Politician, heal thyself

What indeed is the relationship between law and morality and law and justice? How are the imperatives of morality and justice properly identified for the purpose? Is the relationship a permissive or a substantially necessary one? What if it is severed? Does the court without compliance retain its stature as the court? Does it justify obedience at anypoint of time? Does a promise justify organised resistance? How does the nation protect itself against such open defiance?

The debate on such issues is both old and new, both philosophical and jurisprudential, both stimulating and frustrating. It is more relevant today because the party which violated the law and which went back on its promise to protect the Babri Masjid (or the "structure" as the BJP called it), is leading the coalition at the Centre. And Advani, who has talked about the dent in the judiciary’s credibility, has himself made a hole in the fabric of justice. How can he give sermons when he headed the party which went back on the undertaking given to the Supreme Court to protect the masjid? A case is pending against him on the destruction of the masjid. The shocking part is that he is the country’s home minister.

The issue is not only legal but also moral. There has to be a rationale and purposive relationship between law and morality. The general rule is that laws should be obeyed for theprotection of a society. What credibility does the home minister have to question the judiciary’s credibility when he was part of the crowd which gleefully watched the demolition? Uma Bharti and Murli Manohar Joshi were also witnesses to it, and both are now ministers looking after culture and India’s heritage. Religious faith or the sense of righteousness does not constitute a justification for the violation of law. Law cannot be built on feelings. It has to be built on justice. And what his partymen and Advani did was not justice.

There is no separating line between what law is and or what law should be, a thesis the BJP propounds to justify the destruction and vandalism on December 6, 1992. The important proposition is that justice and morality are clearly relevant to the issue as to what the law should be. If the rationale for law is justice and morality, its defiance results in immorality and injustice. Was this otherwise, every person would be free to obey or disobey every law depending on his or herperception about morality and justice. The exercise of that kind of freedom would not only be potentially anarchic but would also be conducive to injustice and immorality because it would invade the rights of others, as the BJP did in the case of Babri Masjid.

It is pursuit of justice which must, in principle, be the basis for all laws. The submission must, therefore, be necessary as it has been through the ages from Aristotle to Cicero through Thomas Aquinas and Mahatma Gandhi, even though the judges came from the class of rulers. Since independence, some able courts have pronounced verdicts which the accused, however important, have obeyed.

Circumventing justice or its defiance is a new phenomenon which politicians have introduced for electoral purposes. By arousing the masses, politicians get away from punishment. Those who are responsible for violating the court’s directive have gone scot-free. In fact, they have constituted the executive. If morality was the criterion, they would have quitted publiclife for penance. But that is possible only if the sentence is not communalised or presented as the upper-caste punishment to the lower.

It is unhealthy to imagine that a principle can only be stoutly defended by violence or by condemning those who do not accept it. That is just bigotry. It is not the approach of tolerance. It is completely opposed to the peaceful approach that Gandhiji taught us. Speaking for myself, I find this approach wholly unscientific, unreasonable and uncivilised, whether it is applied in the realm of religion or economic theory or anything else. But whatever we may think about it, we have arrived at a stage in society when any attempt to forcibly impose ideas, religious or others, on any large section of people is bound to fail ultimately.

Advani has rightly said "for every innocent and wronged citizen, the sheer process of seeking justice in the normal system becomes a punishment itself." But this is precisely what the contention is of those who have challenged the claim of theBJP’s sister organisation, the VHP, about the site of Babri Masjid. For more than four decades, they have been waiting for the title to be decided. The case has not even gone beyond the preliminary stage. Obviously, the Hindu fundamentalists are procrastinating and are not allowing the real issue to come before the court. So what justice can they expect, although they have said on their own that if the foundation of the masjid was built on the ruins of a temple, they would give up the claim?

All this is an intellectually and even emotionally provocative challenge. Just as Advani and his associates have diluted the importance of the judiciary by disobeying it brazenly, the Samajwadi Party and the Rashtriya Janata Dal are chipping away at the sanctity of Parliament. If the court is being "Advanised", the Lok Sabha is being "Lalooised". Which type of democracy are we talking about when the judiciary and Parliament are being trivialised by those who either occupy or have occupied high positions in the country?They are not even sensitive to the calls of morality. And, as people, we are helpless.

Yet, if the nation is to preserve the fundamental values of a democratic society, every person, whether a politician or private citizen, must display a degree of vigilance. Without the awareness of what is right and a desire to act according to what is right, there may be no realisation of what is wrong. During the Emergency, the dividing lines between right and wrong had ceased to exist. They have not been restored since.