Where are we going?

Yet another coffee break at work turned into a heated argument last Friday - tempers flared, and at the end of it all I was left slightly unnerved. It all started with a very casual discussion about last month's terror attacks, one of the colleagues saying we should stop patronising Pakistani music. Yeah right, I told myself, that definitely will stop all kinds of terrorism. I brought up this news and talked about how I thought it was totally ridiculous. Voices of dissent immediately - and I was told I was in the wrong. The lawyers were doing the right thing by refusing to defend him; and Shiv Sena did the right thing by attacking one who just wanted to do his duty. One of the colleagues was pretty vociferous actually - that Kasab should be publicly killed without even a trial. And, he felt, there was nothing wrong in anyone attacking the lawyer; in his own words, this colleague said: "Think like an Indian first and do what is good for the nation." So attacking a lawyer just wanting to perform his duty and uphold the constitutional right was being extremely patriotic! Can someone please help me here? And there was more - since Kasab had simply mowed down unarmed, innocent people, who couldn't defend themselves in any manner, it was simply okay to lynch him.

I know these terrorists killed people in cold-blood, and were caught on cameras doing so. Does that mean it was okay to do the same to him? Why don't we just start right at the beginning? We have ample television evidence of what happened at Babri Masjid; why don't we do the same with all those people as well? We have one of the major leaders of 2002 Gujarat genocide going on record and saying: "...we didn't spare a single Muslim shop, we set everything on fire, we set them on fire and killed them." And how did all this make him feel? "I can't tell you what a good time it was... Maza aata hai na, saheb (I enjoy it)... I came back after I killed them, called up the home minister and went to sleep... I felt like Rana Pratap." The policemen who openly assisted the rampaging Hindu mobs were not punished; they were not even sent to a trial. In fact, we shamelessly voted back the person behind Gujarat carnage to power and are okay with he being positioned as a future Prime Minister of this country. More recently in Orissa we have had thousands of people driven out of their homes and threatened openly. Why don't we get "patriotic" about all this and shout from rooftops that perpetrators of all these crimes should be brought to court as well? No, wait, did I say courts and trial? Why bother? With such overwhelming evidence and confessions on record, why don't we just publicly kill/lynch all these people as well?

As I mentioned here before, I don't understand something like this - to me this is simple and straightforward - we have evidence against Kasab, recorded evidence; we have a strong case against him and from what I can see immense international support; why are we scared to send him to trial? And if there are loopholes in the system that allows one such as Kasab to get away despite all the evidence, then what we need is a clean up of the judicial system. Not some kind of jungle law.

What disturbs me is this - that people seemed to think this was a good idea, that somehow this was totally acceptable. Is that really a solution?