After The Hanging: There Is No Closure We Must Ask Again Why What Happened Did Happen

This document discusses the hanging of Yakub Memon and the issues it raises regarding capital punishment and violence against marginalized groups in India. In 3 sentences: Memon's hanging highlights the disproportionate use of the death penalty against low-caste, religious minority, and poor citizens in India. It also draws attention to the lack of punishment for violence targeting minority communities, compared to cases like the 1993 Bombay bombings where over 100 accused were punished. Viewing Memon's execution and other forms of violence together reveals that the Indian state uses violence to discipline those on society's margins, demonstrating institutionalized discrimination.

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After The Hanging: There Is No Closure We Must Ask Again Why What Happened Did Happen

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Murali Krishna

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AUGUST 8, 2015

After the Hanging

There is no closure; we must ask again why what happened did happen.

T
he hanging of Yakub Memon on 30 July 2015 was only almost always punished. Violence against the poor, in contrast,
the fourth case of a prisoner executed with judicial war- most often goes without notice. The terror of the powerful
rant in the past 11 years. Some people have asked, what is against the weak remains unpunished, whether it is communal
so special about the state taking a life through a proper judicial violence, caste violence or gender violence. Thus not one of
procedure when, for comparison, 14,231 people are known to those involved in the planned and deliberate killings of Muslims
have died in judicial or police custody just in the first decade of in Bombay in December 1992 and January 1993 has been
this century. In other words, almost four people are killed every punished, but over 100 of the 130 or so accused in the March
day, extralegally, by the state while in its custody. This is a veri- 1993 bomb blasts have been punished. In fact from the 1960s,
table bloodbath which remains largely unrecognised, though when communal violence restarted after the post-1947 lull,
sometimes individual cases of custodial death are reported and there has been only one instance where minority communities
become political issues. have been targeted in communal violence and the perpetrators
If the power to take a citizen’s life is one of the extraordinary punished—Gujarat 2002. (This was only because a small group
powers which states vest in their sovereignty, then the Indian of brave citizens with a conscience took up the cases of the victims
state is a veritable mass murderer. In the run-up to the hanging right up to the Supreme Court. This also explains why Teesta
of Yakub Memon, there were media reports of studies which Setalvad and others who led the judicial campaigns on behalf of
showed that more than nine out of every 10 persons awarded the victims of Gujarat are now being targeted.)
the death penalty in independent India belong either to a It did not require a judicial commission of inquiry to tell us so
lower status caste, or are members of a religious minority, or (but one indeed did state this more than 15 years ago) that there
happen to be poor. This ratio would, if anything, be further was a link between the anti-Muslim violence in the Bombay of
skewed if the socio-economic profiles of those who die in custody 1992–93 with the Bombay bomb blasts which happened a few
are added. months later in March 1993. Neither the executive nor the judi-
Viewed dispassionately, the Indian state uses death as the ciary ever cared to act on this link. The aggressive voices in the
ultimate weapon to discipline citizens who live on the margins papers, on television and on social media who demanded no
of the Nation—the poor and the discriminated—and who have mercy for Yakub Memon also refused to see the link and the
not bought into its mythologies of legitimation. obvious imbalance in the justice and punishment for the two
Death as a device for disciplining those who remain on the sets of victims.
margins defines Yakub Memon’s killing. From the evidence Viewed in this perspective, the violence of communal and
shown in court, it does seem clear that he was part of the caste killings is part of the same spectrum as the violence of
conspiracy of the Bombay (as Mumbai was called then) bomb custodial deaths and capital punishment. In the former, the
blasts. It also appears now that his legal defence was less than dominant, powerful sections of society punish the weak and
competent in building the case to mitigate the sentence. Yet, oppressed when they raise their voice or demand space in civil
the highest court in the country (just like the highest political society, in the latter instance it is the state—the representative
offices) refused to take suo motu cognisance of the fact that of the dominant sections of society—which punishes intransi-
Memon came back voluntarily and helped the investigation gent citizens.
agencies garner much evidence about the main conspirators It is this truth that is recognised by the poor, the oppressed
and the role of Pakistan’s intelligence agencies—even if they and the discriminated people in India. And it is this recognition
considered him to be among the main conspirators of the which brought many thousands of ordinary Muslim citizens of
March 1993 Bombay bombings. Mumbai on to the streets to pray for Yakub Memon when his
There is only one form of terror which has been punished in dead body was brought for burial. It is only the majoritarian
this country since independence—the violence of the poor and gaze—blind to the violence that binds state and dominant
the marginalised. The crimes of the poor, whenever caught, are society into one—which discovers “support for a terrorist”
Economic & Political Weekly EPW AUGUST 8, 2015 vol l no 32 7
EDITORIALS

when people come out in anguish at Yakub Memon’s killing. It is hearing to a man who was to hang a few hours later. There has
this majoritarian gaze which asks why the hanging of one man been no closure. If anything, we are forced once again, by the
has become a “cause celebre.” Yakub Memon case, to confront the ugly face of institutional-
The eminent have demanded a “closure” now that the ised violence in India, and, to now additionally confront, signs
Supreme Court opened its doors at 2:30 am and gave a final of institutionalised discrimination.