Crime and punishment
K S S Pillai
Though the backlog of cases in our courts will take decades to be disposed of, there is a section of our society that swears by our judicial system. They don’t have any problem with adjournment after adjournment of the hearing, or appeal after appeal, often resulting in such a delay that the original litigants might no more be alive when the final verdict is delivered. If it was one of great public interest when the case was filed, it might no more be remembered by most people when it is closed.
Another section has, however, no patience to wait that long, and believes in instant justice. Newspapers and television channels often report novel ways in which justice is dispensed outside the courts.
A girl, who is bold enough to marry a boy of another caste, is sentenced by the elders of the village to carry the boy on her shoulders around the village. A thief, caught red-handed, is paraded naked through the streets while being thrashed by all and sundry. An angry village school teacher ties the legs and hands of a ten-year-old boy for writing a love letter to a girl in the same class. Cops look the other way when wrong-doers are dealt with in this manner by the general public.
When some suspected criminals were shot down recently in an ‘encounter’, the public was so elated that the policemen involved were treated as heroes. They were smeared with saffron, garlanded, fed sweets, and taken in a procession on the shoulders of the admirers to the accompaniment of drum beating and dancing. The police claim that it was a genuine encounter was taken with a pinch of salt by many.
People take it in their stride when the police deliver justice in their own way for minor offences. Though closed-circuit cameras and mobile phones of bystanders record such incidents and become viral in the social media and television channels, we see offenders undergoing punishment like doing ‘sit-ups’ in full view of the public, or those not following covid protocols like wearing face masks or not keeping social distancing let off after a sound thrashing.
Some kings and emperors of the bygone era, who were their own law-makers, were equally interested in dispensing instant justice. There is the story of a king, displeased with a long-serving courtier, ordering him to be thrown to a pack of hungry dogs. The clever courtier requests him to postpone the punishment for ten days, which is granted. The dogs spare him on the appointed day as he had befriended them during the intervening period by feeding and petting them, but the determined king promptly orders him to be thrown into a pond full of hungry crocodiles!
Corporal punishment, though banned legally, is still rampant in our schools. In the past, society had accepted it as a necessary corrective step. Parents had full faith in teachers, who were put on the same pedestal as God.
A three-foot-long cane used to be an integral part of a classroom, except on inspection days, and it could land heavily on a student’s outstretched palm or any part of the body if he indulged in indiscipline or lagged in studies. For coming late, talking in the class, or not bringing textbooks, the student was made to stand on the bench or in a corner of the classroom until the class was over.
If he made mistakes in a dictation test, the usual punishment was rewriting the wrongly spelt words correctly a hundred times or more. In cases like stealing or getting into a fight with the other students, a student would be taken to the headmaster, who would cane him first and then ask him not to attend the school till his guardian met him. The reprimanded guardian was sure to take his ward to task for the embarrassment caused and subject him to a thorough thrashing.
(The author is a retired professor of English and a regular contributor to The Kashmir Vision. He can be reached at: [email protected])
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