Legal Evils — How they Evolve and how to contain them?
As a society, we must be able to diagnose the Social evils for what they are irrespective of its legality, and administer a repelling treatment to the perpetrators before they infect the society beyond cure.
1. A Genocide killing 6 million Humans.
2. Humans owning and utilizing other fellow humans as commodities.
3. The life of a widow is unwarranted after the passing away of her Husband.
If the statements seem like the mumblings of a restrained sadist, you are in for a surprise!!!
All these cringing statements are instances which were actually legal at different points in history. While ‘Holocaust’ in Nazi Germany was an institutionalized doctrine of killing a legally defined ‘inferior’ race; ‘Slavery’ was a global phenomenon which involved sale and ownership of humans as commodities — to be utilized, mutilated, or simply exterminated if found unworthy to the master. In India, the ritual of ‘Sati’ mandated suicide as an essential duty of widows once their husband passed away.
As bewildering is the fact that these were legal action, it is equally astonishing to realize that all these exploits are instances of the last century — a time when Humans decided to declare themselves as ‘Modern’ and ‘Civilized’.
History is rife with many more examples of such ‘Legal evils’. So how come, such deplorable actions are not only practiced but find patronage of the law in the ‘Civilized’ society?
For this we must comprehend the evolution of a Legal Evil.
Evolution of a Legal Evil:
The idea invariably germinates in a human out of the most common base human instincts — hatred, anger, vengeance, envy — for others. When left unimpeded, the base human instincts gradually convince the human about the ‘righteousness’ of this conceived evil. On continually feeding on this, the person manages to annihilate his conscience with resolute conviction and finds the courage to display this new-found righteousness to the society:
1. Hitler did it with Mein-Kamph (My Struggle) — wherein he propounded Fascism and Anti-semitism — much before he actually executed those very ideas.
2. His viewpoint had become the inspiration for Golwalkar’s “Bunch of Thoughts” wherein he projects 3 identities among the fellow citizens as internal threats to the country.
3. The constant relegation of women as an inferior class has been made possible only due to the sanctity of female inferiority being preserved in the most sacred of texts and edicts world-wide.
Once the evil is spewed in society, it does two things simultaneously — appeals to and unites the evil instincts together and separates this evil bunch from the rest of society which consciously reject these deplorable perspectives.
It is at this point, that a joint reflection over this idea becomes possible. Now, this evil idea is carefully nurtured, invariably cloaked behind a seemingly altruistic motive, decorated with more and more appealing ornaments, so that it becomes easily soluble in the society. The dark idea, most often has a shining armour over it:
The ‘egocentric economic policy’ of British Colonialism — which was premised on the development of self at the expense of subjugation of others — was cloaked with the veil of ‘Holy Christian Mission’ to purify the world.
In Germany, the ‘hatred of One Person against a community’ was defined and popularised as a ‘Nationalism of the highest degree practiced by a superior race’.
In India, the unashamed use ‘divisive communal politics for electoral benefits’ is masked behind an abstract and dubious notion of bringing an ‘Global dominance under the Hindu Rashtra’.
Given the decorated mask combined often with an able seller, the idea seems striking to the generally innocent populace, with soft-clayey thought processes rife for the molding.
Now, the roots of this evil grow deeper in the society and ‘branches’ reach farther and wider.
Once the evil is popular enough, it is ready to be legitimized. While the popularity is just a preference for a non-democratic government, for legitimizing any idea in a Democracy, a relative popularity is essential.
Given the universal nature of electorate in a Democracy i. e. no qualification of the electors of powers, the ‘evil idea’ is easily cloaked to sound like an appealing governance policy, among the unwitting masses. This, then, easily translates into electoral profiteering finally resulting in awarding of powers to the guardians of the evil idea.
Once the evil bunch are in power to legislate, the evil idea can be provided security of the statute books. Beyond this point, the arbitrariness of evilness of idea is no longer up for debate for the citizenry.
The humanly defined ‘legality’ is enough to win any conscientious argument. The most common examples of some contemporary ‘Legal evils’ thriving and constantly protected in India’s statute books are:
Section 124A, IPC: The dark law commonly known as the Sedition Act was procreated and enacted in Colonial Era (1860) to restrain some of the tallest Freedom Strugglers including Father of the Nation — Mahatma Gandhi, Subhash Chandra Bose and Lok Manya Tilak, continues to be utilized with such flagrance in independent India, that it would have made the Colonial Dictators proud.
Unlawful Activities Prevention Act: The law simply goes against the basic doctrine of jurisprudence that the burden of proof shall be on the accuser. UAPA takes this doctrine and turns it on its head, wherein the accused instantly becomes a ‘national threat’ and the burden of innocence is placed on the accused.
The law which was premised to weed out strongest threats to national integrity is now unashamedly utilised to punish any voice which is perceived to be against Government. Whether, it is a justified criticism, a mere restatement of Government failures or even a scientific suggestion for policy improvement.
Section 375, IPC: The patriarchal Colonial law allows for extraction of un-consensual sex from a woman if the woman happens to be the ‘lawful’ wife of the sex claimant.
The wisdom of our Independent Government and Jurisprudence has neither been able to fathom the irrationality of such laws nor has been able to unequivocally weed them out — goes on to establish that the evil human instincts may morph their forms, from visible violent bloodshed to invisible silent legalized retraining, but at the root remain the same — assertion of hatred or dominance of one class over the other.
Extermination of the Evil:
Every society is like a human body, equipped with a responsive and active immune system. Once the immune system detects the infiltration of a detrimental agent into the human body, it takes a forthright and discernible effort to weed out the threat. However, if the immune system fails, the tumor can take firm roots in the body, feed on it and then hollow it out completely.
For a society, the immune system is its collective conscience — the collective acceptance on what is wrong and right. If the conscience fails, the society is doomed to be relegated to the dishonorable pages of history as the examples of tyranny; but if stands upright, will uproot any evil which tries to take root in it.
