In a 2009 interview with New Perspectives Quarterly, Lee Kuan Yew, the founding father of modern Singapore, attributed the island nation’s economic success to an unusual factor: air conditioning. He called it a sign invention of history, helping economic development in the tropics changed the nature of civilization. “Without air-conditioning you can only work in the cool morning hours or evening hours,” he said, and so he installed air-conditioners for civil service officers. This, he said, was the key to public efficiency.
I hope that the judges of the Supreme Court in India will have air-conditioned offices and homes. Delhi’s heat is harsh, it can sap one’s energy, and one should never resent the judges—or anyone else for that matter—with such creature comforts. And yet, a bench dismissing the plea of Zakia Jafri and Teesta Setalvad to re-examine the case to prosecute those responsible for the brutal murder of former MP Ehsan Jafri during the 2002 genocide in Gujarat ruled the Human Rights ridiculed lawyers and activists that they are possibly operating from. Air conditioned comfort. The comment was unnecessary, akin to the slang words being tossed on social media to imply that those working in conditioned comfort are different from reality, or are in some way insidious.
As things stand now, like Jessica Lal, Ehsan Jafri was not killed by anyone; And justice seekers are said to be badly motivated to implicate innocent people. Setalvad is now in the dock. Within a day of the verdict, India’s home minister offered his own explanation (and claim) of what happened in Gujarat in 2002; And perhaps purely coincidentally, law enforcement officials from Gujarat arrived at Setalvad’s home in Mumbai and detained him, during which they allege he was assaulted. The complainant has not only been cautioned for his tenacity to present the legal challenge, he must be set an example, it appears, so that others may know better. The size of his house was criticized on social media, and some commentators misleadingly claimed that Setalvad’s great-grandfather, Chimanlal Setalvad, acquitted British General Reginald Dyer, who in 1919 killed soldiers at Jallianwala Bagh. Although he had actually opposed it. Hunter with two other Indians on commission.
The irony of Setalvad’s arrest on the anniversary of the 1975 Emergency did not diminish. The irony has multiplied since then: Within a day, India’s prime minister was speaking out about freedom of expression in Germany, even as his government asked the Indian arm of Twitter to downplay the tweet by Freedom House. Asked to block, stating that India blocks the Internet. As if to highlight the continuity in action, if not in words, Mohammad Zubair of fact-checking site AltNews was arrested for a tweet with a picture of a popular film that hasn’t offended anyone in decades. did, after a Twitter handle with a negligible following complained of hurting sentiments. Like other such sites, AltNews exists because some mainstream media organizations have served as propaganda weapons of the government while others lack the resources to check the accuracy of every story. AltNews exposes misinformation, troubling everyone, with every exposed advocate of lies accusing the site of bias.
These cases highlight disturbing patterns. The responsibility of investigating and prosecuting a crime rests with the state, but the judiciary has to determine whether the charges are serious enough that the accused needs to be taken into custody. Many judges have spoken eloquently about the rule of law and how bail should be the norm and not the exception, but they have done so in lectures or after retirement. On the bench, several judges consider the request of the prosecution and deny bail. So the process becomes punishment. In fact, the law should always take its course, but the principle should be the rule of law, not rule by law.
Pro-government broadcasters and a vocal online chorus say the court will say so if the arrested persons are innocent. But charges get filed forever and Indian prisons are full of dissidents. Meanwhile, Stan Swami dies, Varavara Rao becomes seriously ill, and Sudha Bharadwaj is released, but not Umar Khalid and many others. The state argues that it cannot make exceptions, but good governance lies in the exercise of judgment and not in the rubber-stamp given by the rules. The state has to serve both policy and justice, as Amartya Sen writes in The Idea of Justice. Policy is about justice of rules and institutions, and justice is the way to realize the same. Justice is meaningful only when policy guides it, while justice ensures that it is implemented.
Instead of protecting rights, Indian courts appear to be protecting the system. A court that once treated the postcard with respect and turned it into a plea to hold the state accountable now wants to hold complainants accountable for challenging the state.
This is not an emergency, we have been told. It is not; There is no dissenting Justice HR Khanna on the bench, regardless of the consequences of his career.
As Singaporean author and academic Cherian George memorably noted, Lee’s Singapore was ultimately a conditioned nation, with the climate under control. As it turns 75, the reasoning nation is becoming a conditioned nation.
Salil Tripathi is a writer based in New York. Read Salil’s previous mint columns at www.livemint.com/saliltripathi