ATTACH their properties! shouts a shrill voice. People shake their heads as they hear these orders and many including me hearing those words or seeing the headlines think it comes from a state which uses bulldozers and such techniques to still dissidents. But this was no powerful ruling party leader, flush with brawn and muscle, giving these orders. They came from Mamata herself, an opposition chief minister!
When bulldozers are used by Yogi and his team, we all cry foul, and now find that the same thinking persists in a leader of the opposition. “What about us?” cry the courts, “Shouldn’t we be the ones who decide whether someone did it or not. Shouldn’t we go into the case and find out the motive for a deed, and what counter action instigated him to do it? Shouldn’t we be the ones to judge? Aren’t we the keepers of justice?” “Justice?” scream those in power, whether they be from the ruling party or from the opposition, “Justice? Who’s talking about justice! We want blood, revenge!”
And I take these two chief ministers and others of such thinking to see the Twin Towers in New York being hit by two planes. I show them the pride of New York and America crashing to the ground, and then show a President, who between choking on a pretzel, while watching a football game, sees the towers falling and without looking for more facts, takes out two pistols from holsters on his side, and with guns blazing attacks Iraq and kills a man who had really nothing to do with the Towers!
It was one of the stupidest decisions in history, and bloodthirsty for revenge, the American people laid bare a land, thinking they were striking back for the three and a half thousand of those who were burned or fell in the New York disaster! It was years later that Obama got the Seals to fish out Osama Bin Laden from Pakistan. But in our hurry for vengeance, justice makes an exit.
Vengeance is scraping a boil or sore on one’s skin, justice is finding out what caused the sore and dealing with the problem. The need for revenge is a deadly human urge. We have been hit and we want to hit out at anything, but the duty of those who rule, is to transform those violently, vengeful fists into the delicate hands of Justitia who balances the weighing scales of justice.
Such bulldozer tactics should be condemned in a democracy. We need to remember that every single person for whom justice is denied spawns a hundred, nay a thousand more who seek revenge. Bush made every American throughout the world a target, just by seeking vengeance in Iraq. “What about us?” cry the courts again. “Bring the perpetrators to justice!” we whisper, and democracy strikes a goal..!
—Email: bobsbanter@gmail.com
