Tomorrow, January 26 marks the 57th year of the Indian republic. The question that will be in the mind of many this Republic Day is what has become of the “tryst with destiny” spoken of by the country’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, on the occasion of its independence just a few years earlier. After six decades, it is clear that the tryst with destiny is beset with some deep and lasting problems. Among those is the crisis of justice: the breakdown of policing, and of prosecution and judicial procedures, which is the rot at the core of India’s decaying democracy.
Sri Aurobindo was one of those who in the lead up to independence observed how Indian creativity was adversely affected by the paralysis of the Indian mind. Today nothing retards the Indian mind more than the paralysis of the Indian justice system. This paralysis obstructs all attempts for greater social mobility and change within Indian society. While public consciousness of rights has grown enormously, the justice system obstructs popular aspirations. The failed justice system keeps India fragmented and in a constant battle against anarchy.
India’s judicial system is today obsolete and grossly unfair to majority of the population. Not only are the most discriminated and victimised groups–including Dalits and indigenous peoples–terrorised by its agents and apparatus, but even the middle classes find it fundamentally unjust. Encounter killings, torture, fabrication of cases, negligence and gross indiscipline are daily fare and common knowledge among the ordinary folk.
The fossilised conditions of India’s courts and police stations do not stand to reason when compared to the sophistication achieved in other sectors through the use of increasingly affordable new technology. Yet the justice system’s stark failure immobilises the entire nation and contributes greatly to the tensions and unhappiness of its people everywhere. The struggle to modernise remains confined to technological advances among small parts of its society, most of whom are already affluent. Overall, the country remains completely feudal and primitive.
Strangely, an extremely conservative minority uses public dissatisfaction with the system to urge for “reforms” that would amount to destroying completely what notions of justice remain. In 2003 the Malimath Committee suggestions brought such strong public backlash that they became the butt of jokes, yet they are still being pursued under different names and in different descriptions. This minority is now clamouring for stronger restraints on citizens by way of greater police powers, backed by some intellectuals who once had credibility in the legal community. Their agenda is not only to restrict civil rights: it is to dismantle the justice system altogether. The old debate in Indian society on the need of the Wheel of Law, or Dharma, continues. The proponents of ruthless exploitation and repression remain vocal, and must be vigorously and constantly opposed.
On this Republic Day of India 2006 the Asian Human Rights Commission calls for drastic and genuine reforms to the country’s justice system. Above all, the notion of command responsibility and competence in criminal investigations must be strongly planted and nurtured. So long as the public perceives criminal investigation to be the work of corrupt incompetents and illiterates, the society will be degraded and all its public institutions further undermined. It is the ending of impunity and injustice that will bring true meaning to the struggle for freedom, liberty and equality in India, and at last make its democracy something of substance, rather than mere appearance.
