Hanging Afzal…
Arundhati Roy’s Op Ed piece in Hindustan Times (December 23) evoked my curiosity and admiration for the courageous person. She touched several raw nerves.
The death sentence on Mohammad Afzal Guru has also been a sentence on our frivolous societal behaviour. We have been deluged by floods of reportage, comments, display of anger, hatred, and compassion in the print and electronic media. The judicial process has been politicised, communalised, lionised, demonised, and defied.
While the constitutional right to expression is well reflected in such wide varieties of reactions, we tend to forget that by communalising, politicising and passing witch-court verdicts on a person condemned to death by the Apex Court, we exhibit the worst kind animal psyche we suffer from.
Sentencing Afzal is not burning an offender at the stakes, like they did to Jeanne d’Arc and numerous others in the dark ages. It’s not even as entertaining an event as exhibiting the severed head of a vanquished enemy on the tallest spear. It is a complicated legal process involving criminal jurisprudence, legal hair-splitting, and Constitutional sanctity.
Sentencing Afzal is neither a spot nor a fabricated police encounter. The legal and the constitutional processes have not yet been exhausted. The Apex Court is yet to deliberate on the Curative Petition and the President is yet to put his seal on the Mercy Petition. Yet, we are braying like war field hyenas for Afzal’s blood. What for? Are we so bloodthirsty a nation that waits in the wings for a few drops of blood of an accused person? Whose thirst would be quenched by quick drawl of blood of an alleged offender, be he a disaffected Kashmiri, a disgruntled Naxal, a desperate Tripura tribal or a starving peasant in Vidharva?
I am not a civil and human rights campaigner but I respect people like Arundhati Roy who struggle for these values that go in the making of a living and kicking constitutional democracy. I value and respect courageous and incisive media persons like Barkha. Reading Arundhati is a cosmic delight, while Barkha is a compelling earthly torpor. Both have presented their cases convincingly.
What I want to add is that braying for blood, burning at stake and dancing around a spear mounted severed head are characteristics of the medieval ages. In modern India, we do not derive pleasure from a Roman gladiator’s rings. Certain institutions like the higher judiciary, vibrating media and fearless civil protesters still uphold the values of our demented democracy paralysed by communalised, sectionalised and criminalised political system.
The legal process of sentencing Afzal has often been overshadowed by aroused and coerced public outrages. However, display of electronic patriotism, through Internet, SMS and MMS, often expressed in slaughter-house lingo, is no patriotism at all. Such azan of media muejjins to their faithful to spontaneously respond to a transient electronic exposition of a problem of great national importance is equivalent to irresponsible war cry vented by a General who has no horse to mount and no soldier to lead. This amounts to worst form of media fundamentalism that arouses violent passion, communal hatred and present only a black and white canvas to its constituency. Such spot survey may present a reality byte in telemarketing and window shopping. But sentencing Afzal is not a telemarketing show. Afzal is a symbol. Such display of crude patriotism reminds one of the blood-thirsty Roman amphitheatres where gladiators are pitted against monumental odds and are jeered and cheered.
No one has the right to behave like Bhima the second Pandava quenching thirst of revenge by drinking the blood of one of the Kurus. Even if it is accepted that the trial of Afzal has been fair at every stage of the legal process, which is contested by many like Arundhati Roy, we have to take into account that the Superior Judiciary has in the recent past carried out spectacular revision of judgments in Priyadarshini Mattoo and Jessica Lall cases. We only pray that Nitish Katara should receive a fair judicial verdict. What is the harm if Afzal gets a fresh chance to exhaust all avenues before he walks up to the gallows? We in the public and media should not behave like hangmen waiting with the knotted rope to hang a person and drink to the lees our cup of vain patriotism.
Why sentencing Afzal should be treated as a political issue? One spectrum of political view appears to be defensive, shy, and coy like a young lover wooing his consort. The other spectrum brays for blood as if the nation will be securer if an alleged offender is hanged, better be lynched. Why this coyness and blood cry? Vote bank politics? Has Afzal become a pawn in political chess-board to be shifted around with utterances like Shah-rukh and Shah-maat? The petulant plunderers of political and electoral democracy might as well remember that sentencing a symbol, good or bad, often recoils against the nation.
The politicians had created a symbol of Sikh resistance between 1975 and 1080. They demolished it by using excessive force in 1984 and invited a decade long turmoil, which was exploited by Pakistan. In the case of hanging of Maqbool Butt in 1984, the government had ignored certain ground realities. Maqbool was sentenced to death in 1976. Why did the government wait for years to hang him in 1984?
That was not the correct geostrategic and geopolitical timing for terminating political tango with Jarnail Singh and Maqbool. They had emerged as symbols of resistance movements in Punjab and Kashmir. Pakistan, with assistance of the Royal Saudi Intelligence and the CIA was emerging as the vanguard of Islamic jihad in Afghanistan. It was preparing to step into the troubled waters of Punjab and the process of igniting bushfire in Kashmir had begun. Political compulsions of the ruling party in Punjab, Kashmir and rest of India had prompted them to ignore the geostrategic realities of Pakistan working on a blueprint of diverting the Afghan victory to its traditional war field-India. If Jarnail Singh’s demolition had intensified the Sikh imbroglio, Maqbool Butt’s hanging in 1984 also cemented the will of the disaffected political groups in Kashmir to join hands with Pakistan. Maqbool stood for a unified independent Kashmir. I had opportunities to interact with Maqbool in a Tihar cell and found him a man completely disillusioned with Pakistan’s intentions in Kashmir. Could we not use that hatred for Pakistan to the advantage of the Kashmiri people?
However, General Zia had simply taken advantage of our gladiator-style national security approaches. Patience and waiting often offer better diplomatic and war field elbow room. From my grassroots experiences as an intelligence operator, I always felt that Delhi had not chosen the correct time to storm the Golden Temple and hang Maqbool Butt. Both incidents brought disastrous consequences to the country.
It is hoped that the political class in India would like to look at the rear view mirror and drive the national carts more tactfully. Kashmir is in the midst of a new ferment. The people of Kashmir are disillusioned with Pakistan. Even the people of the POK and the Northern Areas (Balawaristan) have started agitating against Pakistani stranglehold and total absence of democratic rights. Should we stop the new ferment by hanging this hour itself a man who is yet to get past the democratic rights given to him by Indian laws and constitution?
I tend to agree with Arundhati Roy that some of the Reality TV shows are absurd. I endorse Barkha’s views that some of these shows are educative and well researched. However, some of the anchors with whom I shared the arch lamps, were not interested in knowledge, research, and topical relevance. On one occasion, the anchor, on hook up with a Mumbai based reporter, dished out sensational information about Groupe Islamique Arme (GIA) of Algeria having entered India. I continued to protest that individual GIA members had links with Al Qaeda but they had not shown up in India. The anchor blacked me out and continued with his delirious dissemination of un-researched intelligence gossip.
On another occasion, another channel brought in Al Qaeda to the heartland of India with graphics and chaste Hindi. My protests that Al Qaeda had pitched camps in tribal areas bordering POK and North and South Waziristan and that the ISI was bargaining with them to shift tent to Indian Kashmir went unheeded. Such uneducated dissemination of information generates panic, confusion, and hatred towards a particular community. The news and views channels are otherwise doing a great job. But while treading complicated national security issues, they are required to observe better restraint. Most such gossip vending should be backed by well researched facts. Tickling sensation of the viewers is perhaps not the best marketing tool.
Afzal is not a chained creature in amphitheatre. He enjoys all the constitutional rights like any other Indian. Let us not bray for his blood. He is a fellow Indian and we should wait for the legal, and constitutional tools of the country to have a closer look at his fresh pleas.
