The Hindu Business Line : Crime and punishment

The Dhananjay Chatterji case has opened up a debate on the issue of capital punishment. A just economic order, where common property outweighs private ones, would virtually eliminate criminal tendencies as it does among the Bushmen of Africa. As Aristotle has said, a society decays when the idea of the family decays. Thus, it is probable that a society that guarantees good family values is still the best protection, says P. V. Indiresan.

THE CASE of Dhananjay Chatterji, sentenced to death for raping a minor girl, has opened up a debate on the issue of capital punishment. On the surface, we have the specific issue whether or not a modern, civilised country should permit capital punishment. At the base, we have a more general issue of crime against women, and even of criminality itself. Writing about his travels in India, Macaulay wrote that he found not one beggar, not one thief throughout the country. That was a little over 150 years ago. What happened to make India as lawless and as criminal as it is today?

Crime against women has been common from time immemorial. The stories of Helen of Troy, of our own Sita and Draupadi illustrate that even in pre-historic times, women have been victims of violence. On the other hand, it has been said of the 13th century empire of Ghengis Khan, that a young maiden with her arm full of gold could travel across the length and breadth of his empire without fear. That is saying a lot because his empire stretched from China all the way to Hungary.

Fifty years ago, the awe and respect Bengalis had for Mother Goddess ensured that Calcutta was the safest city for women. Till recently (perhaps it is true even now), the tradition in UP villages was that no one could marry within the village — all young men were brothers, and all maidens were sisters. Strict taboo of marriage within the village was the effective solution the villages had devised for the protection of nubile maidens. On the other hand, in the neighbouring Haryana, parents will not send their girls to schools in neighbouring villages for fear of abduction and molestation.

Thus, whether women are victimised or whether they are carefully protected depends on tradition and culture. Changing social climate, political policy are other reasons why at some times, and in some places, women were safe, and at other times and places they were under constant dread of molestation.

Crime against women is but one element of the broader climate of crime itself. Till recently, New York was one of the sleaziest cities in the world. The situation even in the heart of the city was so bad that it was considered risky to have doors in the toilets of the Grand Central Station: Passengers had to use the facility in full view of the passing public. The legendary mayor, Mr Rudy Guliani, argued, it appears quite correctly, that tolerance of even petty crimes breeds worse crimes. He pointed out, again correctly, that once crime of whatever nature is tolerated, it becomes impractical to draw the line anywhere. Hence, he started taking action against even minor infringements of the law. Within a short time, New York became a safe city.

The former US President, Mr Bill Clinton, has an interesting view on the matter: It is not the severity of punishment but it is its certainty that deters criminals. Then, we should expect law's delays to encourage criminals. It would not be wrong to say that a criminal is born every time a judge delays a case. It is also natural for judges to be lenient, and refrain from convicting criminals if the law is unduly severe.

Some appear to be born with criminal tendencies. There may be little that can be done in such cases. On the other hand, the fact that criminality varies from society to society, and in the same society from one time to another, indicates that criminal behaviour is not due to nature alone. Therefore, it would be worth looking into social, political and cultural causes of criminality.

Even in these wicked times, there is practically no crime in Himachal Pradesh. Its prisons are empty, and the few prisoners there are, are outsiders. That is true of many tribal communities. Some years ago, there was a quasi-documentary on the Bushmen tribe of Southern Africa. These tribes are amongst the most primitive in the world. They have no concept of property; the entire forest (rather the entire desert) is common property for the whole tribe. They are loving and kind; treat their women and children with great affection. Such innocence is widespread in many forest tribes. According to the story, a passing aircraft dropped a Coca-Cola bottle near one of the tribes. That was a strange and a glamorous object. Soon the tribal family found many uses for it in their simple family chores. As there was only one bottle, and the demand was great, for the first time, dissension brew in the community.

It appears that where all property is common, and there is enough to satisfy everyone's needs, there will be no conflicts, no crime. Extending this principle to less idealistic situations, we may expect crime to decrease when the weight of common property increases, and that of private property decreases. Then, crime should be less where society is composed of extended families than when it has nuclear ones. Ultimately, a society which encourages individualism to such an extent that even nuclear families become an anachronism, will have most crime. That could be the reason why Western cities, where individualism has become a creed, are also the riskiest for women to wander alone.

Libertarian ideology, which gives no weight to chastity, seems to have increased the risks that women face. Sections of mass media have found it profitable to propagate and glamourise licentious behaviour. They depict fidelity as boring and licentious behaviour as at least interesting, if not desirable. Movie producers depict teasing innocent girls as normal macho behaviour for young men. Violence of the most extreme sort is depicted in such graphic detail that the audience loses a sense of shock, and gets instead vicarious pleasure out of it. Consequently, internal moral sensor loses force; violence appears so interesting that it tempts some to experiment on their own.

A couple of generations ago, chaste behaviour was the expected conduct. Most leaders lived up to such an ideal. The present generation has few such role models to emulate. Criminal behaviour has become excusable at the highest levels. As different forms of criminal behaviour are contagious, one type of crime leads to others, and women become the worst sufferers.

In recent weeks, in Europe, there have been three prominent reports on paedophiles who have been accused of not one but several sexual crimes against children. In each case, the suspect escaped conviction several times on legal technicalities.

One served his prison term and was rehabilitated with a new identity and settled in a quiet neighbourhood without the knowledge of neighbours. The law took the view that the privacy and the rehabilitation of the convict were more important than the possible risk he posed to children in the neighbourhood.

Criminals often escape punishment because of the analytic nature of Roman Law. In Western jurisprudence, punishment is for the crime, not the individual. Evidence against each crime is evaluated separately without reference to past record of the accused. With clever lawyers, a repeat offender can go scot-free each time because each case has to be separately proved beyond doubt. Further, once the sentence is complete, the convict has "paid his dues to society", and is free to start all over again. In many respects, Western law offers great protection to offenders both during the trial, and after the sentence has been completed. It has no balancing concern for the victims of crime.

Our own culture is synthetic, not analytic. The punishment is not for the crime but for the individual. We go by the concept of jaati dharma, the principle that proper conduct varies with the status of the individual. The entire individual and family background of the accused is ferreted out before judgement is given. This principle has been misused, but the idea that the punishment is for the individual and not for the crime is superior to the Western practice. The liberal view is that, no matter how heinous the crime, there should be no capital punishment.

The Supreme Court talks of death sentence for the rarest of rare cases. We would do better by treating the protection of the innocent as the cardinal principle. In that case, capital punishment may be meted to those who, even from within prison, can organise grievous hurt to innocent people, through hostage taking for instance. As a corollary, only those who pose physical danger to others should be sent to prison and none of the others.

Competent policing and effective justice as in Ghengis Khan's days would work better than severe punishment. Civilised culture too will help. A just economic order, where common property outweighs private ones, would virtually eliminate criminal tendencies as it does among Bushmen.

Finally, as Aristotle has said, a society decays when the idea of the family decays. Then, it is probable that a society that guarantees good family values is still the best protection for women.

(The author is former Director, IIT Madras. Response may be sent to indresan@vsnl.com)

This is 127th in the Vision 2020 series. The previous article was published on June 28.

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