Sandeep Shrivastwa

sandeep.andes@gmail.com

IN THE NAME OF JUSTICE!

The irony of justice in India is that if you killed someone, you could be hanged, but if you are a mass murder, you go scot-free. We have before us the Gujarat carnage, the Delhi riots and the Bhopal gas chamber, signalling something is terribly rotten with our idea of justice. Half a million people awaiting justice for a quarter of a century with 20,000 dead in history’s worst corporate disaster was indeed shocking. But more shocking was the verdict treating the genocide of a people as misdemeanour – a crime that could be catalogued with Auschwitz, Hiroshima, andJallianwala Bagh. It’s happening in the world’s largest democracy.
If Jallianwala Bagh marked the turning point for the freedom movement, this verdict could well be the turning point for the idea of justice that the people demand. Jessica Lall, Priyadarshini Mattoo and Ruchika Girhotra are symbols of miscarriage of justice prevented by the people’s anger. In a democracy, there is nothing more unnerving for the conspirators and manipulators of the system than the wrath of the people. Things fall in place instantly, as though miraculously.
Was it ethical for former Chief Justice A M Ahmadi to accept the lifetime office as the head of the Bhopal Memorial Hospital Trust, funded by Union Carbide and created by orders of the Supreme Court whose verdict he himself delivered in 1996? The common man who is ignorant of the legal niceties might even think that the learned judge has created a post for himself and occupied it, with or without conferring favours to Union Carbide or its CEO Warren Anderson. His suspicion that grows stronger by each passing day needs to be addressed to set the record straight.
If Arjun Singh who was concerned about the safety of Anderson provided a safe passage for the corporate history’s most wanted CEO, did he tell his prime minister? Or did he keep the pm in the dark? If Anderson were to make a joyride through the streets of Bhopal to study the devastation caused by his monstrous Carbide, even the stones would have flung into action on their own. Sure enough, the mob would have lynched him, even the ghost of him if they spotted one.
To our politicians, the safety of one person who played dice with the safety of half a million is far more important. People are statistics, Anderson is not. Thanks to the electronic media and the new generation of voters who packed off the old guard, the idea of justice shall no more be the same. The people will demand and get justice. The political firmament of India is changing. Conspirators and manipulators, beware!