Justice and Revenge


Barkha Dutt closed a TV debate on ‘death penalty’ with an unusual take on justice: “Justice,” she said “is somewhere in between turning the other cheek and revenge”. I liked the fact that she differentiated justice from revenge. That is one step more evolved than those TV anchors who made a eleven year old girl bay for Ajmal Kasab’s blood.

In the primitive world when every man was unto himself, justice and revenge had the same meaning. When someone hurt you, you got revenge by hurting them back. This was considered just and fair because that was the way you defended yourself in those days. The initial sets of law like the code of Hammurabi brought in an essential difference – the individuals were spared of taking revenge. Instead the state took the responsibility to get things even. But with the famous ‘an eye for an eye’ tone, the code itself came closer to a ‘revenge code’ than a ‘penal code’.

During the 3000+ years after Hammurabi, the system of justice evolved a lot. Today, a criminal case is conducted between the state as ‘prosecution’ and the accused as the ‘defendant’. The objective of the court is to deliver justice to the defendant – not to the victim, and certainly not to the relatives of the victim. In a criminal case, the injustice is already done to the victim and there is typically no way of undoing it. The victim (or the victim’s relatives) can claim relief in the form of financial compensation, but this is altogether unconnected to the justice delivered in the criminal case.

At least this was my view of the current system of justice, until I watched our news channels cover some of the recent sensational cases. They think that the victims and their relatives have a ‘fair’ judgment on what the right quantum of punishment is (before the verdict the victim/relatives are asked what the right punishment was, and after the verdict they are asked if justice was delivered); they are shocked when a famous lawyer is ready to take up the defense of the accused; they are indignant when an accused gets a bail. I remember a channel being enraged when someone was released on parole to visit an ailing parent. In short, this new media almost makes me feel that I have gone back in time by around 4000 years. I wish I had! At least I will be spared of TV news then.

Comments

  1. UnknownJuly 4, 2010 at 11:53 PM

    Etta,

    What do you think of the American Judicial System?

    Dileepan

    ReplyDelete
  2. Mohanakrishnan GopalakrishnanJuly 12, 2010 at 8:01 AM

    Dileepan,

    That is quite a broad question. The American system is quite robust when compared to the Indian system, mainly because the support systems (like the police system) work better.

    But at the end of the day all judicial systems are approximations to justice. Same way that the religions are approximations to God.

    ReplyDelete
  3. ReadnRyteJuly 23, 2010 at 1:45 PM

    Nice article.

    I believe that justice 'must be seen to be done'. Justice is beyond the perpetrator and the victim. It is not about allievating the pain of the victim (that is an entirely different issue). Justice is served when the prescribed protocol (law/moral/social/economical...) is applied equally without descrimination based on any parameters. We do not seek justice to punish someone, we seek justice cz we ask to be treated equally. Punishment is a by product of justice, but people tend to equate justice with the verdict without trying to understand that 'verdict' is not justice by itself and the solace they get from a verdict is more an emotional response.

    Cheers,
    Rahul

    ReplyDelete
  4. Mohanakrishnan GopalakrishnanAugust 8, 2010 at 8:48 AM

    Rahul,

    Thanks for the comment. I agree with your view.

    Mohan

    ReplyDelete

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