There are unjust laws just as there are unjust men

Gandhi is right in equating unjust laws with unjust men. Unjust men motivated by a need to assert power in the face of their own feelings of inferiority will use the law to suit their pursuit of public attention for ill-formulated causes. They put an imaginary notion of justice above truth, blindly adhering to the view that truth is a matter of perspective. What I call an unjust law is not only that which gives the powerful an escape route when they are caught committing unlawful acts as is usually the case with how lawyers are able to twist and turn the interpretation of evidence to weaken the truth.

An unjust law is also one where somebody, for the best of reasons, can file a police complaint against you, and you have to spend your time and effort to prove that you did not commit such a crime. This kind of a law operates through instilling fear and is popular in authoritarian states where people are first thrown into jails and then given the “opportunity” to prove their innocence. While fear is a necessary component of the law, respect for the law is equally important, something that does not happen where a person is convinced that the law is one-sided and therefore unjust and unjust because it is one-sided. If the guilt of the other person is already assumed, then what is the point in having a law? The law becomes a disguise where you substitute an impartial inquiry with a preconceived notion.

In the Indian context, the Scheduled Castes and Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 which is supposed to prevent atrocities by non-Dalits against Dalits falls in the category of laws that are unjust because it allows an innocent person to be harassed, intimidated and blackmailed merely because he or she is upper caste (or simply a non-Dalit) and it is incumbent upon him or her to prove that one is not guilty. The reason I protest against this law is because it first arrests and puts me in prison and then tells me that I am allowed to prove my innocence from behind bars. It wants me to believe that I have rights while it mocks my freedom to be myself. My loss of reputation and dignity amount to nothing according to this law, while it gives my opponent the undue advantage of making sure that sufficient harm is done to me in every possible manner.

In a recent judgment passed by the Supreme Court, in order to prevent misuse and arbitrary arrests, the judges made changes in the law to the effect that “preliminary enquiry may be made whether the case falls in the parameters of the Atrocities Act and is not frivolous or motivated.” In my view these changes are long due and the judges are completely fair in their attempts to ensure that innocent people are not falsely implicated.

I could not believe that in a rather militant response to this judgment, the Dalit leadership called for a nationwide protest which resulted in the deaths of ten people as of now and injuries to many others. Does that mean that they endorse using an unjust law to terrorize people who are not Dalits whenever it suits their personal interests? I mean, what is the agenda behind this meaningless protest? If the Dalit idea of freedom is to be able to send an upper caste person to jail with the help of the law, that certainly is not an idea of freedom that ought to be enshrined in the Constitution.

As far as I can see violence against poor Dalits, especially in villages and small towns, continues unabated and this law has done little to stop or control the violence. There is an in-built problem in the law because it has the potential for someone to use it with the best or not-so-best of intentions without giving the opponent a fair chance to make his or her point. Not only in my own case, I observed this law misused in so many other instances that I doubt whether it is serving its real purpose or just being used to settle personal scores.

There are serious issues that Dalit leadership should be concerned with such as poverty, illiteracy, lack of healthcare and social inequality among the lower castes. I don’t see much of that happening; what I see happening is that they are more interested in ensuring that they have a legal weapon in their hands to make it difficult for public authorities to conduct day-to-day affairs especially if they happen to be from the upper castes. Instead of working hard to raise the status of their people, a leadership that is incapable of creatively thinking of a cause, is covering its own inadequacies by making it look that they really care for the poor and the downtrodden.

Hypocritical upper caste supporters of laws of this kind who want to make their careers by being self-appointed spokespersons for the Dalits, and a section of the educated Dalits themselves who think that having an Atrocity law is the only way to work things out with non-Dalits, these are the people responsible for the kind of divisive identity politics that has been a feature of India’s politics and public life since it won independence from the British.

Never in history has the writing of history been more abused than in the 20^th and 21^st centuries by all and sundry to suit their particular brand of politics. I cannot think of a single group of people that is not guilty of using hyperbole where there should have been understatement. Imagined and sometimes contrived pasts of victimization are liberally concocted only keeping present gains in mind. Lies upon lies upon lies are uttered with the conviction of truth. There are people who use crutches only because they cannot imagine what life is without them. I am not speaking of the real disabled. I am speaking of people who choose to be disabled because they are afraid that they would be incapable of standing on their feet if they cannot be seen as disabled.

In a short piece titled “In defence of history,” Eric Hobsbawm observes: “The major immediate political danger to historiography today is “anti-universalism” or ‘my truth is as valid as yours, whatever the evidence.’ This appeals to various forms of identity group history, for which the central issue of history is not what happened, but how it concerns the members of a particular group. What is important to this kind of history is not rational explanation but ‘meaning,’ not what happened but what members of a collective group defining itself against outsiders—religious, ethnic, national, by gender, or lifestyle—feel about it . . .”

These are lobbies that need group support to “manufacture consent” and will use the argument that truth is what you feel about it at any point in time. Freedom and truth go together and untruthful people will never be free in my view. Their slavery is a thousand times greater than what a real slave must have gone through in the Roman Empire because the former have dedicated their lives to dishonesty that comes with a consequence in their personal lives. They are not only enemies of my country but also humanity’s enemies.

Real leadership is inclusive and speaks to different groups in the same voice. It does not try to answer exclusion with exclusion. Dr. Ambedkar, for all his greatness as a leader of the Dalit masses, only speaks to his own people. He is certainly a liberator and a formidable voice articulating the feelings of the Dalit masses, but he does not address those who are not Dalits. His tone towards upper caste Hindus is always one of condemnation, along with the generalization that reduces Hinduism as a religion to nothing but caste system. I can understand the bitterness of a man who suffers injustice but great leadership is about rising above personal suffering and arriving at the truth that will open the doors to dialogue and honest exchange of views.

This is unlike the case with Bayard Rustin, Martin Luther King or Henry David Thoreau. They are humanity’s liberators and what they say is immensely relevant to blacks, whites and others as well. Gandhi was immensely moved by the power of Thoreau’s argument in the essay on “Civil Disobedience.” In fact we have a Civil Disobedience movement in India’s freedom struggle that owes its success in no small measure to this essay by Thoreau. But, I am not sure if when he wrote this essay, Thoreau dreamt that someday an Indian lawyer working in South Africa is going to use it effectively to fight for the freedom of his country. What gives the essay its power is the fact that it is an argument for “imagining a State” “which can afford to be just to all men, and . . . treat the individual with respect as a neighbor.”

This is what I think Dalit leadership and Dalits themselves should understand: that their own liberation is connected to the liberation of the non-Dalits as well; just as black liberation will not happen without bearing the future of white kids in mind; or Arab without the Israelis or the Kurds without the Turks. In the end people have no choice but to live with other people and as human beings. Whether we like it or not we have one planet and we need to share the resources equitably so that everybody is able to have a life of dignity. I see nothing so terribly difficult in understanding this simple fact of life.

Prakash Kona is a writer, teacher and researcher who lives in Hyderabad, India. He is Professor at the Department of English Literature, The English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU), Hyderabad.