Yesterday
What we saw at Singhu border yesterday was a spectacle of fearsome medieval justice. There should be no distortion of what it was and what it was intended to be. And no one should look past the crime. Recognise it for what it was. The accused has been arrested and to defend him now is the job of his lawyers.
In terms of law and order, it is rare to see such swift action and arrest in India - for which the willingness, even enthusiasm, of the accused to give himself up should be, if not commended, at least acknowledged.
We can also agree such a crime should not happen again. What should one do to prevent it ? Quick action by the police is commendable. That often works as a deterrent, doesn’t it.
If say, someone committed such a ghastly crime resulting in many deaths, and no arrests were made for days and even then grudgingly so, that would be a failure of the law and order machine. And, say, no arrests were made, or accused, or leave that alone arrested even identifications made for six years, that would be a bigger failure still. But imagine the unimaginable : that nothing is done for four decades - what would we call that? I don’t know.
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If a tree falls in a forest, does it fall at all if no one hears it? Depends. How far will the tremors travel, maybe far enough to be felt far away. Of course it would have to be a very big tree which falls. And a weak earth to so shake.
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kál káti raje kasai dharam pankh kar uddarya
kúd amawas sach chandrama deese nahi keh chadya
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The rule of law separates a just society from an unjust one. Such is the nature of rule of law that it takes generations to entrench in a civilisation’s course but one bad king is all it takes to deal it a severe blow. Once the poison infects the system, you don’t see an immediate total collapse though, but a corrosion of the deep structure which holds up the edifice of justice, and concurrently with it, the degradation of ethics and morality.
The rot most often begins from the top. And it seeps gradually, lower and lower, settling deep within the hearts of men - of the weakest first, weak in terms of the true measure of strength, morality.
When a society reaches a tipping point, where the morality of a certain number of people has become certainly irredeemable, the society will tend towards collapse - because this degradation is caused by the war of the self against the self, engendered by a compromised morality in the soul, so the microcosm will reflect in the macrocosm, and the society will go to war against itself.
But the question is, is there hope for such a society to save itself? Perhaps there is. If some within, a substantial number, still hold something - a symbol, a relic, a philosophy from the collective civilisational soul memory - as still sacrosanct, that can become a sanctuary against the fall.
For those who wish to save that society, that symbol , the springhead of regeneration, must be saved at every cost.
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A spectacle of gruesomeness is memory and prophecy: the first as a reminder of what a human being still is behind the mask of umrah; the second of what he will become again if rule of law rules no more.
One only needs to look to the east. China as a civilisation has always had the narrowest conception of rule of law. And none in the present regime. Maoist China has witnessed the bloodiest, most gruesome orgies of cannibalistic mass violence.
The China that was a civilisation is dead. Vestiges of it remain perhaps somewhere in the frontiers. But they are just remains of spores which travelled far from the civilisational core and were preserved in foreign lands, which the vampiristic core now seeks to feed on to feel, for a moment, alive.
The rule of law which China briefly experienced was also a spore. Perhaps more than one the further back we go. Closer to our times, Kublai Khan attempted to become a Dharamraj.
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dharam ka palan hona chahiye
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This dharam is the river of life which keeps this civilisation alive. I have written previously about how it almost died once, and was brought back to life, and by whom.
It is a uniquely dharmic miracle that the person remains with us still is it not?
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India is not France or the United States of America. Those great civilisational entities have their own life-rivers, which have their own course, and their own particular admixture of vital cultural essences in their waters. That they understand it, and preserve it - at least those of them that do - is a thing to be very greatly admired.
We must bathe in every river of the world, but remember our fields are only nourished by our own.
Among the vital essences of Indic civilisation is the value we give to the idea of respect. Not just respect of this or that, but the very idea of respect, is in a sense, a principle of dharam.
A book of it falls on the ground, it must necessarily be touched to the forehead - if not, we have failed something. Even perhaps the goddess the book represents, or maybe even the goddess within that book, or maybe the goddess who is the book.
Is it not so ?
Dharam runs through every aspect of this civilisations life course. In objects, in landscapes, in mountains and skies, and in individuals - who, it was through an enlightenment engendered by dharam, we came to understand are, in the essence of dharam, one.
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gura’n ik deh bujhaee
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Such an understanding of dharam also leads in another instance of the microcosm reflecting in the macrocosm, to the idea of rajdharam.
When a king follows the rajdharam, society will cohere.
When kings act actively against it, it results in 1947, 1984 and 2002.
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Watch every bank which the waters of the river have washed, to know from where flows the blood that makes its waters red.
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The rule of law does not collapse at once even when it has suffered a serious blow, under state patronage. What ruins the system in the end is the gradual corrosion of its gears, and nuts and bolts. They can only be kept functioning and in good shape if the machinery works as it is meant to, with the necessary upkeep and repairs from time to time.
What we saw at Singhu border yesterday was a bloody crime, but it was the consequence of serious failure of the law and order machinery. There have been numerous cases of desecration of the Guru Granth Sahib in less than a decade.
Only last week there was a case of a man who climbed onto the Dias of the Guru Granth Sahib in a Gurudwara, violently assaulted the elder priest reciting prayers and when confronted by others threatened them with a sword. The man had been arrested some years ago as well for desecration of the Granth but was let off by the police.
Six years ago there was a spate of desecration incidents planned and executed by followers of a cult leader - who is now in prison for rape and murder. When Sikhs peacefully protested asking for the ‘law and order’ machine to do its job and arrest the criminals involved, they were fired at and protestors were killed. (See: https://www.google.co.in/amp/s/indianexpress.com/article/explained/punjab-sacrilege-incidents-sit-probe-amarinder-singh-explained-7376954/lite/).
Crime is a natural phenomenon in society. In itself, crime does not cause a degradation of law and order. In fact, acting swiftly in response to a crime gives the justice system an opportunity to evolve and become more efficient. However, crime is very often a consequence of the degradation of the law and order system - which is, again, a process which occurs as rule of law weakens, which is especially rapid when the ‘weakening’ flows from top to bottom.
(Not to get too theoretical - rule of law refers to the idea that society is governed by principles which are greater than those who rule it, wither through position or power; law and order refers to how rule of law is applied or operationalised in a society.)
The failure of the law and order machine to first punish individuals responsible for isolated sacrilege cases, then organisations who did them systematically, then those who shielded the people who run these organisations, then to punish those who killed citizens who were merely asking for the system to do its most basic functions - the river runs through it all before it comes to Singhu.
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The law must take its course for the course of law to remain alive and not become a dried up riverbed marking the course of a forgotten civilisation.
For when that river begins to run dry, it will for a season or two in the longue duree, flow with the blood of the last children of the land.
The act was done. The crime was committed. The accused was arrested. Let the law take its course.
But who will understand - or who can explain - that it will not.
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And no one will hear their cries.
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