Somewhere down the line, the lawyers of our country (just like most other professions) have forgotten that they form an essential pillar of India’s democratic structure, where their services are required, and not merely solicited. I don’t consider it too much different from the defense forces, where if you are called for duty on behalf of the country, you are required to serve regardless of how unjust you find the cause of the war.
As I have mentioned before, many Indians, in a misplaced sense of patriotism, ironically do the most un-patriotic of actions - attacking the very foundations of what we claim makes India different from other countries - a modern, democratic and free country.
There are many ways to react to what these 10 young men did in Mumbai, but acting like a blood-thirsty lynch mob should not be one of them. That is what we think people are in those other countries, right? The ones, where your limbs are chopped off for trivial reasons? So how are we being different by summarily sending off this lone caught boy to the gallows without even a modicum of justice?
Jethmalani puts it quite well :
The measure of any civilisation is the way society treats those whom it hates.
So what kind of civilization do we stand for? If our country’s founding fathers have made legal defense a fundamental right (Jethmalani has mentioned the specifics in his article), it only shows that they had a much grander vision of the Indian civilization than what Shiv Sena and their ilk can dream of.
(via Communalism Watch)