The fate of the Delhi rapists, and an exercise in situation ethics

The past two days have been filled with thinking, and talking, and chatting, and Facebook commenting, about the death sentence given to the rapists of Jyoti Singh Pandey.

One has already died in custody. Amidst suspicious circumstances. The other, a juvenile at the time of the crime, will spend three years in prison and his slate will be wiped clean.

People have celebrated the verdict of death by passing out sweets. Activists against the death penalty, and indeed, the rapists' parents, have accused the court of bending to public opinion. And the question everyone asks -- and some feel fit to answer -- is, Was justice done?

The girl's parents wanted the death penalty. If we want to speak of justice, really only their opinion matters. My opinion, then, is just that - my feelings on the matter. And I am unsettled.

My first, most visceral response, was that death was too good for them. Their days are numbered and if they show any remorse at all, a swift death is certainly merciful. There are those who would inflict unmentionable punishment on the men, commensurate to what they did to the girl, but I think an eye for an eye only keeps the cycle of violence going and teaches that in some circumstances, violent acts are okay. And we have seen the lengths people will go to in order to justify rape and murder, these most heinous of crimes for which death is the recommended punishment: She was out at night. She has brought dishonor to the family. He committed a crime and was in jail. He was campaigning against morality and decency. She was asking for it. Who decides what crimes warrant cruel and unusual punishment? You'd better hope you never end up on the wrong side of that decision maker's politics, and political connections change so quickly.

Ideally, I would have liked to see them condemned not to death, but to a lifetime doing hard labor in a maximum security prison where they can no longer be menaces to society. Human rights? Certainly, give them the rights that they so callously took away -- we are not barbarians -- but the privileges of life in this free world they would never see again. Food, water, clothing, shelter, medical care are requirements, but biryani and badminton are privileges. Without leisure, without contact with their loved ones, they would have all the time in the world to think about what they had done until finally God himself granted them mercy and took them from this world. In playing God ourselves, we are being merciful to those who we say do not deserve mercy.

But the mother of the victim said, in an interview I heard earlier but can't find a link to, that the victims showed no remorse, that in court they seemed befikr - unworried. How is it punishment if there was no remorse to begin with? Zero times infinity is still zero. The main problem with my ideal punishment is that it is an ideal and shatters in the face of reality.

The two main arguments that I have heard against life in prison have been that rehabilitation does not work, so why bother, and that the cost borne by the taxpayers would be too great. To the first argument, I agree; although in the US the recidivism rate of sex offenders has been shown to be just 14 percent, this number is low because of controls in the system, including monitoring and registration. In India, where it is difficult to even get a rape case registered at the police station, these controls do not exist and the data does not apply. I do not argue then for rehabilitation at all, but for life sentences with public safety in mind: removing violent criminals from society.

Then people will ask, why should we pay taxes to keep these people alive? That is a difficult question to answer, and the answer will depend on how an individual, and how a culture, values life itself. There are some who believe in the absolute sanctity of life -- that we may not interfere in the natural processes of giving or taking life. Others believe that all humans are allotted a set of inviolable rights without which society will collapse. Yet others believe that human rights should only be extended to those who respect human rights, and that your right to live ends when you take someone else's life. And then there are those who take a utilitarian view: if someone is an unwanted burden on society, they should be done away with sans emotion. My view is closest to the second of these, but I do understand that others hold different opinions and, as such, come to different conclusions.

Which is why, in conclusion, I believe that there was no right thing to do in this case. No action the court took can bring Jyoti Singh Pandey back, can fill the hole in her family's life, can enroll her in classes for this term and get her back on her way to becoming a medical professional. Perhaps the verdict that was delivered was the least wrong thing. But I will leave that for her family to make the final call on.

Spiritual but not religious?

This article from the CNN.com religion column has got Facebook buzzing. Saw discussions about it today on two others' profiles, besides mine.

Alan Miller, the author of the article, states,

Those in the spiritual-but-not-religious camp are peddling the notion that by being independent [...] they are in a deeper, more profound relationship than one that is coerced via a large institution like a church.
That attitude fits with the message we are receiving more and more that "feeling" something somehow is more pure and perhaps, more "true” than having to fit in with the doctrine, practices, rules and observations of a formal institution that are handed down to us.

Despite his patronizing tone, Miller has a point here, and that point is the one of coercion. Does he not realize that all around us, people are questioning authority at all levels moreso than they did fifty years ago? Teachers are certainly not respected anymore, and neither are the police as upholders of the law and social order. We publicize our elected officials' sex scandals on prime-time TV and we have even impeached two presidents. And this distrust of authority is certainly not unwarranted; scandal, corruption, and hypocrisy are rampant in those we consider "authorities" and with the internet, it's a lot harder for a publicist or PR team to keep these things under wraps. We have already lost faith in our leaders; no wonder we are also losing faith in the institutions that are also seen as "supreme authority."

If people feel coerced, they will get up and walk out. This is America and we can do that sort of thing. Respecting authority for authority's sake is no longer a value here.

It's not all about coercion, though. It's not all "Christians are all hypocrites so why should I count myself among them?" -- although that does play a part. The devout would say these people are throwing the baby out with the bathwater, that the hypocrites will end up in hell, and by not believing, you would join them there for eternity. But the reasonable person has already thought through that argument; if the only reason people are leaving the church is because of the hypocrites, then they'll be sorely disappointed to find that the whole world is full of such people, be they Christian or Jewish or Muslim or Hindu or Atheist.

So there has to be another reason, and it seems to me to be that the old patterns do not fit. One of my friends put it very succinctly on Facebook:

People that i know are "spiritual not religious" have extensively studied and looked at many religions only to find a common thread among them all.

This can be a very traumatic moment for someone who sincerely followed a spiritual path, believing it was the only one.  At this point in a crisis of faith, I think it is very natural for people to go "religion shopping," to put it crudely. We have access to so much information today; people can even go to Beliefnet and take a quiz to figure out what belief they should follow. So I can definitely see how people may try, as Miller put it, "A bit of Yoga here, a Zen idea there." Our lives -spiritual and otherwise- are a process and people who have felt alienated or marginalized by one faith may indeed go searching for another one; they have left the confines of one belief system but don't want to give up on God just yet. I think even those people - especially those people?? - should be treated with dignity and respect as seekers, not dismissed as shallow or dabblers.

[...] the spiritual-but-not-religious outlook sees the human as one that simply wants to experience "nice things" and "feel better." There is little of transformation here and nothing that points to any kind of project that can inspire or transform us.

How arrogant. How is leaving the safety of a path that offered a person no more inspiration or transformation an outlook that offers "little of transformation"? And what is wrong with "feeling better"? Indeed, two of the main purposes of religion throughout time have been to establish social order and to find peace of mind. In this statement, Miller seems to be dismissing this latter purpose (which is why people cling even to mainstream religions) and to reduce religion down to obeying the social order, almost as if he were ridiculing people who do not "fall in line." It's okay to "feel better," it seems, as long as it's in a church where you dress up nice and smell the fragrant incense and go to the yummy church potluck, but if someone's spiritual practices are outside the norm, suddenly their need to "feel better" is something to thumb your nose at.

But I really don't think Miller believes that, because at this point, his article takes a bizarre turn.

At the heart of the spiritual but not religious attitude is an unwillingness to take a real position. Influenced by the contribution of modern science, there is a reluctance to advocate a literalist translation of the world.

Take a position? What position needs to be taken? And what does a literalist translation of the world mean? Literalist as in the Biblical view of creation? Maybe the editors left something out; let's ignore that and just continue reading.

But these people will not abandon their affiliation to the sense that there is "something out there," so they do not go along with a rationalist and materialistic explanation of the world, in which humans are responsible to themselves and one another for their actions - and for the future.

If redemption of humankind can be found in both traditional religion, as he seemed to be saying in the first half of the article, and also in materialistic humanism, why can it not be found also by those who do not fall into either bucket? Also in these two paragraphs, Miller is treading dangerously close to now reducing spiritual belief to the absurd question of how the world came into being, simply to contrast it with a scientific, rationalist viewpoint, which does have answers to those questions - at least in part - and should be favored over foolish religious belief.

Theirs is a world of fence-sitting, not-knowingess, but not-trying-ness either. Take a stand, I say. Which one is it? A belief in God and Scripture or a commitment to the Enlightenment ideal of human-based knowledge, reason and action? Being spiritual but not religious avoids having to think too hard about having to decide.

A wild false dichotomy appears! And therein, the crux of Miller's argument (if you can indeed call it that.) He says you can either choose religious literalism or secular humanism, and at this point, it is obvious which he prefers. However, there are certainly people out there of every faith who think religion and science are not mutually exclusive, and who apply the Enlightenment ideals he speaks of to the daily practice of their faith. We are not people who are either led by blind faith or pure reason. Our lives as human beings cannot be unadulterated by emotion or experiences that we do not yet have the science to describe.

Give us a few more thousand years of science, a few million more years of evolution, and perhaps this dichotomy will more resemble reality. But at this point in time, the fact that people do still search for something beyond themselves does not make them inferior; it makes them humans struggling on the search for meaning in a short life on a brutal planet, and it makes people who place themselves as superior to them look awfully silly.