Ajmal Kasab - A Hanging
“Power is when we have every justification to kill and we don’t,” says Oskar Schindler to the SS officer Amon Goeth in the movie Schindler’s List. “Do you think that’s Power?” asks the officer. “That’s what the Emperor said,” replies Schindler. “A man stole something, he was brought before the emperor, he throws himself on the ground and begs for mercy; he knows he’s going to die and the Emperor PARDONS him…this worthless man and he lets him go. That is POWER,” says Schindler.
Images of young boys celebrating outside the Yervada Prison in Pune, over the announcement of the hanging of Ajmal Kasab, the lone-survivor of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, speak of a greater moral turpitude. I see no difference between these young boys, schooled in the privileges of democracy, yet harbored such misplaced vengeance and Ajmal Kasab, the boy-turned-terrorist-turned-deadman, who, born into abject poverty and schooled into theocracy, only looked to a wrong way out of his life conditions. How do we bring to books the terrorism of the mind that celebrates over a dead man, who was a victim himself?
Now that the lynch mob has had its celebratory orgy over a dead man, who was not born a terrorist, may be we indulged in a bit of soul-search. A simple mercy for Kasab may have been a potential currency to convert a few other potential jihadis and possibly earned us a conscientious response and reciprocity from Pakistan. It is not altruism, but common sense that a Presidential pardon would have been a potent deterrent. Yet, the Indian State squandered that rich currency called mercy. A kill for a kill perhaps constitutes Justice. But retributive justice is invariably arbitrary.
Images of young boys celebrating outside the Yervada Prison in Pune, over the announcement of the hanging of Ajmal Kasab, the lone-survivor of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, speak of a greater moral turpitude. I see no difference between these young boys, schooled in the privileges of democracy, yet harbored such misplaced vengeance and Ajmal Kasab, the boy-turned-terrorist-turned-deadman, who, born into abject poverty and schooled into theocracy, only looked to a wrong way out of his life conditions. How do we bring to books the terrorism of the mind that celebrates over a dead man, who was a victim himself?
Now that the lynch mob has had its celebratory orgy over a dead man, who was not born a terrorist, may be we indulged in a bit of soul-search. A simple mercy for Kasab may have been a potential currency to convert a few other potential jihadis and possibly earned us a conscientious response and reciprocity from Pakistan. It is not altruism, but common sense that a Presidential pardon would have been a potent deterrent. Yet, the Indian State squandered that rich currency called mercy. A kill for a kill perhaps constitutes Justice. But retributive justice is invariably arbitrary.
posted by P.V.Srividya at 1:47 AM
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