Assault on Professor disregard our criminal justice system

Aug 03: Current phenomenon of beating and insulting a professor of arts by Bhartiya Vidyarthi Sena (an affiliate of Shiv Sena) in Mumbai is not something surprising and new as far as the modalities of certain so-called custodians of culture, tradition, morality and justice go.

If we go back in memory lanes we will be reminded of the self appointed custodians of Hindu culture embarrassing youngsters sitting in the park and policing over them in Meerut. All this was fabricated by Bajrang Dal members. Responsibility they took in their hands to save their culture.

If we press on our reason various examples of dictatorial-behavior will flash in our mind when Shiv Sena activists stormed into office of news channel for providing platform to the couple from different religions who got married to voice their stand. And many more.

This time they acted as justice-providers on their own. They utterly disregard any authority of law and as if there is no justice or law system in this country. They don’t give weight to any constitutional provision for providing a procedure to obtain justice and any implementing agency of state.

Such actions represent the dictatorship mentality and no democratic culture from any angle. This is the lack of faith in the system not because of the total failure of the system but because of their over-enthusiasm of taking action and becoming hero in public view.

Such retaliation and take one to the task theory is not at all suitable to our democratic culture we are nurturing for the last 55 years. If we ourselves will erase the confidence in our system of criminal justice our society will revert back to the ‘jungle law’ of might is right or retributive justice which is not at all suitable to a civilized society. Society will become a war zone with this method of dispensing justice.

Reference to professor Batuknath will not be out of context when some students of college blackened his face on the news of his love-relationship with his student, Julie in Bihar. Who designated them to pass a judgement or punish some culprit in their eyes.

Such practices should be halted by the appropriate legal machinery otherwise even after developing our nation technologically and economically till 2020 socially we will land in a primitive era.

We have a prescribed procedure of gaining justice and awarding punishment to the wrong doer we should not take law in our hands for themselves teaching a lesson to culprits. We have a long-cherished tradition of non-violence and dignity of human being and we should maintain that tradition even if the accused has committed a crime. This should not be mistaken as defense of the accused but the defense of civilization and justice system.