Fight but make it a just war

Growing up on Hollywood movies, it was clear to us that the Germans and the Japanese “tore up” the Geneva Convention literally and metaphorically. The Anglo-American allies were the good guys who did not imitate the enemy. If the United States today walks away from this unconditional position, it loses not just the PR battle. It loses the moral basis which attracts liberty-loving conservatives like myself around the world to rally to America’s support. It is entirely possible that while fighting fanatical terrorists, this results in imposing a restriction that inhibits, even weakens, us. So be it. Because I am convinced that the forces of civilisation will ultimately prevail over the barbarians — not by becoming barbarians ourselves! That would in fact constitute an unmitigated defeat for freedom, civilisation and its defenders.

In the same vein, I am quite glad that Tony Blair lost his vote on prolonged detention of suspects without charges. One of the glories of the Magna Carta inheritance is that we oppose wretched letters-de-cachet and firmans from the sultan that can cause citizens to be imprisoned casually and with no recourse.

An arrested citizen needs to be told what he or she is charged with. And the charge must be made before an independent judge, a truly independent one, not some toady of the ruler of the day. These are hard-won freedoms and dignities that cannot be cast away easily. It is true that Pitt suspended Habeas Corpus during the Napoleonic wars and that Lincoln suspended it during the civil war.

But even then these measures did not go unquestioned. While all of us support Blair in his fight against terrorists, it is difficult to the point of impossibility to concede extreme powers to him or to the police. While fighting the Al-Qaeda, Britain cannot be turned into a Soviet Union or a Syria! In this important moment it is the Labour back-benchers who have revolted who have been the true conservatives. They have stood for John of Gaunt’s England as immortalised by the bard.

We in India have a particularly important memory in the area of “preventive detentions”. During the Emergency Indira Gandhi’s minions were arresting all and sundry under the infamous Maintenance of Internal Security Act. Several high courts, to their credit, struck down this blatantly unconstitutional law and reaffirmed the Indian citizen’s right of Habeas Corpus. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court did not see it this way. The state, it appeared, had a right to confine us just like parents had a right to restrain their children. There was however a silver lining in Justice Khanna’s dissenting judgement wherein he even addressed the frustrations of the lonely dissenting judge. Why does one write a dissenting judgement? In his immortal words, one writes this perhaps “to appeal to the brooding spirit of the law”. We were made cognizant of the fact that two hundred years earlier when a slave was imprisoned in London and when some people filed a Habeas Corpus petition on his behalf, Lord Chief Justice Mansfield issued a famous two-sentence judgement: “The air of England is too pure for any slave to breathe. Set the negro free.” The right granted to a slave in the 1700s cannot be denied today to citizens of India or of Britain. The Labour backbenchers who voted against Blair are the true followers of Justice Mansfield.

One of the weakest arguments made to me is that in criticising what I believe are egregiously wrong measures of the Bush or Blair administrations, like the need for torture (referred to by different euphemisms) or prolonged police detention without charges, one is somehow weakening them in their fight against menacing terrorism. To the contrary, this is what the fight is all about. If the terrorists succeed in their stated aims we will all be subjects in a universal caliphate where they will tell us how to live, think, worship, speak and so on. And any opposition would be classified as treachery and blasphemy. The terrorists are worth fighting and democracy is worth supporting precisely because McCain and Labour backbenchers can make their point heard and hopefully prevail. The very fact that such healthy debate takes place and that extreme measures are shot down is a source of strength not weakness. In the Soviet Utopia, Stalin was allowed to detain and torture people. Nobody told him otherwise. Despite short term successes, the Soviet experiment ultimately collapsed after causing untold misery.

Even from a practical perspective there is no evidence to show that torture or prolonged detention is a great help. It would do some of Bush’ advisors much good to read up on the revolutionary war. Despite hating the Hessians for their brutality, Washington treated them justly with all the protections that prisoners of war were entitled to. Washington still won the war, if I remember correctly! I would submit that the war against terrorists and terrorist states has to be won because the fate of our children would be unthinkable otherwise. It has also got to be won within the rules of the historic traditions of free countries, for that is the only way it will be worth winning.

The writer is chairman & CEO, Mphasis. Write to him at jerryraoexpressindia.com