Celebrating ad hoc justice

I've been hearing many positive comments about stuff like this, and the public's reaction to the Rizwanur case in general. The middle class Bengali, tamed to within a shade of domestic felinity, now fully occupies himself with illusions of reclaiming the tiger's mantle. I am reluctant to join in the general enthusiasm for the popular reaction in cases like this, for much the same reason as some have problems with celebrating the 'indomitable spirit of Bombay'. I fear that we are becoming a nation of people who seek justice in the details, for whom instances of individuated claim resolution are sufficient to quench the desire for redressal. Instead of diverting our energies towards systemic reforms, to use such tragic cases as rallying points to press for an end to police impunity in general, we pat ourselves on our back for our candle-lit vigils, and our 'hard-hitting' editorials.

We had found ourselves in a great moral moment last month: we had the opportunity to not let the tragic death of Rizwanur go unatoned, and to use the tremendous groundswell of sentiment to actually press for radical change in the way we are governed. Instead, the CBI files a case against Todi, the CM calls on Rizwanur's family, and we are easily satisfied. Come tomorrow, and it's back to business for us, and for the defunct, dysfunctional bureaucracy which holds us in its thrall. Through our callousness, we are all complicit in the deaths of a thousand Rizwanurs. And no amount of lighting candles is going to change that.