Police in India (part VI)

When the common citizens have no rights, and when the powerful have immunity, not in practice, but legally speaking, constitutionally, then the only conclusion is that India is a failed state.

The Independence struggle has merely replaced foreign bullies with regional ones. And since now we are a so-called democracy, there is no hope that the constitution will ever change to reduce the power of the elite. The powerful have no incentive to change the constitution to transfer their power to the citizenry. There cannot be another freedom struggle. There cannot be a coup.

True freedom starts from a constitution which guarantees that freedom. India does not have that. The first freedom is to be free in one's person and property. The constitution of India does not value that freedom. The trial courts of India regard detention as a routine matter (the statutory form for "judicial custody" after one has been detained in "police custody", and which is filled in by the police, does not even have any space for recording the reasons for this request for further detention). The accused in India have to justify to the trial court why they should not be sent behind bars.

The constitution of India is not what should be taught in civics lessons in India. The list of "fundamental rights" and "directive principles of state policy" are fairy tales which made students like me believe that we have rights and the state has duties.

What should be taught is the IPC, the CrPC, the COFEPOSA and the NSA. What they should be taught is what an FIR is, "bail" is, what "custody" means, what "due process of law" is supposed to mean, why jury trials were done away with in India. What should be clarified is the existence of hate speech laws in India, the laws related to "hurting of sentiments", laws related to "obscenity", the existence of warrant-less phone tapping. They should be taught that though the Supreme Court has ruled that the police is BOUND to register your complaint, if it doesn't, and you approach the court, the court will not even whimper or whisper against this illegal conduct of the police, but will instead ask you to prove that you have a valid grievance.

What should be mentioned is that citizens of this country cannot own a hunting knife, by law, but the elites have access to customs-seized automatic weapons. The young students should be taken to police stations and jails and to courts and to scenes of popular protests where feudal methods of baton-charging are still used against the elderly and the weak to make them run away.

Maybe India is not ready for freedom, maybe we are meant to be slaves. Its citizens, mostly, certainly don't seem to care. Many are too busy surviving, and others are too busy enjoying the fruits of this barbaric state of affairs. There are a few who, having had a personal experience of this state of affairs, are horrified, but not being politically organized, can't do much.

The power of a state lies in guns: and in a modern state, with the police and with the military. If these forces are not in service of the citizens, but are instead in the service of the ruling class, then democracy is just a word, it is not an actuality.

The sine qua non of a democratic state is to protect its citizens from harm, not to protect itself from its citizens.