Justice

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

What is justice? The modern jesting pilate will ask and move away plugging his ears.  Right through human history the strong have given justice to the weak, the rich the poor and the powerful to the meek, the intelligent to the dullheads.  When the German soldiers ran over France in the beginning of the Second World War they raped the French women saying the conqueror has every right to rape them. But when in 1944 the Liberation army drove away the Germans and freed France from German occupation, they too raped the French women claiming every right as liberators. In nature matsyanyaya  is very much in operation, the big fish eat the small, the tiger eats the cow and the lizard the fly.No one thinks some judicial or moral imbalance has tilted the ecological or moral equilibrium. No injustice has been done to the weak and meek as it is the wont of nature. The carnivorous will eat the herbivorous and no eyebrows will be raised. When Cain killed his brother Abel and told his mother Eve and when Eve charged him, Cain said,  “Am I my brother’s keeper?” God’s moral sense was not incensed. The earth did not have temperature nor did the stars shed tears of sympathy for the weak and meek. It’s only the weak that cry of injustice that too in a temple or lonely place. They ask for justice from gods. Only when survival was assured the weak vowed for revenge, to pay back the same violence in the name of justice.

What we call justice today is a civilizational value, for civilization creates a value system where the unequal temper of nature is mitigated by rules, laws, ideals and actionable truth. There are judges in proper gear, a sober and staid person presides over a dispute presented by lawyers from both sides. Evidence and logical proof,  however fabricated or concocted, are weighed by the figure of justice (A Blind Woman holding a balance) and a pronouncement is made. In the first flush of civilization the village elders or school masters or priests acted as judges. A landlord or a chieftain also performed the role of a judge who was a god – substitue: Now the judge is appointed by the  Government of a country on the recommendation of an advisory or expert committee or a collegium. The judge presides over a law suit mostly involving the criminality of man. But justice is beyond criminality. Inequality in status, position, social bias derived from religious or intellectual authority, customs and practices and above all identities imposed by tradition or historical necessity often demand justice. Which judge can restore the dalits of  India or the slaves in the Greco-Roman  markets or even the African Americans to psychological dignity retrospectively? Slavery is gone, negro is a taboo word and dalit is now more respectable than harijan but what social justice has wiped off the historical memory? John Rawls’ idea of ‘fairness’ in justice envisaged a ‘primordial equality’ to borrow a phrase from Amartya Sen, which in my view seldom obtains in concrete situations. Impartiality, biaslessness are ideals which normally do not operate in real life situations. Justice must appear to be fair but fairness differs from person to person, class to class and also from age to age. In  Indian Jurisprudence, practically a British Legacy, the principle is: let thousand criminals go scot free but let not a single innocent person be punished. This too is a fair principle. But in the variegated theatre of life no one is satisfied with any judgement.

We ask for justice from God, from Governments from law courts,  from parents but if our actions are not ratified we cry foul. Man does not accept any proclamation of justice. He goes on appealing and at times he becomes the judge, jury and executioner, when his personal sense of justice is frustrated.

Justice delayed is justice denied , they say, yet prolong their own agony by delaying it on some plea or other. Ayodhya  Ram Temple – Babri Masjid is a case in point. Law can not decide all litigations. Man must give himself justice by becoming more tolerant of others' views, religions, rituals and attitudes to life and living. Niti  everywhere is based on values, nyaya too is based on values. But values must sustain life and civilization.