On Vandalizations and the Rule of Law

Through the month of July, Catholics in Goa were under considerable distress following a spate of vandalizations both of crosses as well as grave stones. For a while the state seemed unable to address the situation until the police identified one Francis Pereira as the perpetrator of these acts. However, if the state authorities were under the impression that this arrest would satisfy civil society in Goa, then they were sadly mistaken. Incredulous that a fifty-year-old man could single-handedly engage in so much destruction, the arrest has become the butt of jokes and caustic comment from Goan citizens.

While the state may continue to protest its bona fides and swear that they have gotten the right man, it would do well for the authorities to take stock of the situation they find themselves in where the citizenry is deeply suspicious of them. This is at least the second instance where the citizenry have refused to accept the police’s version of events. The other incident that I refer to is that of the nature of Fr. Bismarque Dias’s mysterious death. The state authorities should realise that if this popular disregard of their findings becomes a systematic pattern, then not only will they lose the confidence of the people but it will seriously impact the law and order situation in the state. Indeed, if there is one single fear that we can take away from the grave vandalization case it is of the manner in which law and order has declined in Goa. Last month, this column reflected on the instance in the village of Mercês where rather than complain to the police, locals had taken it on themselves to avenge their abuse by rowdy tourists.

The Government on the other hand seems to not take this situation where the authorities are being increasingly disregarded seriously enough. As with most things the authorities seem to have grasped the wrong end of the stick with what law and order means. While the state should be concerned with preventing crimes like the vandalization of graves, they are instead busy building up a police, or surveillance state. Thus, rather than work to ensure that the peace of society is not disturbed, they sit back and allow for provocative rhetoric to fill the air – as in the case of the recently-concluded All India Hindu Convention. Once violence erupts, the authorities delightedly step in to augment the existence of a state with greater police surveillance. Civil society should take note that a greater police presence in the state is not a panacea. Rather, the biased way in which police can function, especially when the state is under the control of problematic forces should give one pause when considering, or demanding, greater police presence on the streets. Take, for example, the actions of police forces where they have stood by silently, or joined in the violence when Muslims are attacked by Hindu mobs. This was the case not just in Gujarat in 2002, but in various cases across India. Indeed, one was witness to such a scenario in Goa itself when I 2002 police stood by while property in Fontainhas was vandalised by Hindu right wing groups.  

There is another question that emerges when civil society considers the question of the vandalizations.  In addition to demanding that the state ensure better security, another response has been to blame Hindu nationalist groups, in particular the forces behind the All India Hindu Convention. While there is no doubt that greater state scrutiny is required of the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti, one should be careful to not blame the group for the violence without investigation. There are a plethora of Hindu nationalist groups, and not all of them are necessarily working with each other, even though they may all be working towards a common goal of a Hindu state. These groups are also working to undermine the strength of groups they see as being too soft, some groups demand deference because they have been around for longer are more established, and led by upper caste leaders. Thus, what is required is that, rather than wild allegations, we demand that a serious investigation be carried out by the state authorities and appropriate actions be taken. In this context, it falls on political parties that do not have representation in the legislature, but have ambitions of getting there, to take leadership. Political parties like the AAP or the Communists have funds and personnel and they ideally ought to direct these funds and personnel towards ensuring that the procedures and rule of law are followed. They should hire lawyers, and other professionals as needed, and ensure that there is a systematic follow-up. What I am arguing for, is that especially at a time when the rule of law, and the institutions that secure it, are collapsing we need to work harder to ensure that procedures are followed, and there is a firm focus on institution building.

What would be the appropriate response to these vandalizations? Catholics, and others concerned, should also be aware that these acts are possibly being carried out to gauge the responses of the public. If such is the case, responding with vigilante action would be devastating. Concerned groups need to do all they can to avoid emotional responses and insist that the state do its job. What we need at this point in time, where the state is actively abandoning its role as the upholder of law is to commit ourselves to a greater investment in institution building. What needs to be understood is that the Hindu right thrives precisely on the collapse of the secular state. We need to stem this collapse by a commitment to institution building and a respect for the due process of law.

(A version of this post was first published in the O Heraldo on 25 July 2017)

Social Media and Vigilantism

Could there be a sinister aspect to commonplace grumblings on social media? I recently came across a complaint on social media by a person who claimed that a young man on a bike had assaulted him and threatened him. The complaint which included a photo and a caption ended with the complainant asking the readers of his post “What should be done about such goondagiri [sic] where a law-abiding citizen has to face such humiliation that too by people who have shamelessly broken the law?”

Judging by the fact that the photograph was shared close to one hundred and ninety three times on social media the question was obviously rhetorical. The post was shared precisely to offer up the biker to public justice and ensure that he be shamed, ostracized or punished by other means. But this is precisely where we have to pause and take stock of our actions because these kinds of complaints and appeals to public justice are in fact calls to vigilante justice.

Vigilantes are groups of citizens who take it on themselves to undertake law enforcement in their community without legal authority, typically because the legal agencies are thought to be inadequate. Because vigilantism is often associated with mob justice we associate the term with howling mobs and violent action. However, the roots of vigilante actions lie well beyond these dramatic acts. Vigilantism does not begin with a lynching. Lynching is merely the highpoint of vigilante action.  Vigilantism begins when individuals abandon the state’s justice delivery system, prefer a kangaroo court of public opinion, and take it upon themselves to administer justice. When this happens what we have is the jettisoning of the system of due process through which facts can be established and a fairly objective decision can be reached.

What is particularly scary is that it is not just in the realm of social media that one can see appeals to vigilante justice. Indeed, one sees the mass media, whether print or audiovisual, also engaging in setting up popular courts, presuming guilt before a person is held guilty by the judicial system, and condemning these people in very forceful terms. These are in fact terrifying signs because it signals that we are increasingly moving towards a breakdown of a system of a rule of law, and due process, two concepts that ensure that justice is done.

Let us mine the post that inspired this column for examples. In this particular instance the complainant alleged that the biker rode on the sidewalk and responded violently to the polite request to follow the law and get off the sidewalk. If we rely entirely on the account on social media we have only one side of the story. What we do not have is the biker’s account. It is possible that the biker’s version may be radically different. He might argue that he recognizes that the bike should not be on the sidewalk but there were extenuating circumstances for the violation. He might also argue that while acknowledging his fault the complainant was not particularly polite but in fact aggressive. It is because there are always at least two versions to a conflict that one needs a judicial system manned by an impartial third party. Without an objective system of justice delivery we have no way to determine whether the photographer was in fact telling the truth. One would recognize that a social media complaint does not provide such a dialogical approach to conflict resolution but only presents one version that we often take as the gospel truth.

Central to a justice delivery system is the requirement of being dispassionate. In the post that I refer to, the complainant indicated that after being assaulted and threatened he approached the police who did not act on his complaint. It was the failure to get support from the logical agents of law and order enforcement that he turned to social media. As such, it turns out that the police were also responsible for the disaffection that drove the complainant to social media. If this was the case, why not post images of the allegedly errant police persons as well? Indeed, in the post I refer to the complaint ended the caption with statement indicating “Please note that I don't intent [sic] to target any politician or policeman. My grouch is purely against such law-breakers who are full to the brim with arrogance.”

One of the significant features of vigilante justice is that the vigilantes very often attack the weak. Further, it is not the structure that is attacked, but individual manifestations of a larger, social problem. For example, we know that the sidewalk is hardly respected in our country. Sidewalks are often in a bad state of disrepair, and when available are routinely used to park vehicles. In such a situation it is little wonder that when people are rebuked for using their vehicles on the sidewalk they respond aggressively wondering why they are the only ones to be pulled up and not the others.

Interventions in social media are not innocent. They can often be the apparently innocent appeals that will eventually end in violent vigilante justice. It is imperative, therefore, that we resist the temptation to invite social ire against individuals on social media. To redress this problem what we need to do is to hold the state and its agencies responsible for their primary task; the upholding of a system of due process and the rule of law. It is no use utilizing social media as an alternative to the state system precisely because such a process is not only capricious but it threatens to empty the state of its responsibilities leaving behind a state only interested in asserting its powers. Neither of these situations is an ideal one.

(A version of this post was first published in the O Heraldo on  10 Jan 2017)

My way or the highway: Thoughts on the value of process

The O Heraldo carried a rather shocking report on the twenty-eighth of last month. Titled ‘Farmers, NGOs raise huts in Margao’, the report was about the unchecked vigilantism by a group of citizens, who in the face of the alleged lethargy of the State authorities about a collection of tents, decided to take it on themselves to demolish these make-shift dwellings. Subsequent to this demolition, these citizens then informed the authorities to make sure that the materials of these tents was carried away, and the tents not allowed to be set up again.

This report was tucked away in an internal page of the paper, and was a little fragment of the day’s news, which is tragic. The issue holds grave consequences for the state of civil society and governance in our State and should not be brushed away so lightly. To begin with, what we have here is a case of citizens taking the law into their own hands. There is no doubt that all too often the state machinery does not move fast enough for us, and indeed in many cases there appear good reasons for us to take the law into our own hands and set matters straight. To do so however, is to ensure that we are effectively going down the road of such groups as the Sri Ram Sene, who take it on themselves to institute a case, adjudicate it, and then execute the decision taken as per their sense of what the law should be. There has been a lot of debate in Goa as to whether we should allow the Ram Sene to enter Goa, and there should be this discussion. But alongside the pleas to the Chief Minister to ban the Ram Sense, there should also simultaneously be pleas to the Chief Minister to not take this thus-far-minor incident in Margão lightly. On the contrary, the Chief Minister should take stern action to ensure that the group that motivated this action is hauled up before the law and punished appropriately for its roguery. 

This actions by these so-called NGOs is perhaps more appalling because of their timing, and the nature of the groups that they were attacking. The news report indicated that the people living in these small tents were waste recyclers, and it was their fouling of the local area both with plastic waste that they could not recycle, as well as their excreta, that caused the attack to be carried out. We should be clear then, that this attack was one by middle-class persons against persons who would very well qualify as poor. That this action should have been carried out in the course of the monsoons, is perhaps the most inhumane part of the exercise. While there is no doubt that the tent-dwellers may have inconvenienced these middle-class groups, we must not forget that these persons would have no doubt also had older members of their families, as well as children who also lived in these tents. Thus, what this vigilante demolition effectively did, was to ensure not only that these vulnerable segments of already marginalized groups were forced to be without a roof over their head in the course of the pouring monsoon, but also ensure that these segments would have missed meals, for reasons of losing not just hearth, but possibly kitchen stocks as well. The heartlessness of this action should leave us speechless for shame!

Interestingly, these aspects of the incident were not included in the report on the incident. The report only included the opinions of these self-righteous vigilantes. To that extent one wonders whether the sympathies of the reporter lay with these vigilantes. Good and sensitive reporting would have articulated a much larger picture, rather than merely present a small little snippet that seems to justify the action.

This column however, does not wish to dwell solely on this issue. Rather, it would like to relate the outcome when this report, and the outrage at this action, was shared with others on an internet forum. The first response to the sharing was a question “So do you favour the mushrooming of these structures?” This was a response designed to flummox. Surely this person realized that the issue being raised was not the validity of “these structures” but the problems with the process being used to resolve the matter?

The conversation continued, shifting wildly from the original suggestion that we ought to find this action unacceptable for the manner in which it effectively made a segment of our citizenry homeless, to what was effectively a plaint of middle-class persons against the awful manner in which they are being treated.  In the course of this discussion, it became increasingly clear, that it was not that this, and other, individuals did not want to distinguish between the harm that had been caused to the tent-dwellers and the harm that is being caused to the largely middle-class Goan folk on that internet forum. On the contrary, what became painfully obvious was that this person was UNABLE to distinguish between the two.

It is so much easier to condemn a person for failing to have a conscience, but what we often fail to realize is that having a conscience is often about being able to distinguish one situation from another. It calls for a complexity of vision, so that one can distinguish a cause and an effect, between an end and a process. Such a complexity of vision, it has to be recognized, doesn’t just spring in people automatically; it is cultivated, through observation, discussion. If one goes onto the internet, a space where so many Goans attempt to articulate and discuss their issues, one notices largely, the absence of any protocols of discussion, and the inability to entertain nuance. The situation is largely a case of with me or against me, and following that, the hurling of abuse.

This situation definitely does not augur well for us. Goan society is clearly in a state of flux, facing a great many challenges, and if the vast majority of our people are unable to see the nuance in debates that are being proposed, then we are done for. We are done for, because failing the development of this capacity to see nuance and be able to engage in discussion, we will largely continue to favour actions such as resulted in the demolition of the tents in Margão. As was suggested above, there is not much difference between the actions of groups like the Sri Ram Sene and the actions of these ‘NGOs’. They are both vigilantes committed to their idea of the truth and unable to tolerate the ‘Other’, both of them with scant respect for process. Process, at the end of the day, whether the legal concept of due process, that prevents us from taking the law into our hands; or the simple concept that privileges discussion, is critical to addressing the challenges we face.

The solution for Goa then, lies not merely in finding the solutions to the many problems we face, but in finding a manner in which we negotiate the process in which we arrive at the possibility of solutions.

(A version of this post was first published in the Gomantak Times  on 7 July 2012)