Forgotten Justice

The internet is abuzz with a lot of activity concerning two individuals: Keenan Santos and Reuben Fernandez. There are online petitions, Facebook pages, newspaper campaigns demanding justice for Keenan and Reuben, and for zero-tolerance of crimes against women. The tragic incident, which unfortunately resulted in the deaths of Keenan and Rueben, has put this issue of sexual harassment and street-violence in the limelight. The chief minister, the law minister and the likes have been approached. A vast, internet-surfing, 20-something (and older) crowd has demanded justice. And in all likelihood, justice would be served.

I shall not deal with their quest for justice, or any of their campaigns doing the same. Nor I am going to advocate their cause. Not because there’s something wrong in it; for clearly, there isn’t; but because I have come to question our very sense of morality and conception of justice.

There are several questions I have about what happened that night, and thanks to the media, there are several answers too. I will refrain from commenting on them, because by doing so I would indirectly question Keenan and Rueben’s actions, and thus, their memories. What I will question, is the aftermath in the public domain; which I see reposted on my Facebook wall every day.

Most of the posts say that, I could have been in their place, and therefore I should care about the cause. I agree to that.

But is that the only reason why I should care? Because someone from my social location has been wilfully and gravely caused hurt; because my existence and ideas of freedom in this city are now under threat? Or is it because my female friends (also from my social location) could bear the brunt of such callousness in the future?

If it is so, then I shall very politely refrain from expressing my “support”. Make no mistake; I am not undermining the cause here; but the methods to act upon a cause.

For one, I think there’s something very wrong in the way we’ve all jumped on to this bandwagon. For long, and even now, the newspapers have carried one-paragraphed reports of cases, be it crimes of a sexual nature, or instances of street violence resulting in deaths and injuries. Be it rape, or dowry deaths, or child abuse, society’s response to such crimes has always been that of schematic empathy, so long as the mainstream has remained unaffected. My question is: why haven’t there been campaigns to address these issues?

Before I answer that I would like to share an example.

About six, maybe seven months back, there was a case of serial-rapes and murders of three girls in a Kurla slum. All three girls were abducted from outside their homes, raped and murdered; their bodies were discarded as one would do so for a culled animal. The Garib nagar area lived in perpetual fear for the lives of their children for nearly three months. Despite of which, the third girl’s body was found on the terrace of a police building. Mercifully, the killings stopped and a suspect was arrested. And it is commendable on part of the press that they followed the case thoroughly till it reached a somewhat conclusive end; I am not yet aware of any trial or conviction. But, while this incident may have put one isolated issue on the frontlines of public discourse, several others are relegated to one-paragraphed, correspondent reports, only to be lost in the newspapers.

Every other day there are reports of sexual offences against women, or about people being assaulted as viciously and fatally as Keenan and Rueben were. It’s not that crime has reached unmanageable proportions or that the police are not doing their job. Whatever the scenario was, it is still more or less the same. The tragic episode at Amboli was an instance where these two worlds collided, and led to a crime of the most heinous nature, condemnable by all standards of a civilised society.

But the real injustice does not lie only in this one instance, which by all means was a freak incident. The real injustice lies in our inability to see beyond our pain. We are asking for tougher laws because our shelled existence of safety and security has been shattered; because we have been exposed to the murky and treacherous waters, through which thousands thread every day, and very often, they do so under the pain of death and suffering. It’s only when our feet have been filthied that we are asking for the mud to be removed. And truth be told, we will retreat to our shelled existence once we are assured that we shall never again come in touch with such murkiness, even if it damns the people on the other side.

When the Taj and Oberoi were attacked on 26^th November, a certain class of people were shocked and were forced to come out of their luxuries; precisely because these very luxuries were now under threat. The Taj became the symbol of the 26/11 terror attacks; not CST. The 26/11 attacks have had anniversaries—which were callous and hypocritical celebrations of elitism; the July 11 train blasts, or any other terror episodes, haven’t.

In a similar vein, on-going campaigns crying out for ‘Zero-tolerance’ and ‘Justice for Keenan and Rueben’ reek of upper-middle class bias and elitism. It reeks of our apathy and indifference to confront issues which do not directly affect us. There is a huge deficit in our notion of morality, and the way this notion espouses justice. And as such, by declaring our outrage in the public forum, there is a severely hegemonic move towards covering up this deficit. We profess to defend our morality by contextualising justice in a way in which it would primarily benefit us. Not that a campaign sexual harassment would not benefit a less privileged, marginalised group. But we are consecutively and conspicuously failing to address a larger question: not just about the denial of justice, but also of the lack of access to it.

The outrage and outburst regarding the vicious assault on Keenan and Rueben’s is by every means justified; but this is an outrage moulded by our class consciousness and threat perception to our way of life. More than that, what I find staggering are the posts on the Facebook page, which demand nothing short of vigilantism, bloodlust and anarchy. Such extreme reactions are not a manifestation of injustice; far from it, this is the result of severely clamped vision of society beyond our own boundaries. Many claim, they’ve been wronged; but to manipulate such motives and indeed to manufacture conscience and justice on a public forum is a condemnable act in itself.  

And this demand for justice stifles another one, rendering it meaningless and unimportant: that of social injustice.

Blood And Tears

To say anything like "I am shocked!", or "This is appalling!" would be an understatement. I am shocked, appalled and scared. And I believe so are you. That's fine. In fact, that is a sane reaction.

Mumbai was hit by blasts again, three of them this time; official sources say around twenty killed and sixty injured. But those are just statistics. Just numbers. But for many unfortunate survivors, they are names; mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, friends...

Through my personal observations, I can say that there are two broad responses to such tragedies. One, a sense of hopelessness and despair, soon replaced by what many call the 'spirit of Mumbai', that is, our ability to go on ahead with life, whilst upholding the innate psyche that this city builds in our minds: "Bad things happen, and will keep happening. Will that stop us? Hell no."

And two, is a path of public indignation; usually amplified by political voices. Here, governments are blamed, security agencies are too. Every political big-wig has an opinion. And, strangely, this stage of response follows the first one; candle light vigils and the sorts, you know.

Yesterday, as I sat watching various news channels, I realized these processes were already set into play. Some leader from the Shiv Sena was at Dadar, to "inspect" the site apparently. And this is before the NIA team arrived. He and his party "asked" the government to find out who was behind the blasts. Hmm, I wonder how long the politeness would last.

And in another clip, somewhere in Jhaveri Bazaar, I think, I saw a flash mob gathering near the CM's convoy...shouting protest slogans. Now that is progress.

People often comment that the Indian government is unconcerned towards its 1.2 billion citizenry, and worse still, it tends to value some over the others. The Kalka Mail accident, for example was an appalling example of this fact. Inevitably, discourses on corruption and selfishness of netas follow.

We need a scapegoat. And, in most cases, an inefficient administration suffices. I am not sympathizing with the government, mind you. I believe that they are indeed inefficient and to a very large extent, even unprofessional in dealing with crises like these. They suffer some serious lapses, lack of standardized protocol, incompetence, interdepartmental rivalry, political one-up-man-ship and the gravest of all, lack of political will, to name a few.

Then again, how virtuous is the Indian public? My answer is, not very.

True, one sees a spirit of humanity and solidarity at work when tragedy strikes. The 26/7 floods, the 11/7 train bombings and now this. Also, we've had candle-lights vigils and what-not after 26/11. Yes, India, there is hope- that's what many said.

Half of Mumbai didn't vote in the elections in 2009. But thousands came in support of Team India at Wankehede. Funny world, no?

Not wanting to be accused of cynicism again, I would like to end this post with my personal view on counter-terrorism. Why, because terrorism is a crime of the most depraved nature (let's face it, this is what we're fighting; not a war against our ideas or some abstract struggle), and thus, has to be dealt with ruthlessly. What we need is a competent and well-trained security services and an unhindered chain-of-command. A complete overhaul in our security mechanisms, procedures, protocols and basically, the way we think. And the knowledge of the fact that safety of citizens is of paramount importance. Unless this is realized by the government, I am afraid we are looking at very dark times.

In the face of such troubled times, there is very little what people like you and me can do. But what we can do is, not let the pain wash away by some mind-numbing, defeatist rhetoric. For as long as we remember the wounds and the pain, we will be conscious of what caused it.  Because if we choose to move on, to surrender to fate, spirit or whatever we might call it, then, we are doing a grave injustice to the very people whose losses we mourned; to the tears and blood they have shed.