Our general lack of interest in what goes on behind the bars of our city jails will come back to haunt us someday
Our children will be attacked for tweeting, our youth will be jailed for exercising their fundamental right to protest, and we will all be forced into silence by cowards in Parliament who are too afraid to hold press conferences
Not a week goes by in this new version of India (that is supposedly on its way to becoming a superpower) where I am not surprised or shocked by statements made by public figures. A politician recently tweeted about how upset he was that an old political prisoner had passed away in jail of natural causes, instead of languishing at the mercy of the state. This barbarity from someone intending to occupy a seat in Parliament ought to have been condemned instantly. It was retweeted and liked instead. No one batted an eyebrow, because that is the level of discourse we have all been trained to expect.
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It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that there is something deeply wrong with our country. Newspapers won’t talk about it, of course, and TV channels will ask us to focus on celebrities getting divorced instead, but we should all know by now that a nation built upon the belief of ahimsa or non-violence has long abandoned that pretence in favour of violent, irrational force against the most vulnerable among us. It’s why we are so inured to video footage of men being lynched, women beaten with impunity on the streets, and students at universities attacked with iron bars for daring to hold up placards. The horror these visuals would have evoked in a civilised society has been exchanged for shrugs as we scroll through memes on WhatsApp.
We should all spend a little time trying to understand why some Indians have been placed behind bars for as long as they have, and look at what they have been accused of. We should all ask ourselves why some people are allowed to flee our borders with a few thousand siphoned crores, while others aren’t allowed to visit ailing parents on their deathbeds. We should do this as an exercise because it concerns us even if we believe it doesn’t.
A society is only as humane as the respect it gives to those who have no power. It is only by giving the disenfranchised a voice that it can claim progress. Bigger airports and taller statues do not denote genuine development despite how many times we are told to treat those examples as proof.
There is nothing more condemnable than a state using its might to crush a voice of dissent. That is the sign of people who have something to hide, which is why we should all be more worried than we are. We are all being treated as potential problems for daring to ask questions, which is a fundamental right we once took for granted. Asking a politician why a company was given control of an airport, or why another was allowed to buy fighter jets despite having no qualifications to do either, isn’t an act of sedition. It is one of common sense because our taxes are being used to do these things. We are being denied accountability and transparency, and those daring to push back are being labelled traitors. This isn’t normal.
The truth is, we don’t care about jails. We know they are awful places, but don’t think about what that means for the people unlucky enough to find themselves in those dingy corners of our cities. We drive past Arthur Road without looking at the high walls, safe in the knowledge that we aren’t going to be locked up anytime soon. The sad thing is the certainty we once had about jail being reserved for criminals alone has long been thrown out of the window.
It’s why we have journalists behind bars for simply doing their jobs, activists imprisoned without trial for exposing how political parties deliberately ignore sections of society, and ordinary men and women locked away because they have spoken up against injustice for people who have been given no support. We don’t care about them because they aren’t related to us, but there will come a time when members of our families will bear the brunt of our silence. Our children will be attacked for tweeting, our youth will be jailed for exercising their fundamental right to protest, and we will all be forced into silence by cowards in Parliament who are too afraid to hold press conferences.
Jails were created to hold criminals. The notion of what defines one has been changed by politicians, which is why people who work for the poor are now deemed dangerous for society, while others accused of murder, kidnapping and extortion are qualified to become ministers.
When he isn’t ranting about all things Mumbai, Lindsay Pereira can be almost sweet. He tweets @lindsaypereira
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.
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