DIREST SENTENCE FOR A TERRORIST

COMMENTARY ARCHIVES, 1 Jan 2009

Vithal Rajan

The attack by a group of terrorists on the city of Mumbai for several terrible days in the end of November has been called India’s 9/11, and most middleclass Indians are calling for very strong action by the Indian Government. I am one of them. The question remains what action would break the mould, and do something new and decisive.

As the governments of India and Pakistan have both said very wisely, there can be no recourse to war, or even hot pursuit, or even ‘surgical strikes.’ What then can be an effective challenge to terrorists who mindlessly take so many lives? By sheer chance, one terrorist, Ajmal Amir Kasab, is left alive after the carnage he participated in. According to modern law, he will be tried in an Indian court, very many eye-witness accounts will condemn him, and eventually, after due process, he will end his short life, hanged one early morning in a jail. He has asked, as is his right, for a lawyer from Pakistan to represent him, but Pakistan has rejected the fact that he is a Pakistani, fearing that if they acceded to this, they will be condemned by their own mouths for harbouring terrorists. So he will be represented by some Indian lawyer hastily appointed by the Indian court, who might do his job unwillingly. Certainly no Indian Muslim lawyer will ever come forward to defend him.

All this is part of the great game of politics. But who is Ajmal Amir Kasab? He is perhaps not yet 21, born to a very poor family. His father is a street vendor in his village, his brother pulls a cart in Lahore. Ajmal hardly got four years of schooling. He was adrift, some evil men, telling him stories of atrocities against Muslims – many of which most probably were based on fact – convinced him to become a ‘terrorist.’ In a terrorist military camp he found himself a new respected identity, training, encouragement, and finally lethal arms, the possession of which must have made him feel proud and confident, since that is the patriarchal culture of these days. Before he set out to wreak havoc in Mumbai he was even promised that a princely sum of 150,000 rupees would be paid to his family for his sacrifice.

When the law takes its course, a victim of our society would have been judiciously killed – a meaningless short life would have been snuffed out. That however would not compensate any family for the loss of their breadwinners, their children, their loved ones. Can we compensate the people who have suffered by giving him a worse punishment, and also help them heal their grief? The worst punishment I can think of would be let Ajmal Kasab live, and come to realize the enormous pain and suffering he has inflicted on several families he never knew. Could this young man be made strong enough to live with his guilt, serve the families he has destroyed, bring up the children he has left fatherless? Can he live for another 60 or so years of his natural life to go amongst his erstwhile terrorist handlers to show them how they act against God and Man, and Nature herself? Can he as a single human being publicly repent for the sins of our society? I don’t know that he can. But I do know that we do not have the courage to let him try. If such courage can be found, a great beginning would have been made from which there would be no turning back to terror or injustice, poverty or greed, cruelty or simple neglect.

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 1 Jan 2009.

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