What is Justice?

So, what is Justice?

How, how do you define it?

And, what separates it from Revenge?

These were a few questions that sprung to my mind as a result of some time spent thinking on issues other than the assignments and projects. The Indian Constitution imagines a judge to be competent enough to be handing out ‘judgements’; but again would you consider sentences spelled out by any competent authority to be equivalent to handling out ‘justice’? Or, if you won’t then would anything done after that not come under revenge?

So, what is Justice?

Well, whatever it is, it still evades the hundreds, whose families were butchered; wives, sisters were raped; whose homes were burnt! It’s been a decade since the violence erupted in Gujarat yet, no respite for the victims seems to be in vicinity.

“Move On!!”, is what members seeking justice are being told more and more often, but well, is moving on ever so easy? Do these scars dissolve so easy? No, they don’t! But more important than that is the question, whether they should be trying to move on. Should they quit their efforts to garner ‘justice’?

This is exactly where I had hit the pre-described dilemma!

What is justice?

And would a non-capital punishment handed out to murderers/rapists be satisfactory or even ‘justice’? If you believe in the penal code, your reply will be an affirmative one else…

“Rape, is when a woman is stripped and burnt alive”, was how a nine year old explained the word to the Hindu Columnist, who wrote today’s editorial “The battle against forgetting”.

 The answer was something which only a kid could provide and that makes me wonder, what would’ve happened of the kid, to have witnessed something of such gravity; a gruesome act, at such a young age!

As the event closes to being a decade old, the whole nation looks up to the judiciary; many would want the victims to turn numb, walk along, bury the ghosts; but well, is that really something the nation needs? Shouldn’t the Constitution stand it’s ground and provide the minorities the same ground it promised them back in the ’50s?