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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Justice, forgiveness, and the call to forget -Rajeev Bhargava

Justice, forgiveness, and the call to forget -Rajeev Bhargava

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published Published on Dec 23, 2018   modified Modified on Dec 23, 2018
-The Hindu

Forgiveness can play a reparative role provided it is seen as complementary to justice, not a substitute for it

Post-Partition, India has witnessed innumerable acts of collective violence of which three clearly stand out as the most barbaric: the Nellie massacre in Assam in 1983; the horrific slaughter of Sikhs in Delhi in 1984; and the diabolical pogrom in Gujarat in 2002.

Need for retributive justice

No society that calls itself civilised allows such mass atrocities, and if, as an aberration, such ghastly events do occur, its criminal justice system ensures swift punishment to those found guilty. But India repeatedly permits these catastrophic transgressions. And when the process of retributive justice begins, it is reluctant, painfully slow, and susceptible to political manipulation. Yet, whenever retributive justice has worked, as in the recent verdict on Sajjan Kumar, it has brought some ‘sukoon’ to survivors. It is unbelievable that justice delayed is still seen as justice affirmed.

The reception of the recent judgment 34 years later once again demonstrates that victims of one-sided collective violence desperately need retributive justice, and not be deviously nudged to move on without it, to let bygones be bygones, to forget and forgive. Not surprisingly, it is perpetrators of violence or insensitive bystanders who say this. But forgetting is neither possible nor desirable. Traumatised survivors may be forced into silence but they can’t forget their loss or suffering. For a start, forgetting can’t be brought about intentionally; no one can wilfully strive to achieve amnesia. The more one goads oneself to forget, the more one remembers the brutality of the act and the loss of loved ones. More importantly, such a demand can’t be morally justified. Imagine that someone close to you was lynched in front of your very own eyes. Wouldn’t you be haunted by images of this gruesome act forever? Can the intensity of the initial trauma diminish with the passage of time if, for instance, you lost your only child to this collective insanity? Can the wound ever be healed? How preposterous it is to be asked to move on! Even when friends and family urge you to stop grieving, to try loosen the grip of this nightmare, they don’t expect you to forget what has happened but to find ways of rebuilding your life. To my mind, an appropriate form of remembrance is the only partial remedy for this lifelong ailment.

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The Hindu, 23 December, 2018, https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/justice-forgiveness-and-the-call-to-forget/article25808304.ece
 

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