The end of reason: When judges and courts fail, can ideas of justice can be found in our everyday?
An instance of hate speech and a case of casteist violence emphasise the limitations of making claims for justice exclusively from the state or judiciary.
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Three loosely connected events took place in the days around Gandhi’s 155th birth anniversary on October 2 this year.
In gleeful violation of the Supreme Court’s directives on hate speech, a controversial priest – a habitual offender – indulged again in his routine abuse of Muslims, and, this time joined by sundry lackeys, also of their Prophet. Done without any apparent context or reason, it was evidently meant to hurt, humiliate and incite.
The perpetrator was briefly detained. Some Muslims proved themselves incited, and assembled in protest and in petty violence, thereby managing to get themselves arrested. This is in fine contrast to the other prominent case that has occupied the legal landscape for the last five years: the prosecution, and detention without trial of community organisers responsible for having led widespread protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act.
The prosecution accuses them of having conspired, through their protests and public speeches, to provoke those in favour of the new law to counter-mobilise and give more immediately inciteful counter-speeches, which then resulted in violence.
Even though the protestors’ speeches were not in themselves incendiary, the state places the burden of the “provoked people” and their violent retaliation on the protestors.
The primary case, which has resulted in detention without trial of...
