Hanging of Memon brought home the message loud and clear; a modern state is obliged to maintain peace and protect its citizens against physical harm and death, both from internal and external threats. As a custodian of law and order, the state is duty bound to punish those who take upon themselves to hurt or kill fellow citizens. In seeking death for Memon, India experienced a sense of gratification of having upheld a fundamental principal and discharged a basic duty.

The message from Rameswaram is that India is a secular polity, and we can take considerable pride that even high offices are open to men and women from the minority communities. India can be proud that excellence and achievement alone count—and, not religious affiliation—in the matter of reward and punishment.

Kalam was doubtless a great President; got more publicity and recognition after his passing away than during his life time. There was a context to Kalam’s elevation to the highest office of the land. Vajpayee’s secular credentials lay shattered in the face of horrible 2002 anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat. He felt utterly helpless as he found himself out- maneuvered and outvoted by his own senior colleagues when he tried to make the case that the then Chief Minister Narendra Modi had failed to perform his duty. Vajpayee wanted the principle of political accountability to be upheld. His invocation of rajdharma, a basic principle of statecraft, was spurned. In a counter move, he brought Kalam to cleanse India’s soiled image. And Kalam fitted the scheme of things in more than one way. To make him the President was a masterstroke indeed by Vajpayee and to extract the BJP from guilt over the Gujarat riots. So far as the Prime Minister was concerned, Kalam was a pliant President during the NDA rule.

In case of Yakub Memon, there was high drama as the apex court worked all night thinking its decision through. And in the end, public opinion was bitterly divided between those who felt that the execution would bring closure to a sensational and emotive case in which so many people had died and those who felt that retributive justice had no place in a civilized society.

But largely lost in all this were the voices of those who had lost loved ones on that fateful day in 1993. Their argument was that Memon who facilitated the terror attack did not deserve leniency and that only death penalty would bring them closure. The case has been going on for over two decades and all angles have been considered by the court. The argument over whether he should have been given death or a life sentence will continue, but at no point in time was his guilt in any doubt. The abolition or otherwise of the death penalty is for the law makers to decide, not the courts. A section opposes the death penalty on moral and practical grounds. This section hopes that one day we will have a government that would abolish it. Even if the statute exists on books , the state would do well to minimize its exercise.

Columnist and political commentator, Shekhar Gupta, points out “we often have to disguise our opposition to the death penalty under technical, procedural and legal doubts of a particular case; conversely, the desire for a strong state often rides roughshod over details in particular cases. These risks are inevitable in a democracy. But what we saw this week was something more ominous”. First, there was an open legitimizing of blood lust. Even if you believe Yakub Memon should have been hanged, the sensibility that accompanies that belief is important.

There are practical people who feels that abolition of capital punishment is fraught with dangerous consequences; more so, in the days when terrorists’ activities are on rise and the criminals openly defy law. Death is the only deterrent that may keep terrorist and criminals away from their nefarious activities. Idealists may talk of abolishing hanging but in the days of mounting crime, rise of mafias and armed senas, the anti-social elements only fear hanging. They are not afraid of life-sentence because they get released on parole or get their jail-term reduced. There were also cases of jail-breaks and holding hostages by terrorists to secure their accomplices released. (IPA Service)