A divided verdict

Amit Kushari (IAS Retd)
After every hanging usually there is a controversy as to whether death penalty should be deleted from our statute book. The same controversy has come back again. After the hanging of Qasab and Afzal Guru, however, this issue was not raised so loudly. It was raised in 2004 when Dhananjay Chatterji was hanged. This time another important controversy has arisen— the hanging has sharply divided the nation into two distinct parts — we stand totally polarised. After the hanging I had a casual walk in a busy market place and talked to a large number of people. Ordinary citizens like shopkeepers, street vendors, office goers, fruit sellers were all discussing the execution. Strangely I found that the Muslims were quite annoyed by the hanging whereas the Hindus were quite happy. The Muslims were saying that Yaqoob was hanged out of turn because he was a Muslim. Mostly they were saying that had he been a Hindu or a Sikh he could have been spared the noose. The Hindus, on the contrary, were mostly saying that a vicious terrorist like him ought to be hanged from any available lamp post since he had killed 257 people and had maimed hundreds of human beings. A gentle Hindu lady who sells milk at a govt. booth near my house was the only Hindu, I came across, who did not support the hanging. She said ” I know he had committed a horrendous crime— but isn’t it inhuman to hang a human being? He could have been kept in prison for life.” I knew the lady was a Left supporter and she was only airing the views expressed by people like Sitaram Yechuri  and Brinda Karat on TV. Another Hindu lady sitting in the booth said, “Oh, my God, sister, don’t say such dangerous things. Rabid dogs and snakes like terrorists should be killed immediately and should not be kept alive in prisons! Who knows after a few years they may come out in the open with some political support and could endanger the whole society. There could be hijacking of aircrafts to get them freed by blackmailing the govt.”
On the whole I found that a vast majority of people supported the hanging with only the Muslims looking aggrieved.  This indicates that there is a huge divide in our society on religious lines. It seems so obvious to me that in spite of all the big talk of our leaders, and in spite of our high flying liberal constitution, on the ground actually the Hindus and Muslims live on two different islands with no bridge or ferry service connecting the two. The Muslims actually believe, in large numbers, that the views of Assaduddin Owaiasi, MP from Hyderabad, are correct. I realise now that if Mr. Owaisi’s party, MIM, contest elections in a large number of seats in the Muslim areas of northern and western India, he could easily win 15 – 20 seats from Maharashtra, Gujarat and UP. He could severely damage the electoral prospects of parties like Samajwadi Party, Congress, NCP, JDU, AAP. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, if NDA falls below the 200 mark , we may have a combination of large number of parties coming to power in the Govt. of India, and this time MIM ( Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul- Musalmeen) will be a coalition partner in Delhi. Is MIM the new avtaar of Muslim League which ultimately divided India? Is Owaisi a new edition of M.A. Jinnah?
In 1947, Mr. M A Jinnah realised the basic truth in the two nation theory which Indian leaders like Jawahar Lal failed to understand. After the partition, Jinnah was willing to take all Muslims in Pakistan as all Hindus were driven out of Pakistan. Indian leaders pretended to be secular and kept the frightened Muslims in India as a captive vote bank for the ruling party. The Muslims of coastal India could not have gone to Pakistan for obvious linguistic and cultural reasons, but surely a large number of Urdu speaking Muslims from Bombay, Hyderabad and Lucknow areas of north and western India would have preferred to go to Pakistan as Mohajirs rather than stay in Hindu dominated India as stranded Pakistanis.
The second controversy is regarding the abolition of the death penalty as has been done in a hundred small countries. In India with its huge problems like terrorism, murders, rapes etc abolition of the death penalty does not seem probable in the near future. Majority opinion is not in its favour. Even recently hanging was prescribed for serial rapists—who can now be hanged like murderers and terrorists. The people had forced the govt. to prescribe death for serial rapists after the Nirbhaya episode in Delhi.
When all politicians of BJP and Shiv Sena were pleading for Yaqoob’s hanging, some Congress and JDU politicians, like Digvijay Singh, Shashi Tharoor and KC Tyagi were singing a slightly different tune. Not surprising—because their parties are heavily dependent on Muslim votes and they cannot ignore the Muslim sentiments. The BJP, Shiv Sena and Akali Dal are simply not bothered, because in any case they do not get any Muslim votes. If they could have their say they would have hanged every terrorist ten times.
(The author is former Financial Commissioner J&K)
Feedback to the author at 09748635185or amitkus@hotmail.com

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