#dnaEdit: Law and prejudice

Every nation likes to stake euphemistic claims to modernity and progress. Yet each of them continues to promote vulgar forms of class polarisation, victimising those at the bottom of the heap, with no access to wealth, power and privilege. Here’s the latest corroboration of the same disturbing and undeterred practice from India. According to an official report on prisons released this month, Muslims, Dalits and Adivasis — society’s most underprivileged sections — account for more than half of our prisoners. The irony is that although these three communities make up about 39% of the population, their share of prisoners stands at a much higher 53%.  
 Coming on the heels of the recent violent face-off between Rampal and the Haryana police in Hisar, the latest report on prisons is once again a vindication of how skewed our system of justice is; how heavily loaded it is against the poor and in favour of the rich. India, for instance, had 4.2 lakh people in prison in 2013. Twenty per cent of them were Muslims even when their share in the population — according to the 2001 census — is 13%. At 17% of the population, Dalits make for 22% of prisoners. While the Adivasis — 9% of the general population — account for 11% of prisoners.

By now we are familiar with rising incidence of falsely implicating Muslims in terror cases. Justice, when finally delivered to these prisoners, comes too late. After being released from protracted incarceration, stigmatising them for life, it is virtually impossible to reclaim the lives lost. In the class-ridden society we inhabit, it is easy to scapegoat poor people. The most galling aspect of this discriminatory culture is that the wealthy and the influential nearly always manage to dodge the law, regardless of how high the cases are stacked against them are. Tainted ministers (recall the cases of the rape-accused Union minister Nihal Chand Meghwal and Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman Kurien) continue unfazed in their privileged positions of power, notwithstanding the serious criminal charges they face. The same legal leniency is also very much in evidence in high-profile cases of misappropriation of funds and scams. More often than not — power and privilege take precedence over the rule of law whose writ seems to run, by and large, for common people.

A look at the prison statistics published annually by the National Crime Records Bureau since 1995 (the caste breakup is available since 1999), shows that the percentage of Muslims, Dalits and Adivasis has remained virtually unchanged over the past 15 years. Clearly, this is a systemic malaise stemming from entrenched caste, communal and class prejudices. All of these biases have become serious obstacles in negotiating the legal system.
If it’s any consolation, India is not the only country whose legal system operates in a biased context along the axes of class, caste and religion. Even in a highly advanced, developed country like the US, the prejudice of colour is evident in the skewed ratio of its prisoners. Here’s what the criminal data sheet of the National Association for the Protection of Coloured People has to say in the matter: African Americans constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million incarcerated population, almost six times the rate of whites. That’s not all. About 14 million Whites and 2.6 million African Americans report using an illicit drug. In other words, five times as many Whites are using drugs as African-Americans, yet African-Americans are sent to prison for drug offenses at 10 times the rate of Whites.