The Trial of chacha manmohan s gandhi - Part 5

Yesterday, I discussed the "Corruption of the Law." Today, I shall conclude this Prosecution with a discussion on the natural fallout of legal corruption - and that is Corruption of the Police. They become a "legislation-enforcement agency" - and all these amoral and immoral pieces of legislation passed by our Socialist Parliament are essentially Predatory, like the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act. In any case, the Indian Police are known to be Predatory on every city and town street pan-India. They only protect the VVIPs; they prey on the rest of us.

Let us begin with some History. The modern State, equipped with a Police Force and a Central Bank, is very new. Sir Robert Peel set up the London Metropolitan Police - the unarmed "Bobby" - only in the 1830s. They used to be jeered at on the streets when they first made their appearance. 

In India, the Honourable East India Company ruled without any police force. They had an army - but no police. The "civilians" of the HEICS roamed their vast districts unarmed and unescorted, maintaining land records while sitting among the peasants, settling disputes on time, providing Justice, collecting taxes in exchange for Property Titles - and, of course, building "roads, bridges and canals."

The Indian Police Act is dated 1861. This was immediately after the horrors of the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, and the Government of India had passed from the Honourable Company to the British Crown. Victoria was now "Empress of India." It is an interesting coincidence that Rabindranath Tagore was born that very same year, in 1861. While Tagore dreamt of an India "where the mind is without fear and the head is held high," the motto of the Indian Police is "Fear is the Key."

Let us fear them not - if we want to be Free.

In this post, I will relate some anecdotes. The first of this is especially for the Free Press, because these events occurred on Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, the Fleet Street of Nude Elly. I was then working with The Economic Times, and my offices were in Times House. One afternoon, Professor Christopher Lingle came calling - and I invited him out for lunch. There was an Udipi restaurant nearby. The alternative was the vast array of "street food" on the opposite side of the road. Cris is adventurous, and he opted for the street food. We ate all kinds of stuff, like the delicious papaya salad one guy makes, and we washed it all down with a nimboo masala soda prepared by a guy whose masala is his own secret formula. The sign on his stall says he has been in operation since god knows when.

A few days later, I bumped into Cris again at the Rajiv Gandhi Institute, where I had gone to attend a seminar. After the seminar was over, I had to rush to office to pen my editorial of the day, and Cris tagged along  with the special purpose of trying out the BSZ Marg street food once again.

But lo and behold! When we arrived we found that every single hawker and vendor had been evicted!

Cris, who is a very widely travelled man,  then made a remark that I have never forgotten. He said:

"The poor people of India are exceptionally honest. In any other country if such things happened, the people would have turned to crime."

That is the moral choice we all face - to survive through moral, voluntary and gainful exchanges in The Market, or to live off plunder and theft.

Continuing on the same theme, my second anecdote is about India's "super-cop" KPS Gill. Around 1999 or thereabouts, Professor Madhu Kishwar raised a big stink about police predation on street-hawkers and vendors, particularly in Nude Elly itself. She even made an excellent - and blood-curling - documentary film on the subject, which I hope, if she is reading this, she will put on YouTube. 

As a columnist and editorial writer with ET, I supported Madhu to the hilt. Finally, she called me for a meeting at the India International Centre. And who should be there but KPS Gill. We briefly discussed the matter of police predation on the poor - and Gill thundered, "You cannot stop it." As if on cue, Renana Jhabwala of the Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA), whose members include women street vendors from all over India, retorted, "In my lifetime we will stop this." It was quite a sight seeing Renana, a tiny woman, say this to this huge, big super-cop. One can only wonder what "commands" such cops issue to their subordinates. There must be come "corruption of the mind" that makes them, in reality, not super-cops, but super-thieves.

My own horrible experience with the Karnataka cops is well known: arrested repeatedly, harassed, and even an assassination attempt. They serve their political masters. Just as KPS Gill killed thousands of "Sikh terrorists" without trial for Indira Gandhi and her CONgress. The Free Press hailed him as a "hero" then; in particular, Chandan Mitra of The Pioneer.

My concluding anecdote is not about cops, but it is extremely relevant nonetheless. While I was working with ET I had to give up writing in the "white papers" as I used to do while a freelancer. Thanks to Jug Suraiya I finally managed to edge myself onto the ToI edit page - and my monthly thunder began. One such monthly thunder was titled "Predatory State: The Black Hole of Social Science." The article has been preserved here. 

A few days later, I received a phone call from Professor ML Sondhi, a former Indian Foreign Service officer who became a JNU don and was then Chairman of the Indian Council for Social Science Research as a BJP appointee. Sondhi invited me for dinner - at the IIC, of course. I took Parth J Shah along as witness. During the course of the meal, Sondhi made me the following indecent proposal:

How can we co-opt you?

My stern reply: 

"I have studied too much Political Science to allow that to happen."

I am most certainly NOT getting aboard this Pirate Ship of State.

It is my firm belief that this Predatory State must be dismissed in toto, cops and all. And by all I include all their "co-opted" professors.

Let us live in the "natural order" of The Market. As a "Private Law Society." Let us also abolish the corrupt Reserve Bank of India, which funds all this corruption with its fraudulent paper notes. Inflationism must be ended permanently - especially so in a country where millions and millions are so desperately poor. I recommend my column on the Gold Standard, and another on Private Money.

Some people might want to be "conservative." To them I address the following question:

Which Department of our The State would you like to see conserved?

And as for the cops, they are nothing but what Bob Marley called "uniforms of brutality." Gandhi made a fatal error after Chauri Chaura. Let us be a wiser nation today. A wise nation that knows what Freedom really means. And where both order as well as morality come from: which is, The Free Market.

Shubh Laabh to all of you.

[PS: On the "natural order," I recommend my column defining "catallaxy." And on how the world can live happily without police forces tyrannising us, I earnestly recommend Professor Bruce L Benson's The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without The State, of which, I have just learnt, a new edition has appeared.]