Drinking, dancing & Dhoble
hibited in Mumbai.
The Mumbai police commissioner and the head of the excise department both backed these “initiatives”. Both claimed that the officials were merely upholding the law.
For this, they should be thanked. These gentlemen have succeeded in bringing much-needed focus to a very important issue, which is that we have laws against pretty much everything. Are you a woman? You can be detained on suspicion of being a prostitute. Are you a man? If you’re Muslim, you could be suspected of being a terrorist, and spend the next few years in jail. If you’re Hindu or And so it goes. India is a country with too many laws and too little justice. Approximately 65 per cent of the people in our jails are not convicts, they are people who have been arrested on suspicion. Often it emerges after years that the person was innocent. What do the police do to give back a man his lost years?
It is an axiom of justice that no innocent should be punished even if 10 guilty persons get away. A second axiom is that a person is innocent until proven guilty. Here, the reverse happens. Those assumed guilty are filling our jails while the people who actually per- body of India has become corrupt with cancerous growths, many of which we inherited from the British. We should simply cut them off and throw them away.
The silly laws that empower our constables and enforcement officials to become extortionists should be repealed. That would be the single most effective measure against corruption. Let our legislators frame fresh laws keeping in mind the contemporary realities of our country and its place in the world. Laws that have no relevance to contemporary society should be done away with.
The point of living in an independent country is that we can live by our own democratically legislated laws. That is why we have Parliament and Assemblies, and pay for the upkeep of our legislators.
As a taxpayer, I would like to ask them what useful work they do. Last year Parliament worked for 73 days out of 365. More than 30 per cent of that time was wasted in disruptions.
Meanwhile, citizens suffer.
The Indian Penal Code was framed by the British in 1860. The great revolt of 1857 had just taken place. The Raj was shaken. It needed laws that would empower the British, who were few, to control the natives, who were many. These laws came into force in that milieu. The British rulers made way for Indian ones in 1947. Why have our leaders kept those same laws and same powers for themselves till now? Is it so they can unleash the occasional Dhoble on us to show they are still the mai-baap sarkar of the Raj?