When the lawmaker and the law enforcer fail

The historic town of Kheda in Gujarat was instrumental in the journey of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi to ‘Mahatma’. It was here that Gandhi had launched a Satyagraha against oppressive taxes by the British rulers. Satyagraha was a spectacularly non-violent protest, and locals cutting across ethnicities and religions did their bit assert their rights and sow the seeds of India’s independence. Gandhi had described the epic movement as “the beginning of an awakening”. Kheda was also the hometown of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. Today, the same town that was so pivotal in shaping the inclusive ‘Idea of India’ is in the news for shameful visuals of its law enforcers, i.e., the local police, publicly flogging members of a minority community who had been chained to an electric pole. The optics were reminiscent of the pre-Independence highhandedness of the British rulers.

The victims of the flogging had been accused of pelting stones at garba celebrations that had been organised in the proximity of a mosque. For the police to retaliate with means that are blatantly unconstitutional and brutal, especially in these polarised times, augurs poorly for the trust that ought to be the bedrock of all law enforcement.

In recent times, the normalisation of police excesses such as extrajudicial actions, staged encounters and bulldozer terror have sullied the credentials of our constitutional democracy and its ability to deliver effective criminal justice. Vigilante justice cannot be the wont of law enforcers. Surely, they would have known the inherent communal angle in the tinderbox of Gujarat, yet the police chose to act in complete defiance of all norms of duties, restraints, and implied impartiality.

The previous Chief Justice of India N V Ramana had recently warned that the “threat to human rights and bodily integrity are the highest in police stations”. Yet, the police in Kheda felt emboldened enough to conduct itself with such a devil-may-care attitude, perhaps confident of their impunity. Expectedly, many even justified the same and felt that such tactics of the police are necessary, never mind that it increasingly makes India look like an illiberal police state like a Saudi Arabia or North Korea.

Completing the picture of societal morass is the recent video of a BJP lawmaker in the national capital itself who suggested a “total boycott” of a minority community and is seen exhorting supporters to “fix their heads and set them straight”. These shockers didn’t come from a wet-behind-the-ear newbie but a young dynastic politician (whose father was once the Chief Minister of Delhi). This, after taking the solemn oath of a Member of the Lok Sabha, “I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of India as by law established”.

At the same function, another lawmaker, an MLA from Uttar Pradesh, equated the targeted community to ‘pigs’ in his unrestrained vitriol. From the symbolism of historic Kheda to the national capital, both lawmakers and law enforcers diminished the dignity of their respective callings and, above all, the dignity of India. India has perhaps never looked more like Pakistan, a bogey that the ruling party and its Parivar constantly raise, than today.

Institutionalised violence signifies the decline in the health of a constitutional democracy and the rule of law, expected to be implemented impartially by its law enforcers. It was Sardar Patel who said: “A civil servant cannot afford to, and must not, take part in politics. Nor must he involve himself in communal wrangles. To depart from the path of rectitude in either of these respects is to debase public service and to lower its dignity”. That path of rectitude in public service has been enthusiastically forsaken, recklessly abandoned, by tactical acquiescence and inaction. It is a wound that will inevitably turn into the septicemia of Indian nationhood. Honouring the word and principles of Sardar Patel in their true spirit, rather than merely casting him in a grand statue (paradoxical, in the current backdrop, to call it the ‘Statue of Unity’) for purposes of political appropriation, would be more befitting.

Even if one were to grudgingly admit that politicians in a multi-identity land will invariably feast on societal fault lines and tensions, yet the police can surely repair and strengthen societal bonds by enforcing the law without fear or favour. Their ability to demonstrate procedural justice, unbiased conduct and contribute towards societal reconciliation can be decisive -- which of these three tenets were upheld by the police by their action in Kheda or inaction in Delhi, is worth pondering. The much-publicised line ‘With You, For You, Always’, emblazoned on Delhi Police PCR’s must evoke a sense of earned trust and genuine respect in the eyes of the citizenry, irrespective of their ethnicity, race, religion or any other ‘identity’. But does it?

Unfortunately, the policing institution has remained a ‘caged parrot’ that has historically been politically subservient (across all governments since Independence), though the levels of submission, interference and misuse of the various governmental institutions has perhaps never been so brazen as now.

In today’s desperate times, silence is tantamount to complicity – it isn’t even about targeting one partisan party, one state police, one community or ‘one’ another, it is about the overall failure of the governance model and narrative. When both lawmakers and the law enforcers ‘normalise’ such majoritarianism, then the lofty ‘Idea of India’ as envisaged by the likes of Sardar Patel is in danger. Blaming the ‘past’ has outlived its utility and it is time for those in power to heed to at least their own Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwas slogan, if not Sardar Patel.

(The writer is a former Lt Governor of Andaman and Nicobar Islands & Puducherry)