LAW, LAWLESSNESS AND THE JUST

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When I go to sleep at night, it is with the firm belief that I would wake up the next day, with everything inside and outside as it had been before. And in the morning, when I go to attend to my daily chores, I go with the conviction that I would find the house and all things inside in the same way as I left it. This, in essence, is what we understand by civilized living. The belief that you can go along with your life undisturbed, living it the way you want it to be lived, without any one else intruding into your sphere of living.  An idyllic and very tame life, no doubt. But that is how the majority of what we call the common people would like to live their lives.

I well remember the choral rants from T S Eliot’s play, Murder in the Cathedral. The Chorus in the play represents the Common Person, who is sure that the return of the Bishop, Thomas Beckett, would surely invite murder and subsequent anarchy. They do not want that to happen. They had been going about living their "half-lives", coping up with minor injustices. And they do not want that peace to be disturbed.  That peace would be what the majority of the silent populace would swear by.

It is to ensure this social peace and harmony that well-meaning individuals from each society have got together to frame laws, which each person who claims to be part of that society need follow. This society can be taken to mean anything from a local residential society to the global society of nations. And the species that proudly owns up its civilizational uniqueness is duty bound to adhere to the laws that have evolved from the social and personal values that marks its uniqueness.  

Great teachers and religious founders from yore have underlined the need to exercise restraint, because they knew the confusion and unrest that retributive justice can bring about. When one is asked to turn the other cheek instead of demanding an eye for an eye, what is emphasized is the preservation of the existing order. True civilization rests on the pillars of peace and forbearing. For, that is when we would have learnt to effectively master our animal instincts. 

What we see around us in these times of our lives is a marked erosion of values and faith. It is not to say that we have been living a civilized life otherwise. But now the scant regard for law seems to have become a habit, rather than an exception. More and more people are now convinced that the law and the procedures it involves serves only to put off justice. Things have come to a stage where the ones who have no patience for the law and serve what they think is justice, are actually applauded and turned to heroes. 

The present and the recent past have plenty of examples to show how impatient with law we have become. The most recent being the blatant killing of a dreaded gangster by the very police who are supposed to ensure that the rule of law prevails, and how they have been welcomed by the local population. A few months back, a police official who was responsible for shooting down the four accused in a horrific case of rape and inhuman murder, became a national celebrity overnight. These incidents are quoted to show that cases of what are generally considered criminal activities now win general approbium. Retributive justice seems to have become the norm again, and the adage that civilization is a myth, seems to get underlined in the bold.

It must definitely be because the present legal system is exasperatingly ineffective. Right from the law’s foot soldier to those adorning the lofty portals of the justice provider, every person must be held accountable for the state of affairs.

But then, the persons, on whom rests the onus of ensuring legal and human justice, aren’t heaven sent. They come from the very society they are expected to reform. And can they remain immune to the prevailing mores and cultures and ambitions of the society they live in? When the society as a whole seemed to be more value-centric, the persons who adorned the portals of power reflected the then prevailing values. When the whole business of living becomes a game of one upmanship, then values recede to the background – like a religious text one swears by before going out in the sun sinning. Democracy and its professed thrust on equal justice remain safely ensconced within the maze of law books. Mobocracy rules the streets of everyday living.

It was as an antithesis to Christ’s exhortation of peaceful co-existence that Nietzsche called for anarchy. He theorized that the end of anarchy would give birth to a new order of co-existence. But would it, indeed?

And I am left wondering, can we ever outgrow our animal nature?