Can the state assume the right to kill?
By Jawhar Sircar
No, we will not
discuss Vikas Dubey. But we need to revisit occasionally that very shadowy zone
where the state assumes the power to liquidate certain citizens. We know that
this is one of the three unique traits that distinguish the state from all
other organisations, including those more prosperous or rful. These are the
legitimate right to impose taxes (everyone else ‘charges’ people); the inherent
right to requisition men, materials, places and buildings (as during elections
or wars); and the third is its basic right to kill. It thus declares all other
killings are homicides and prosecutes the perpetrators, leading occasionally to
capital punishment, after due trial and the process of law.
Besides, this most critical
authority of the state is meant for foreign attacks and extended to internal
rebellion and ‘liquidation’, in the name of tackling the “war against the Union
of India”. But neither the judiciary nor the rational section of the people can
ever agree with the claim that encounter killings are just a further extension
of this dreadful syndrome. At this point, let us recall the first
‘mainstreaming’ of large-scale liquidation that was carried out in 1971-72
against the original Naxalites of Bengal. The Naxalites were in the throes of
their class war and had appropriated to themselves the right to kill at will.
The gory beheadings and the
hit-and-run killings of hapless police constables and other perceived class
enemies by ‘action squads’ had converted life in Kolkata to brutal, bloody and
short. The major strike-back was ‘Operation Steeplechase’ in mid-1971 when the
police and armed forces unleashed reprisals on an unprecedented scale,
methodically and remorselessly, without any due process of law. Those like us
who lived through that terrifying period know how young men were tied to
lampposts and shot point blank. Later, as an administrator, one was proudly
shown exhibits of the very successful operation against urban guerrillas at the
Counter Insurgency and Jungle Warfare School.
It was entitled ‘Calcutta
1971’ which was, quite eerily, the same name that Mrinal Sen had chosen for his
very disturbing film on police brutality in contemporary Kolkata. Hazar
Chaurarsi’s mother can suffer endlessly but the state had “gotten over its
problem” and re-established its authority. The same fate awaited those who had
almost hacked Punjab from the Union of India in the 1980s and 1990s, amidst
unspeakable atrocities and horror. It was only after pro-Khalistan terrorists
had literally slaughtered several hundred innocent citizens, mainly in Punjab
and Delhi, that the state hit back—with unconcealed vengeance.
Indira Gandhi paid with her
life for having stormed the Golden Temple and stepping up action to liquidate
terrorists, but terrorism lingered on. In August 1995, Punjab CM Beant Singh
and 17 others were blown off by a Khalistani suicide bomber. The point is,
unlike Bengal where a painful surgery worked, Punjab’s ulcer bled for a dozen
years more. But then, the state clawed its way back and seized Punjab — again,
at a huge human cost. It is not that this is restricted to India. It is a
recurring feature of the entire Third World and the inhuman brutalities wreaked
in Bosnia and its neighbours prove that Europe is not immune. This month
itself, Human Rights Watch has reported that more than 180 male corpses have
been found in Djibo, a town in the north of Burkina Faso, obviously resulting
from ‘extra-
judicial killings’.
To understand the heartless
institution called the state, we may look back at the most powerful theorist in
this domain, Thomas Hobbes. This 17th century English philosopher was obsessed
with rescuing humanity from terrifying chaos, lawlessness and endless strife in
“the state of nature”. He viewed the state as an authoritarian Leviathan
created by its citizens, surrendering a part of their liberties to strengthen
it—to rule over them. The other great philosopher, John Locke, was less
paranoid and spoke more of human rights, but the state that he advocated had
freedom in “the mutual preservation of their lives, liberties and ...
property”. The third theorist, Rousseau, was clear that the state emerges from
a “social contract” with citizens but his state could go to more extremes to
ensure that the “general will of the people” prevailed over dissidents.
But these propositions are
quite old and constitutional democracy has evolved much since then, through
battles, revolutions and world wars. Vigilance over the modern state has
sharpened and the ‘hue and cry’ factor cannot be ignored. In 1919, Jallianwala
Bagh hardly stirred the world but 70 years later, the Tiananmen Square massacre
drew universal condemnation. Yet, when Daya Nayak eliminated 83 “notorious
gangsters in Mumbai through his encounter killings”, he became the stuff of
legend. A rotten, failed judicial system is largely factual, but as long as
public support exists for such ‘encounters’, they are difficult to stop. They
satisfy innate desires for reprisals and bottled-up bloodthirstiness that lie
deep within society.
These are, however, only
attempted explanations and civilised society can never accept them as
justifications. History has proved, time and again, that a murderous state soon
turns upon the citizenry it is duty bound to protect. The genetic propensity of
the state to assume an acquired right to kill has to be shackled—or else we
will all be locked in a cage with a Godzilla gone berserk.
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