Tackling Violence in the Society

In a civil society nothing justifies violence - whether it be by the minority or the majority or the state. The root cause for people resorting to violence to settle perceived injustices lies with the law and order situation and the snail pace at which the judiciary works. True, the developed countries are not perfect.But their ranking on the above two criteria are far ahead of us.

A crime is a crime is a crime.There are no political crimes or crimes of passion or crimes related to terror. In India, people do not have the confidence in approaching the Police to even register a complaint for fear of being harassed. Even if the complaint is registered, the police will not investigate properly. Even if they investigate, the culprits will not be brought to book. By some miracle, if the culprit is brought to the court, either he will be let of scot free or the case will take such a long time that people would have forgotten about it by the time a verdict is passed. The need of the hour is revamping of the law and order and expediting the judicial process. It is not easy. The rot has set in deeply. But if we start now, at least in a decade we would have made some solid progress.

I have always believed that secularism means the individual has the right to practice a religion of his choice. The question of special privileges for the minority doesnt arise at all. Take the case of special status for educational institutions run by minorities. It has become a cancer in many parts of India and especially in my home state Kerala. The intentions of all these privileges are good but in reality it becomes counterproductive. Same with the case of lack of Uniform Civil Code. Nation should come ahead of religion. Somewhere it is written in panchatantra that ‘You can sacrifice an individual for a family, family for a village, village for the welfare of a nation'.

Nation comes first, second and last. Today unfortunately people purporting to support their religion are taking law on their hands because they know that nothing will happen to them. We have the ridiculous situation of religious leaders issuing fatwas, moral policing, intolerence of others opinions and finally religious terrorism with the State being a silent spectactor.
Unless and until this is taken care of our country will go from bad to worse.


My recommendations;

1. Implement Uniform civil code with immediate effect
2. Government should have the right to implement without being questioned issues that matter to the nation - like immunization, healthcare, education, family planning
3. Revamping the entire law and order machinery. It is impossible to set right the existing system. Better to start another system manned by professionals parallaly with a view to them taking over in the long run
4. Filling up of all judicial vacancies, increasing the number of courts, fixing a time span for disposing of a case, simplifying the judical process ( why there should be so much paper work, motions, adjournments in an era where all information is available at the click of a button is something I cannot understand)
5. Focus on preventive justice than wasting time after the incident has occured.
6. Moving away from symbolism. Dont see any reason why we have to abide by symobolism. When we work in an organization, we work with people from different region and religion.We dont deem it fit to be symbolic with respect to anything related to the above. There is a common purpose. Likewise the society should have a common purpose. I should not be asked to prove my secularism every single time. I can be a religious fanatic but that should be inside my home. When I come out I should be the citizen of india first and foremost, like I am the employee of the company where I work.

None of the above are unworkable and definitely not utopian. Will someone listen to this voice in wilderness?