In the present day world, one finds that it is easy to profile a section of society or community, pillory him, her or them and then categorise the persons as not deserving justice. This also thrives on the concept that justice can be conditional.
So we have Rhea Chakraborty being pilloried as the archetypal girlfriend who doesn’t deserve to be heard because she is supposed to have fleeced Sushant and spent his money and played mind games with him to turn him against his own family and isolate him? And on the other hand, that Sushant Singh’s family doesn’t deserve to be heard because they are people from the toxic cow belt. Well there is toxic masculinity everywhere. And also women who are carriers of that masculinity. So the truth may lie somewhere in between or beyond, all the voices need to be heard rather than proceeding with archetypal stereotypes. In the whole process any issue of any mental illness and what could be leading to it and how has it been treated, is completely drowned.
One is reminded of a murder case in Panjim many years ago, where people almost sympathised with the man who killed his father-in-law, as someone who was avenging being jilted by his girlfriend. Nobody wanted to look at the fact that Panjim police had taken no action against complaints lodged by the woman against him for threatening her, that too, with messages on mobile, that are hard evidence. To cap it all, the BJP-led cabinet, statedly for the first time according to the man’s lawyer, actually made a case for grant of pardon to him after the conviction for a life term. And why? Because he was a party sympathizer.
But profiling happens in many other spheres too, where the entire narrative of the crime that has taken place is scripted by forces that want to perpetuate their own agendas. The truth unfortunately then becomes a casualty in this baying-for-blood kind of justice-seeking. It is good to raise questions and not presume anything. Unless one has such levels of inside information that one can safely triangulate information and conclude.
We find that the same thing has happened with the murder of the jewellery shop owner that rocked Margao a few days back. In this space itself an earlier article has already highlighted how there was stereotyping about the possible murderers. Also, as a matter of fact, what nobody is trying to even explore is that Margao has become a veritable explosive hotbed for perpetuating stereotypes and diverting issues from the course of justice. Some years ago, a grievance of molestation was forgotten for the molestation issue that was and turned into a stereotyping of criminal/sexual harassment perpetrating character of a particular minority community.
Again, a couple of years ago, a bomb was going to be planted during Narkasur parade which would automatically – because of the stereotypes – have led one to think that a minority community has been instrumental in targeting an event of the majority community. If not for the explosion on the scooter of the person who was carrying the bomb, who happened to be of the majority community.
Then there has also been the profiling of who it is that are supposed to be the carriers of COVID. Here in Goa, the profiling has ranged from ‘those with travel history’, ‘outsiders’, ‘seafarers’, tribals, without an iota of evidence to that effect, but did anyone try to think beyond this to explore other possibilities – such as what makes people in particular areas vulnerable to contracting and dying with COVID. Justice, in real terms, for Goa, would also mean looking for this.
Indeed justice, if it has to have deterrent value, cannot be effected through deterrent punishment in individual cases alone, but deterrent punishment for those who wilfully become the cogs in the wheel of systemic corruption, violence and fascism that makes crime and neglect of the needy members of society possible. This should, however, not be construed as an endorsement of death penalty, which again is seen as a stereotype for deterring crime, whereas studies show that because of this, courts have fought shy of convicting a person, if the only option on conviction is death penalty.
Stereotyping communities and people with certain political beliefs as anti-national is also in vogue. Those who protested the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 plus the National Register of Citizens and the National Population Register are all candidates for throwing into the pot-boiler of this case. As this is going to the press, the news is just out of yet another stereotype playing out in the name of justice in policing and investigation. Ambedkarite activist Jyoti Jagtap has just been arrested in what is referred to as the Bhima Khoregao – Elgar Parishad case. Jagtap is one of the newest batch of arrestees. Fifteen assorted human rights activists, lawyers, writers, professors, have so far been arrested as accused in the case from June 2018. That includes Prof Anand Teltumbde, a prolific writer and a professor at our very own Goa Institute of Management.
Surely stereotypes cannot be the foundation of justice? How different are we from the days of colonial rule when a Criminal Tribes Act notified a whole lot of tribal communities as criminal tribes? How different are we from the days when justice did not go beyond punishment, and when concepts of substantive justice were never explored? How different are we from the times when justice would not just be about pillorying people based on stereotypes, but about looking at the whole case in context? If we do not remain alert, justice will continue to be subverted by the powers that be.
(Albertina Almeida is a lawyer and human
rights activist)
