Juvenile activists

 

The reactions of the Left and activists to Rajya Sabha’s nod to the Juvenile Justice (Care & Protection of Children) Amendment Bill, 2015, reflect their own pathologies and perversities. Equally odious are their efforts to calumniate those who oppose bleeding-heart idiocies.

The most vicious attack is: those who favor harsher punishment for the juvenile (now adult) in the Nirbhaya or Jyoti Singh case have a ‘lynch-mob mentality.’ This is the classical use of argumentum ad hominem, the form of argumentation in which personal charges are hurled at the opponent instead of confronting his arguments.

Leading the mob, according to this narrative, is Bharatiya Janata Party leader Subramanian Swamy. But the fact is—activists have little use of facts though—that Swamy never sought the lynching of the juvenile. His plea with the judiciary was that the crime was heinous—something that cannot be taken lightly. It was not, as he said, that the boy had stolen a pastry and, therefore, given his economic condition and tender age, can be viewed as a minor delinquency. He had trapped the young woman, raped her, and savaged her. He was, Swamy said, “an animal.” Bestiality is not childish delinquency.

Pinkish jholawallahs, however, do not regard these facts of any consequence. For them, the culprit was a child at the time of the crime and children have inalienable rights. Period. But what about the rights of the woman who was raped, ravaged, and murdered? No answers, only homilies and platitudes.

Another criticism of the passing of the Bill is that political leaders followed the rabble—the rabble that the media and demagogues made out of the people of India. In the Leftist theology, people are “the masses” which, rather than who, are humanoids bereft of the faculties of reason and reflection; they ought to be guided by the Marxist vanguard, lest they drift astray.

Unfortunately for the commies, India is a democracy and, therefore, politicians can ill-afford to disregard the views and feelings of their constituents. So, when there was outrage against the freeing of the former juvenile, most Opposition leaders felt it prudent to clear the legislation which has been languishing in the Upper House.

This has angered communists, because for them only collectivities matter; human beings don’t. In their scheme of things, what is important is the socio-economic condition that leads to a crime, not an individual decision. So, Brinda Karat, a Politburo member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and a former Member of the Rajya Sabha, wrote in an article: “The issue of increase in juvenile crime, which was one of the main reasons cited for lowering the age to 16, is also entirely de-contextualized… When our society is getting more and more violent, are our children not going to be influenced?”

So, it is the context, the society, etc., that ought to be discussed, not the specific delinquent. But why is it that for every poor child who indulges in a misdemeanor, there are a thousand similar kids who don’t? The ilk of Karat does not even ponder over such questions because their collectivist ideology has convinced them that all solutions have to be sought in collectivities and abstractions.

But Jyoti was not an abstraction; she was an aspiring physiotherapist who was mauled and slaughtered; and she has been denied justice.

It is ironic that the activists, who claim to be the champions of women, have worked hard to deny justice to Jyoti, while Swamy—supposedly the most obnoxious Rightwing politician and thus anti-woman—has striven to bring the ex-juvenile to book. He is still striving for justice to Jyoti.

The entire episode has a lesson for India: the Left and activists are opposed to the reality, reason, and justice.