Certainty and severity

When the state and people are so disconnected fragmentation and dissolution results. A nation-state ceases to exist.

When little angel, Zainab of Kasur, was mutilated by her violator and the spark of her life extinguished the event took a life of its own for barbarity. This was the dark and the heinous part of our society that had grown alongside our rhetorically pure and sublime culture in the Islamic Republic. It was the society we had become. Why and how had we touched these depths and how as a state and a society had we lost our moorings, I will come to later, but its monstrosity pointed to normalised inhumanity. Numerous Zainabs have since become victims of this unexplained societal deprecation.

This wasn’t the first in Kasur, innocence of many more young boys and girls was being traded by those supported by the politically eminent. The case has beggared closure and most accused have been paroled. Those in the know need to introspect, just a bit, beyond the perfunctory message of sadness and blame-game when another as dastardly an event recurs right in our midst. A young mother was desecrated before her three young children by two detestable purveyors hunting innocence who found the family stranded on a lonely road and turned them into opportunity victims. Rapists are pathological criminals and thus immune to any sense of the right, but how their act will impact the conscience of those perceptible young minds makes it against humanity and worthy of a compatible retribution.

So the debate that followed week after week after the Zainab murder rested on what should be done to the perpetrator of the crime after he had been apprehended and moved before the law in express satisfaction of the various statutes that obligate rights due to a convict. Those on the progressive side of the debate felt the society needed to first examine why and how does a man become the animal that he does. An animal alright but with human rights! Or, that death penalty was too uncivil and most of the progressive world had given up on it for it being savage and ruthless. Perhaps correction and deterrence could be achieved with far less. Most liberal thinkers and writers have spelled a similar sentiment. With one caveat though: they are talking to a progressive society and of a progressive society.

To a differently developed Pakistani society it has always been Greek. Somewhere along the way we lost the society that could resonate with such decency and refinement. We wish to apply the gold standard to a trashed people. Why was the society dumped may be explained by the attitude of the rulers of the past but we made no amends either and found it opportune to perpetuate the rot. This gave us, the rulers, the control of these dispossessed barely humans. If the ruled turned into sub-humans in the manner of their conduct or baseness why should their animalistic recourse surprise us now? It seriously questions the paradigm of distributive justice which needs to be addressed forthwith. This is our new political challenge which needs redress not the politics of the past which created these issues for us and the society today. The young Turks in each political party need to understand and realize this fault-line and face up to it. They have a responsibility to build the future society and preserve the state. Hope, they know, are equipped and are listening and can get away from the politics of their forbears.

On the issue of retributive justice the debate is stuck between certainty of punishment Vs severity of punishment. Certainty and proportionality together form the principle of deterrence. And this is universally applicable in any form of competitive existence whether social or strategic but where proportionality other than being an arguable aspect is also superimposed by a leaky and a compromised justice system the criminals find an easy escape. The crime thus keeps getting repeated. It translates into impunity which mauls societal values which found a society. This mutates the society into sub-to-semi-human form and life into animalistic existence. Add to it the inequity and segmental polarisation and you come across a state with a fragmented and a dissolving society. That creates ‘otherness’. So when the two despicable chose to do what they did, in their mind perhaps the otherness ruled. To them she was another specie not one from among them. They will recognise their own mother, sister or daughter but to them the victim doesn’t fit in any of those classifications except a commodity to be reviled. Rape is the ultimate expression of venom and debasing another soul.

This kind of animalistic behaviour may not be treatable with conservative responses only. A moral regression will need to be equally shock-treated to instill fear and thus deter from recurrence. If a justice system is as inefficient as it is unfortunately it just might help to make a few exceptions. Death for such violators of human dignity as in a rape is a given but how public it should be or how expressive or severe it needs to be to make an impact and treat what is endemic is what needs consideration. Mere public hangings were resorted to and left an impact but crime reappeared as soon as the purveyors sensed laxity. Our children and women need to be protected by legislative authority on the finality of punishment and its exemplary execution where it can serve as a persisting deterrent. Public execution through firing squads is one such example where minors and women are the victims. Let this not be clouded by ideational debates. This society needs to be put back on track through as much of a shock retribution for violators of human dignity as their dismissal of remorse for their acts.

Why have we become as heinous a people without the slightest sense of wrongdoing is a result of a misdirected society which has no anchor. Any society would have four thought leaders to give shape to its mental make-up: its teachers; its religious scholars; public intellectuals, who along with the media enable a public discourse; and the political leadership, who at all times must relate to their constituents and anchor the evolution of society. The teacher has lost his place and relevance when he was dropped in the societal pecking order; the religious scholar is perceived compromised and polarised towards his own belief system and is an element of further segmentation of the society; the media is largely perceived to be sold out to the highest bidder — most if not all. That only leaves the politicians who can still boast of active links with the people and shape their minds and humanism. They are instead taken by the lust of making more for themselves or their ilk and have left the people to their fate. In policy, governance and administration political governments have through neglect closed options on the deprived and the common to develop differently. When the state and the people are so disconnected fragmentation and dissolution results. A nation-state ceases to exist. In such a state human decency and consideration is the farthest from anyone’s mind.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 20^th, 2020.

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