Thinking Allowed: Lawless lawyers
These lawyers were clearly insulting the Constitution by their criminal acts in lawyers’ uniform.
( February 25, 2016, New Delhi, Sri Lanka Guardian) Clever lies become matters of self-congratulation. Solemn pledges become a farce — laughable for their very solemnity,” wrote Rabindranath Tagore. “The nation, with all its paraphernalia of power and prosperity, its flags and pious hymns… and the literary mock thunders of its patriotic bragging, cannot hide the fact that the nation is the greatest evil for the nation…”
The sound and fury over alleged “anti-nationalist” slogans at the Jawaharlal Nehru University and the belligerent, showy “nationalism” of people in public life reminds me of Tagore’s words from a hundred years ago. Is the nation really the greatest evil for the nation? I don’t know. But what I do know is that nationalism can be a heartless weapon in the hands of populist, politically motivated people. Anyone can be branded an “anti-nationalist” and be beaten up or clapped in jail. Anyone can pose as a nationalist and beat you up and clap you in jail. The police will look on. The law will look away. Even in Delhi, in the buzzing capital of a proud democracy.
JNU students’ union president Kanhaiya Kumar was arrested on sedition charges and branded an anti-national with no proper evidence against him, and beaten up by lawyers while in police custody in Delhi’s Patiala House courts last week. But a lot of people have been hit with the sedition charge — an academic here, a doctor there, a budding artist elsewhere, people whose views annoyed the government of the day. And under trials are routinely beaten up in police custody. So what is so special about Mr Kumar’s case?
It is special because it brings the festering wounds of our injured democracy out in the open — there is no veneer of doing the right thing or respecting the law. It shows how shamelessly politics can manipulate the rule of law. It shows that democratic institutions are not sacred anymore and we are not ashamed about it.
