[nukkad] Capital punishment

["Mahesh chandra Gupta" <>]

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Friends,
I hereby respond to the ongoing controversy regarding capital punishment 
in the context of Mc Veigh's execution.

1. I have seen his photo and his last statement in the form of the 1875 
poem Invictus by William Emest Henley. I note that he was a decorated 
Gulf war soldier. I also note that his crime was that he bombed a 
building to mark his protest against a bully government [words taken 
from report in Times of India]. It is notable that he died very calm and 
watched TV, slept and wrote letters before he was taken to the execution 
chamber.20

2. All the above acts evoke in me a sense of admiration for him, however 
flawed it may appear on the face of it. He was calm till the end. Does 
that not remind us of Ram Prasad Bismil and Chandra Shekhar Azad etc.? 
He bombed government building to protest against government brutality. 
So did Azad and Bhagat Singh etc., who are national heroes, and so did 
[and are doing] the Kashmiri militants whose sins have been forgotten 
and who are being called honourably for discussions with high government 
officials like KC Pant. Phoolan Devi killed scores of people as a dacoit 
[the society made her one], and became an MP not once but twice. Azad, 
Bhagat Singh and Phoolan Devi killed with intention to kill 
preidentified persons. McVeigh merely bombed a building, with no 
intention to kill any one in particular. Had he been a political or 
legal heavy weight, he might have thought of non-violent options. In his 
circumstances, he was so much overwhelmed by the perceived state 
atrocities that he had the strong urge to act, yet he could not see an 
alternative to what he did. [Let us not forget that george Fernandez, 
ex-defence minister, had carried dynamite during the emergency with the 
intention of blowing up railway tracks and buildings as a protest 
against the emergency and was convicted for the same, but the cases were 
withdrawn when Janata government came to power.]

3. I am reminded of the biblical saying: judge not that ye may not be 
judjed. How apt it is! Who are the judjes here? The same government that 
let loose a holocaust on the Vietnamese people just because they wanted 
to remain independent? The same government which has admittedly tried to 
intentionally kill Fiedel Castro on more than a dozen occasions through 
the CIA outfit, merely because they do not like a communist neighbour? 
The same government who assume the role of a one member global police 
commission and send troops to any part of the world without so much as a 
face saving formal UN sanction?20

4. I am not anti-American. USA is a great country. [My son is there, 
though I myself decided not to go there in spite of having an immigrant 
visa as a young doctor]. I am simply trying to have an open mind.

5. Regarding death penalty, it should certainly be done away with. As 
per 1997 figures, 57 countries, including England, Germany and Italy, 
had abolished death penalty. [I wonder if England would still do so if 
it continued to rule over India. Executing a white is, after all, not 
the same as executing a black!. The latter are dispensable. That, may 
be, explains why US, the self-proclaimed champion of human rights,  
still persists with it]. In a ruling about 5 years ago, the South 
African Constitutional Court ruled that death penalty is a cruel, 
inhuman and degrading punishment, hence unconstitutional. [ Note that 
the unconstituttionality of capital punishment could not be discovered 
as long as SA was ruled by the white.].

6. I am reminded of the words of my father who, quoting a poet, used to 
say:

There is so much of good in the worst of us,
And so much of bad in the best of us,
It is difficult to say which one of us,
Ought to reform the rest of us.

7. To me, McVeigh sounds a bit like a martyr. He gave his life not for 
his own sake, but because he wanted to protest against brute force used 
to quell law and order problems, knowing fully well that he would be 
sentenced for this. I do not know whether he surrendered after the 
bombing or went into hiding. I do not know whether his act served as a 
wake up call to the government against high handedness. May be my US 
friends would be able to answer these two points.

8. Finally, we have no right to take away what we can not give, ie., 
life. There are many documented instances where alleged murderers were 
found to be innocent after they had been executed. Our perception of 
guilt is coloured by our thinking. General Dyer of Jallianwala fame was 
never sent to gallows by the justice loving British. And, let us not 
forget that if given a chance, a spark may enlighten a soul and gems may 
flow. People can do wonders even behind jail gates. Nehru's Discovery of 
India was written in jail, and so was the famous Gita Pravachan by 
Vinoba. Let us remember, giving a chance and giving death punishment are 
mutually exclusive.

Sorry for this long write up. But I did have strong feelings on this 
topic.

MC Gupta
June 12, 2001


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