On Ajmal Kasab's hanging

Yesterday Ajmal Kasab was hanged to death for his involvement in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks. There was a sense of revelry around the country, when it actually is poignant moment for all of us. The debate on capital punishment is one which has been going on for ages, and I don’t think I can offer a new line of argument, but in the light of recent events I feel compelled to put out my thoughts. 

Before that, the question that begs for attention is that, whether Ajmal Kasab was the ‘rarest of the rare’ case that required the capital punishment. Among the many categories of Normative ethics, the branch of philosophical ethics that investigates the set of questions that arise when considering how one ought to act, morally speaking, are Consequentialism and Deontology. Consequentialism theorises that the consequences of the person’s acts are the ultimate judge of the morality of the act. One of the major reasons for any judge to pronounce a death penalty is because it acts as a deterrent for potential criminals. Ajmal Kasab’s death is in no way going to stop the strategists from plotting another attack, as he was just a pawn who was ready to die anyway.

Deontology on the other hand is the normative ethical position that judges the morality of an action based on the action's adherence to a rule or rules. What Kasab did is unquestionably abhorrent by any standard, but does he represent the worst of humanity for whom we reserve the death penalty for. We have to understand the circumstances in which the crime was perpetrated. Ajmal Kasab was 21 when he committed the killings in Mumbai, more than half of the boys of that age, under everyday conditions are not fully aware of their actions; Kasab was probably recruited early in his childhood and indoctrinated with a false ideology based on hate and violence. If I had lost someone dear to me in the attacks, I would have wanted Kasab dead, but the more evolved and humane response would have to be something else, he could have been sentenced for life; like in Norway which will keep its vile terrorist attacker, Anders Breivik, locked up for life. That would arguably have been a greater deterrent than hanging a man who had planned anyway to die. Our responses to such situations should reflect the soul and conscience of mankind, that which values life itself more than anything, rather than temporary public anger.

To come to the death penalty itself, when a court in any country pronounces a death penalty it actually is trying to wipe clean its blemishes. A human being considered worth executing by the society, is actually a result of the failure of the institutions of the society. If we have people who cross all limits of civilised life, it is because the society in large has created circumstances for their creation. It is the failure institutions like the judiciary, legislature and also the institution of family or an absence of it. When you take part in ceremonious killing of a fellow human being, we refuse to gauge the inherent value of life itself.                         

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A comment on Research

"According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, drowning is the second-leading cause of accidental death among children; and black children and teenagers, from ages 5 to 19, are 2.3 times more likely to drown than whites in this age group. For children 10 to 14, the rate is five times higher."

The above statement has been extracted from an article i read in the New York Times dated June 19,2006 written by Lynn Zinser, the article explores the reasons behind the high drowning rates of African Americans in general and Afro American childeren in particular.  One of the reasons that the article states for this phenomenon is the myth that African Americans are inherently incapable of swimming, this myth arises from the fact that the African slaves when they were brought to America were deleberately not taught to swim or were kept away from it as the owners saw it as a tool to escape. Thus this produces  generations of nonswimmers in the community. The article goes on to explain the other reasons for the drowning rates and also the efforts of the government and the voluntary organizations to counter this trend.

The question pertinent to the Indian context is that if there are any trends similar these in our country. The unfortunate truth is that arts and social sciences receive such a stepchild like treatment, that such questions are never asked if not researched. The caste structure in India is a much more primitive and deeply entrenched part of our society, where segregation and discrimination are the dirty truths of daily life. Thus it warrants a much more dedicated and vociferous approach and academic research.

Commodity Fetishism and Human relations

Recently I was asked a question by a friend of mine about the rules that governed the phenomenon of attraction, this question was the follow up of a discussion on commodity fetishism, a concept discussed by Marx in Capital vol.1 where he theorises that in a capitalist society commodities playing such a pivotal role that they start encroaching upon every facet of the society. Niche spaces of human character like the relations people build with others and the emotions which lie behind them start showing signs of consumerism in them. Bonds of friendship, love, loyalty and trust start having commodities as their foundations instead plain emotions. This phenomenon occurs to such extent that after a point it will seem as though the commodities have started forging relations among them with the human facet as a background. It was in light of this theory that my friend had asked me the question, she was curious to know if there was actually an element of truth to this theory, that the relations that we build an the emotions that we express are actually only to mask the real relations that we had forged with the commodities that the other person possessed. The theory makes a lot of sense to me, but to claim a complete absence of emotions is false. Our society in my view is divided into innumerable fragments based on standard of living. Although in broader perspective class serves as an indicator of economic status, but the fragments I am talking of are intra class. There is constant overlapping of these fragments as they are very similar and belong to the same class but there are slight variations among them based on asset ownership and the quality of those assets.

It is almost always that various relationships are forged within these overlapping social spheres. And especially when we talk of attraction and getting romantically involved    with someone the social fragment which the two individuals belong to plays a prominent   role. This process takes place subconsciously and it is only after this process that individuals experience feelings like attraction, 'love', etc. I can cite numerous examples of this process, people of similar economic status go to similar social recreational spaces, educational spaces. Although we can find counter examples, but I doubt that there will be a lot. So again i find it impossible not to refer to our films, but this time I would disagree with them as the case in which the rich girl falls for the poor guy almost never happens in the real world.