NewsClick

NewsClick
  • हिन्दी
  • Politics
  • Economy
  • Covid-19
  • Science
  • Culture
  • India
  • International
  • Sports
  • Articles
  • Videos
search
menu

INTERACTIVE ELECTION MAPS

image/svg+xml
  • All Articles
  • Newsclick Articles
  • All Videos
  • Newsclick Videos
  • हिन्दी
  • Politics
  • Economy
  • Science
  • Culture
  • India
  • Sports
  • International
  • Africa
  • Latin America
  • Palestine
  • Nepal
  • Pakistan
  • Sri Lanka
  • US
  • West Asia
About us
Subscribe
Follow us Facebook - Newsclick Twitter - Newsclick RSS - Newsclick
close menu
×
For latest updates on nCOVID-19 around the world visit our INTERACTIVE COVID MAP
Law
Politics
India

The Last Straw: Civil Society Must Step in When Law is no Longer About Justice

The straw becomes lethal in the Stan Swamy story. When indifference and prejudice becomes a monstrosity of legal indifference, civil society must reinvent democracy as a new politics of caring.
Shiv Visvanathan
04 Dec 2020
The Last Straw: Civil Society Must Step in When Law is no Longer About Justice

Image Courtesy: Mint

Each citizen, as Havel once said about totalitarianism, must become iconic of protest from body language to symbolism. When indifference and prejudice becomes a monstrosity of legal indifference, civil society must reinvent democracy as a new politics of caring, says SHIV VISHVANATHAN.

———–

AN anthropologist watching the regime is struck by different styles and contrasts. The Congress oozes hypocrisy stemming from its socialism and lack of respect for the everyday demands of politics. It takes a kind of collective stupidity to think a Rahul Gandhi could lead an anarchic Congress. He can head a club or a boycott group, but lacks the intuition that politics demands.

The BJP oozes pomposity, confusing bureaucracy for morality.

It is still not able to tackle its sense of inferiority, its mediocrity which it seeks to hide behind the logic of number. It is marked by mediocrity. It has no claim to legend, epic.

Between pomposity and bumbling, the government forgets simple acts of generosity, tenderness and care. The straw becomes lethal in the Stan Swamy story, never knowing what an Urban Naxal may do with a piece of straw.

If Rahul Gandhi conveyed a sense of Pinocchio, Amit Shah and Yogi Adityanath and Modi convey a Frankenstein. They prefer inquisition to dialogue, feel holier than thou among Indians but convey a sense of inferiority when they confront rivals abroad. An obsequiousness with the latter is made up with intolerance in the former.

Between pomposity and bumbling, the government forgets simple acts of generosity, tenderness and care. The straw becomes lethal in the Stan Swamy story, never knowing what an Urban Naxal may do with a piece of straw.

One witnesses it in small things. When Stan Swamy, suffering from Parkinson was arrested, he asked for a straw to enable him to drink with ease. This request was treated literally as a security issue by the National Investigation Agency or not fully procedural. This request becomes troublesome. It could have been handled in one minute and forgotten. Instead, it becomes a cause of celebre, a Kafkaesque joke, the last straw. Between pomposity and bumbling, the government forgets simple acts of generosity, tenderness and care. The straw becomes lethal in the Stan Swamy story, never knowing what an Urban Naxal may do with a piece of straw.

Yet it is this missing humanitarianism that haunts the regime. The regime seems to read anyone who cares for the tribe as antinational and locks them up.

When decency is suspect, when humanitarianism is seen as anti-national, it is the regime that is revealing its true colours.

Chittrangada Singh writing poignantly about Sudha Bharadwaj shows that the ordinary tribal knows that he is helpless against big companies without the help of lawyers like Sudha.

One witnesses the same callousness in the harassment of the human rights lawyer and Dalit rights activist Surendra Gadling, a man known for challenging the police on extrajudicial killings. Yet these individuals are seen as problems for internal security. When decency is suspect, when humanitarianism is seen as anti-national, it is the regime that is revealing its true colours. In any decent society a Swamy, a Gadling, a Sudha Bharadwaj would be honoured. I think our civil society must hail them as prisoners of conscience, Gadling has represented Arun Ferriera, G.N. Saibaba in earlier cases.

The regime has no sense of the difference between a crude idea of law and order, as an extension of imagined security, and the link between law and justice, which is the hall mark of a decent society, where the law is not just about justice, but decency and dignity.

Why I am raising these issues when protests have left no imprint on the regime when the Supreme Court would rather give attention to Arnab Goswami and Amit Shah declares that Kangana Ranaut needed security.

I admit that everyone is entitled to rights but the BJP in its post-Orwellian style seems to think some are more equal than others.

One is forced to ask why is the law so cannibalistic about professionals who protect the integrity of the law? The regime has no sense of the difference between a crude idea of law and order, as an extension of imagined security, and the link between law and justice, which is the hall mark of a decent society, where the law is not just about justice, but decency and dignity.

I have seen the best of legal minds from Upendra Baxi to Boaventura de Sousa Santos explain this to the world.

Civil society has to challenge majoritarianism as anticipation of emerging authoritarianism. It has to challenge the language of technicality and procedural delay.

When the law is no longer about justice but is reimagined as a tool of terror and harassment, it is time for civil society to step in. I admit the reign of COVID and majoritarianism has made civil society helpless. The regime is arrogant enough to present RSS and Bajrang Dal as simulacra of civil society.

Civil society has to challenge majoritarianism as anticipation of emerging authoritarianism. It has to challenge the language of technicality and procedural delay.

Why does the prosecution need twenty days to file a reply on the Stan Swamy case? The prosecutor files a technical answer to a technical question. Decency does not matter. In a strange way, he reminded me of Robert Oppenheimer.

At a critical moment when the scientist was asked why did you make the Atomic Bomb. He said it was a technical answer to a technical question.

Our regime has similar proclivities where technicality hides a monstrous indifference to torture, seeking silence as a new language of minorities and marginal.

Civil Society must challenge this.

Each citizen, as Havel once said about totalitarianism, must become iconic of protest from body language to symbolism.

When indifference and prejudice becomes a monstrosity of legal indifference, civil society must reinvent democracy as a new politics of caring. This much we owe the Bharadwajs, Swamy’s, and Gadlings as the great Satyagrahis of today.

(Shiv Visvanathan is an Indian academic best known for his contributions to developing the field of science and technology studies, and for the concept of cognitive justice- a term he coined. He is currently a Professor at O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonepat. The views are personal.)

The article was originally published in The Leaflet.

Get the latest reports & analysis with people's perspective on Protests, movements & deep analytical videos, discussions of the current affairs in your Telegram app. Subscribe to NewsClick's Telegram channel & get Real-Time updates on stories, as they get published on our website.
Anti-Nationals
Civil Society
majoritarianism
Urban Naxal
Related Stories
Calling for ‘Democratisation’, Civil Society Groups To Conduct Telangana People’s Assembly from September 4

Calling for ‘Democratisation’, Civil Society Groups To Conduct Telangana People’s Assembly from September 4

rss politics

When Ascetics Stride Into Politics

CAA Changed Muslim Women

Anti-CAA Movement Changed Muslim Women Forever

Muslim Politics beyond Islamophobia

Muslim Politics beyond Islamophobia

Tariq Ali’s Golden Butterfly: A Hidden Lament for Today’s India

Tariq Ali’s Golden Butterfly: A Hidden Lament for Today’s India

Engage in Relief Work

Empathy is Greater Than Hate: Muslims Engage in Relief Work

Bharat ek Mauj

Modi ji’s Degree, Godi Media in Shaheen Bagh and More: Bharat Ek Mauj S4 E7

Campus Spring Changed my View on ‘Apolitical’ Students

Why this Government Does Nothing About Economic Crisis

Why this Government Does Nothing About Economic Crisis

Majoritarianism in India

Take Power From Majoritarianism and Return it to People

Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on WhatsAppShare via EmailShare on RedditShare on KindlePrint
Share
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on WhatsAppShare via EmailShare on RedditShare on KindlePrint
Share

Related Stories

Ajay Gudavarthy

India Needs a New Anti-Majoritarian Self

16 January 2021
We learn from the majoritarian culture that is spreading around the world that its influence cannot be explaine
Ajay Gudavarthy

AIMIM and India’s Majoritarian Impasse

11 January 2021
The strategy of fielding candidates in local and state e
Aritry Das

‘Repeal Unconstitutional Farm Laws’: Civil Society, Women, and Rights Groups Support Farmers’ Protest

02 December 2020
Demanding the withdrawal and repeal of the three new farm laws, civil society gro

Pagination

  • Next page ››

More

  • covid 19 vaccine J&K

    COVID-19: Amid Apprehensions, over 3,700 Vaccinated in J&K in Two Days

  • Mamata Gets Taste of Public Outrage

    West Bengal: Mamata Banerjee to Contest Assembly Polls from Nandigram

  • New ‘COVID Tongue’ Symptom Identified, Claims Expert

    New ‘COVID Tongue’ Symptom Identified, Claims Expert

  • covid 19 vaccine

    UP: Health Worker in Moradabad Dies Day After COVID Vaccine Shot

  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with
about