Afzal Guru's Execution: A New Low for the Indian State

The execution of Afzal Guru by the Indian state as well as the manner in which it was done, must rank as one of its most shameful acts. That death penalty should be carried out in this day and age, that too without letting his family get a last chance to see him, shows the Indian state in very poor light indeed.

I still remember that the pall of gloom that descended in Tihar jail, where I was spending a year as Mrs. Gandhi's “guest” during the emergency. Even hardened criminals and an equally hardened jail staff were in mourning. Death happens all the time, so does killings and murders. But there is a difference between such killings and a state deciding that it needs to take a life in this completely cold-blooded, calculated way.

A number of people have reacted to Afzal Guru's execution citing various lacunae in the judicial proceedings. The implication is that Afzal was innocent and therefore should not have been hanged. But then this line of argument opens itself out to the possibility that if Afzal was indeed guilty, presumably there was nothing wrong in executing him.

For me, and many others, the issue is not whether Afazal was guilty or whether it could be considered rarest of rare cases. The issue is even – as the prosecution claimed and the courts have held – if Afzal Guru was indeed a part of the attack on Parliament, his execution was still not warranted.

I believe that capital punishment should be abolished in India as it has been in a number of countries. There is no evidence that capital punishment has any deterrent effect as its proponents argue. Countries that have retained capital punishment – such as the US – have not seen their crime figures fall, nor has crime gone up in countries which have abolished the death penalty.

It has been shown that a number of persons in the Death Row are actually innocent. Some of them have been victims of circumstantial evidence, some of a biased prosecution. If they are executed, there is no possibility of a redress. New genetic tools, for example have lead to a number of people, who were condemned to death winning their freedom.

Obviously, the execution of Afzal Guru is not just an abstract act, but part of a larger political agenda. The Congress wants to deny the BJP an election plank in 2014 that it is soft on “terror”; it has entered into a kind of competitive masculinity with the BJP. The problem with such a policy is that a blood thirsty agenda of revenge and state killings is the natural terrain of the right. Not only here but world over. A soft Hindutva agenda or a we can be “mard” too, is not going to win the Congress much dividend.

For the Congress, Kashmir and its solution should have been the primary agenda. Political scenario in Kashmir was ripe for a peace initiative. The kind of Islamic onslaught that is now taking place in Pakistan meant that it is no longer attractive for the bulk of Kashmiris to go with Pakistan. There is no doubt that Azadi remains a popular cause in Kashmir valley. Nevertheless, there was enough space for a dialogue for a larger autonomy, lifting of the draconian laws and eventually a softer border. By executing Afzal Guru, it has renewed the alienation of the Valley from the rest of the country and aborted any possibility of a dialogue.

What is particularly reprehensible is the manner of the execution. That a letter should be posted in a way that the family could not have possibly have known of rejection of Afazal's mercy petition, no possibility of either the family seeing Afzal or for Afzal to see them before his execution, is a new low for the Indian state. Even two decades back, with extremism very much prevailing in Punjab, the Indian state executed Mrs. Gandhi's assassins openly. When a state cannot announce openly that it is executing a Kasab or an Afzal, it only shows its weakness, not its strength.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the author's personal views, and do not necessarily represent the views of Newsclick