Prisoner of Pen

I recently came across a story on how a "comma" took a person's life. Yes a comma.  Call it an urban legend or a myth, whatever you like. The story was about a person convicted in Indian court of law and was scheduled to be hanged by order of the court. But he managed to get a stay order that reached in time to the supervising officer in-charge of ensuring the execution of the hanging order of the court. To the utter dismay of the pleaders on behalf of the convicted person, the hanging was carried out.  The stay order said "Hang him, not wait for further court orders."  The court stay order, however, was meant to be "Hang him not, wait for further court orders."

India is a state of unity in diversity. One of the greatest diversity is its linguistic diversity. They say that around 1600 languages are spoken in India alone. And India has a literacy rate of below 50%. Literacy in India is defined as ability to write once own name as signature. Thus, it reflects that above 50% of the population of a democratic nation as populous as India cannot read and write, let alone reading English, the principle language to codify the law of the land. This raises a serious doubt on the basis of law and justice system with fundamental question of validity of the law of this democratic land that has above 50% of its population donot know / understand / contemplate.  Hence, it is presumably true that the civility in our nation is more based on its culture, custom and general principles of living over law of the land.

But then, here comes the axe. "Ignorance of this English codified Law is not valid reason for excuse."   All this has culminated into a wonderful opportunity to the legislatives of this nation who has gone ahead and created a mountain of laws in English, most of which the legislators are themselves confused of, and which a majority of population donot know / understand. This has thus created a layer with a battery of Black Coat agents posing as the knowledge agents of the complexity of law and on name of advocating by law for their client are indiscriminately violating the most fundamental law themselves. These agents we know as lawyers skim their clients with fees without records or bills, a serious economic offence and generation of black money in the country, interestingly by non-other than the agents of law. The sarcasm of the system doesn't stop here. It further extends to the fact that these lawyers, who have been for life being part of undermining the law, rise up to be judges of the court delivering justice. And above all, justice, apparently, doesn't depend on the law of the land but depends on representation of the knowledge of the law of the land represented by the competing parties either by self or through their law agents. It can only mean that regardless of what the law of the land may speak, judgement may be based upon how it is presented to the judges, reference to whom is forcefully preceded with words like Hon'ble or Lordship.  I only leave it to the imagination of my dear readers as to what the justice delivery system of our nation possibly could be. This I say because when a nation fails to deliver justice to its citizen is like sitting on a time-bomb waiting to be exploded.

India is a land of scholars, philosophers and great minds with high intelligence quotient (or IQ in short). But lately, it is seen that most great minds of India have become victims or supporters of these flaws of the system that has gripped us for around 170 years now of which 69 years have been when we are blessed to take our own decisions without tyranny or oppression. The steady deterioration in our society can be attributed to decreasing MQs (or Moral Quotient) of our people either due to incessant greed or daily struggle for basic needs of life. Either way, our society has become a reflection of the 3 monkeys of the father of our nation. I always wish he had a fourth (4th) one too that said "Bura Mat Karo" (Donot do Bad). Unfortunately, he only said not to hear, see or talk bad. So doing bad is Ok for when the father of our nation didn't talk about it, who am I to talk about it.

Our nation was formed on the fundamentals of being a "welfare" state meaning a state motivated to care for the well-being of its citizen's fundamental needs and rights. But inadvertently this welfare state has turned into a market instead of being a community or society.  A community and / or society is a group of people living together in an interdependent manner with a sense of reasonable care and concern for each other. A market is a place that is interested in extracting value from each other.  Every day I hit the road to travel, what I notice is markets, shops and large hoardings trying to sell something. I rarely come across places or hoardings that is talking of human values, morality and togetherness. And above all, the increasing disregard for people in need coupled with inability to restrict people begging for living raises serious alarm. Even the temples, expected to deliver emotional and spiritual peace, are experienced as a market, by non-other than the priests who give a clear impression of agents trying to extract some value quite competitively instead of someone intelligent willing to spread the knowledge. Most of these priest are even ill equipped to handle a small debate brushing away all such attempts saying beliefs are not to be questioned, quite the opposite to what is said in the Holy Bhagwat Gita. The spiritual philosophers of today have proven as to tapping into the lucrative market of spiritual sentiments of the market there by gaining significant financial strength coupled with political relevance and at times rising upto levels of power brokers.

When I introspect on these errors / biases / aberrations of our society, I try to reflect upon myself as to what is going wrong in our nation. The so called "Ram Raj" does seem to exist in some other nations where the society is progressive and creative with decisive and time-bound justice delivery system. But what will it take for my India to venture in to that path. Most common answer that I get is people with low IQ and no MQ have been successfully able to dwell in the affairs of legislation by electing themselves by extreme use of MP and CP (Muscle Power and Corruption Power) and thus ill fit to fix the dilapidating state of affairs. Instead, they are further brewing cronyism and corruption thereby installing an ineffective bureaucracy to suit individual comfort and sense of security. But I find myself not entirely convinced with this hypothesis even though I believe that the legislative powers are not in the hands of person with desired MQ and IQ.     

We have all heard the phrase "Pen is Mightier than the Sword". And being blessed to be part of a nation where Judiciary is a constitutionally independent body and in direct access of common man, I somewhere believe that the Pen has not done enough to bring about the desired change in the society. What good is a sword if it is never tried and fails to leave its holster at the time of need !!! Same principle applies to the pen too.  May be it’s the demand of time from our nation that has come for the Pen to do its job through constitutionally independent judiciary and media, together, to continuously question and challenge the ills, irony and sarcasm that has gripped our nation. Make no mistake that this is nothing less than a war with the MPs and CPs installed in legislative, bureaucratic powers and media presstitutes bound to pose not just a challenge but a threat too. And hence, not one Pen but collectively hundreds and thousands will be needed, be it to liberate our nation from hundreds of mindless laws, or to question and bring to justice the evils of our system, including that in judiciary itself. But over 170 years of poor MQ, our society is in a far degraded situation where the majority citizen in society blessed with Pen have been trained in a system that prepares them more for market than for the society with the trainers themselves engaged in training for their market needs with most trainers in Government service getting entry through CPs than meritss. Yes, Pen is a great potential liberator for our nation but till we pseudo-intelligent with acceptable MQs are concerned but coward citizens have it holstered in our pocket, pen will be in hands of legislators and system, with poor or no MQ and enough MPs and CPs, in a manner that will have us forever continue to be "Prisoner of Pen".

God Bless Indian Society.

- Amogh, 30-Aug-2015

ps - This Article underscores the need for learned citizen of India concerned with poor dilapidating state of affairs of our nation to rise up to the demand of time and start writing to media and judiciary on a continuous basis at a local level and small courts and distributing brochures to higher courts and media with large circulations for your voice and concern in large numbers and in continuous manner is only hope to liberate our system from its ills and evils. Unless we use our Pen as Liberator, those scoundrels will continue to have us the Prisoner of their Pen.