Gopal Gandhi opposes death penalty in all cases

This vehement opposition to death penalty springs from myth that it can lead to increase in murders. Facts show otherwise.

The process to elect the VicePresident of the country has started. There is a straight fight between the NDA candidate Venkaiah Naidu, and Opposition’s Gopal Krishna Gandhi. But this piece is not about the election. It is about the place of death penalty in a civilised country like ours, in the context of the protests against Gopal Gandhi on the ground that he had asked for Yakub Menon’s death penalty to be commuted to life imprisonment in the Mumbai blasts case, which had killed many innocent citizens. Headlines were flashed to say that Gopal Gandhi wanted mercy to be given to the terrorists. This was an incorrect interpretation of what he had said. It is not denied that Gopal Gandhi has been a long time opponent of death penalty. Around two years ago, the Law Commission of India had held a seminar on death penalty. I was one of the speakers there. I am for the abolition of death penalty. A near unanimous resolution was passed there for the abolition of death penalty. Consistent with his stand, Gopal Gandhi too voted for the abolition of death penalty. In fact for abolitionists like us, the judgement is not based on any individual case, but on the principle that death sentence to anyone is inconsistent with a civilised society and does not even serve as a deterrent and violates human rights.

Let us recall that some the greatest men have all opposed death penalty. Gandhiji said, “I do regard death sentence as contrary to ahimsa. Only He can take it who gives it.” Freedom fighter and socialist leader Jayaprakash Narayan said, “To my mind, it is ultimately a question of respect for life and human approach to those who commit grievous hurts to others. Death sentence is no remedy for such crimes.”

Dr B.R. Ambedkar, during the Constituent Assembly debates said, “I think that having regard to this fact, the proper thing for this country to do is to abolish the death sentence altogether.”

The High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour called the death penalty “...a sanction that should have no place in any society that claims to value human rights and the inviolability of the person”. President Eduardo Frei of Chile said, “I cannot believe that to defend life and punish the person that kills, the State should in its turn kill. The death penalty is as inhuman as the crime which motivates it.”

The vociferous opposition to the abolition of death penalty springs from myth that it can lead to increase of murders. Facts show otherwise. Thus, in 1945-50 the State of Travancore, which had no death penalty, had 962 murders, whereas during 1950-55, when death sentence was introduced, there were 967 murders. In Canada, after the abolition of death penalty in 1976, the homicide rate has declined. In 2000, there were 542 homicides in Canada—16 less than in 1998 and 159 less than in 1975 (one year prior to the abolition of capital punishment).

In 1997, the Attorney General of Massachusetts (US) said, “there is not a shred of credible evidence that the death penalty lowers the murder rate. In fact, without the death penalty the murder rate in Massachusetts is about half the national average.”

Death penalty has been abolished since 1965 in UK. The membership of European Union is dependent on having no death penalty. This has been done obviously in the confidence that murders do not get automatically reduced by retaining death penalty.

The South African Constitutional Court unanimously ruled in 1995 that death penalty was unconstitutional as it constituted “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”.

At present, 105 countries have abolished death penalty in law for all crimes—a majority of world states, as of April 2017.

I may also remind critics of Gopal Gandhi that when India wanted Abu Salem, who was then living in Portugal, to proceed against him for the same Mumbai 1993 blasts, Government of India gave an undertaking to Portugal that he would not be given the death penalty. That is why, although convicted, he has been given the life sentence.

The injustice of death as a penalty has a hoary past. Although death penalty was briefly banned in China between 747 and 759 AD, modern opposition to death penalty stems from the book of the Italian Cesare Beccaria Dei Delitti e Delle Pene ( On Crimes and Punishments), published in 1764. Influenced by the book, Grand Duke Leopold II of Habsburg, the future Emperor of Austria, abolished death penalty in the then-independent Granducato di Toscana (Tuscany). It was the first permanent abolition in modern times. On 30 November 1786, after having de facto blocked capital executions (the last was in 1769), Leopold promulgated the reform of the penal code that abolished death penalty and ordered the destruction of all the instruments for capital execution in his land. In 2000, Tuscany’s regional authorities instituted an annual holiday on 30 November to commemorate the event. The event is also commemorated on this day by 300 cities around the world celebrating the Cities for the Life Day.

In 1849, the Roman Republic became the first country to ban capital punishment in its Constitution. Venezuela abolished death penalty in 1863 and Portugal did so in 1867.

Will the critics of Gopal Gandhi on the death penalty issue please have the courtesy of apologising for their totally unsustainable comments? In a country where over 70% of the population is under the age of 40 years, the recollection of the terrible Emergency, which occurred more than four decades ago, is nearly a fogged-out fact. Therefore, Madhur Bhandarkar’s film

is unlikely to have the desired impact. The current generation is oblivious even of contemporary history, and hence any attempt to recall events of those dreaded days would fall on deaf ears. Today’s cine-goer would be more comfortable in relating to the fear-factor, if at all it presently exists, and affects his day to day life.

The Congress party has every reason to be repentant of the Emergency, which lasted for a period of nearly 20 months, and led to its first major debacle in the electoral arena, where even a powerful Prime Minister like Indira Gandhi and her younger son, Sanjay, lost to their opponents Raj Narain and Ravindra Pratap Singh in the Rae Bareli and Amethi constituencies, respectively. There is no way one can endorse the proclamation, which led to the suspension of the fundamental rights of individuals and the arrest of scores of politicians, including many who today occupy pivotal positions.

Therefore, it was pointless for anyone in the present Congress, which has no resemblance to its earlier avatar, to protest against the screening of the film, however exaggerated and removed from the truth it may seem to some of the leaders. Bhandarkar is a seasoned filmmaker and thus has the creative licence to showcase his interpretation of the dark days, even if there is 70% element of fiction in the celluloid depiction of the episodes.

Indira Gandhi had the humility to accept that she had erred in clamping down an Emergency. In 1978, during her first trip to London post-Emergency, a hostile press awaited her arrival at the Heathrow airport. The first question put forward by a correspondent was laced with sarcasm. She was asked to spell out the gains of the Emergency. Unruffled by the loaded query, Indira Gandhi looked straight in the eye of the journalist and stated in an even-key voice that during the period, her party had managed to alienate every section of society in the country. In a single stroke, she had silenced her critics with her witty and truthful response. The viciousness in the air evaporated, and the former Prime Minister emerged victorious in her first major brush with the international media, post Emergency.

The Emergency is remembered for the excesses on the common people, most notably those connected with the sterilisation drive. Any person who offered himself for a vasectomy operation was gifted, as an incentive, a transistor set or a five kilogram tin of (Dalda or Rath). Yes, there were cases of forced sterilisation, but in a country where the bureaucracy’s favourite pastime is to fudge figures to impress their political masters, the official claims could have been doubtful. Thus the inflated statistics went far in generating the fear-factor.

Old timers would remember that shortly after the Emergency was lifted, there were four persons who emerged as the chief villains, and were described as Indira’s caucus or gang of four: Sanjay Gandhi, former Haryana Chief Minister Bansi Lal, former Information and Broadcasting Minister Vidya Charan Shukla and the former Minister of State for Home Om Mehta. The Bharatiya Jana Sangh and subsequently the Janata Party and the BJP went overboard to hold them responsible for the excesses.

The supreme irony is that Sanjay’s widow, Maneka and son, Feroze Varun, both are BJP MPs. True, the two were not at fault, but by accepting them in its ranks, the BJP, has also to some degree, reconciled with Sanjay’s legacy; Bansi Lal, who had formed his Haryana Vikas Party, aligned with the BJP and ruled as the Chief Minister of the state. V.C. Shukla, too, did a short stint with the BJP, before returning to the Congress. Om Mehta faded away into oblivion.

Bhandarkar’s film vividly depicts the demolitions at the Turkman Gate in Central Delhi. Civil servant turned politician, Jagmohan was at one time accused of being responsible for the demolitions when he was the vice chairman of the Delhi Development Authority (DDA). He was also sought to be prosecuted during the hearings of the Shah Commission. Subsequently, he joined the BJP and was elected thrice on its ticket from the New Delhi constituency. He remained a Central minister in the A.B. Vajpayee government after his stint as the Governor of Jammu and Kashmir.

The short point is that the BJP and the RSS, which opposed the Emergency, compromised on their stance, and did business with those who were at one time on the other side of the fence. Bhandarkar’s film is merely a celluloid version of those bygone days and hence, should be seen in this light. It is not a recollection of history, but a presentation of some facts that tend to take matters in one direction.

Therefore, anyone who is trying to be self-righteous about what happened during the Emergency should also look at its aftermath and how “certain villains of one era were resurrected in another”. The Emergency will always remain a blot on our otherwise vibrant democracy. The Congress has paid for its transgressions, but the BJP cannot gloat and continue to sit in perennial judgement. As is well documented, people in glasshouses should not throw stones at others. Between us.