E-Book - Mahatma Gandhi

Is There an Alternative to… 183law and order want anonymity for witnesses, summary trials,and on top of everything else, a reversal of the accepted canonsof jurisprudence by transferring the onus to the accused,making it his responsibility to prove innocence in someinstances, even for contravention or suspicion of contraventionof laws that retrospectively expand definitions of crime. Thusyou have a crop of restrictive legislations, suppressing orsuspending fundamental rights and traditional civil rights-theP.D. Act, MISA, ESMA, TADA, and so on. At the time that thelegislature is asked to entrust these new Draconian Powers tothe Government (which in many cases put the Rowlatt Act toshame as I myself have had occasion to establish in Parliament),the Government gives a solemn assurance that thepowers would be used only with the greatest reluctance and inunchallengable cases of hardship, and in general public interest;and yet, perhaps even before the Acts are gazetted, theprovisions (of the Acts) are invoked indiscriminately,sometimes against political opponents who have nothing to dowith terrorism, but are contenders in the hunt for Parliamentarymajority or majority in Party Councils, sometimes againstadvocates who are engaged in public interest litigation or thedefence of civil liberties, or the defence of those whom theminions or leaders of government have deliberately and falselyimplicated with charges of protecting or abetting terrorism,sometimes against those who are agitating against being oustedfrom their ancestral homes in the forests, or in support ofcauses relating to hazards to public health, or the protection ofthe environment, and so on.Thus the instruments of terror used on one side and theinstruments of suppression used on the other side lead to totallaxity in the definition of targets, gradual extinction of thedistinction between the combatant and the non-combatant (as inmodern warfare), between the accused and the innocent whoare on the scene or far from the scene, the creation of a climate