What is the role of anger?
I don't want to go into wordplay, but the question of degree is the first qualifier. There's productive discontent, and then there's the sort of rage against the machine, which is apparently anarchic and actually cynical and self-reinforcing. The former may sound rather wishy-washy, but the latter quite peters out when faced with personal settings or socially awkward situations.
My preference is evident; the distinction between the two, not so much. Self-analysis can hardly be the standard. Hypocrisy must be one, so that you don't advocate through your methods what you're opposing in principle. Another perhaps moderation: rape may be as black-and-white as crimes get, but rapists are not necessarily round-the-clock, dyed-in-the-wool criminals.
At the same time, the degree of a crime is an obfuscating question. The rape of a three-year-old by her father is not less of a rape than that of a resisting woman by her otherwise-loving husband (assuming such things can happen) but they certainly merit different reactions from other people, including courts. Gang-rape might have a higher tendency towards violence and mutual reassurance or encouragement among the aggressors, but that very excessiveness results in both, as aforementioned, a more extreme reaction from others, but also a different internal reaction for each rapist. The actual difference may be a greater defiance in some cases, but in others like the 16 December 2012 gang-rape, to more horror and shame for each. With such a high rate of repeated offenses, however, remorse as a corrective is both essential and unlikely.
The degree of anger generated by a crime, the mundane or shocking circumstances of its perpetration, cannot in any case affect the process of justice delivery. Besides the insufficiently discriminating need of anger for a target, anger is not the preserve of those in the right. (a pun! and in retrospect, intended) Nor does a violation of rights, or a crime, necessarily leave its trail of anger. Justice, or rather the judiciary, is a process to which one has a right, and subsequent to its initiation, anger has no role. So online petitions and protests for capital punishment for all rapists are not just regressive and futile in terms of modern liberal paradigms, they are also against the logic of the state system all citizens endorse (or all the ones concerned here, in any case).
Anger provokes undeliberated opinionizing, as in the case of the columnist in today's ToI who suggests a judicial reform of no appeal in rape cases as one way in which the system not just can, but needs to tighten its belt. Or, of course, half the Indians on Facebook in the last five days. But this seems not to break through to the sort of police officer that the Tehelka expose (here) describes. Which is probably because these policemen know the most important weakness of anger and make their bread and butter off it- that all outrage has a deadline, and that it is too soon for 'justice' to ever be won before boredom strikes. But I don't want to be cynical. Public memory is no mystery, it is the responsibility of the media. Unfortunately, the current 'Breaking News' trend seems headed the other way, towards continuous forgetfulness. It is also the responsibility of the State machinery to provide both reasonable statutes and sensitive, efficient personnel. Both of these are definite bodies which can be held to account, at least in some measure.
But it is also the business of people to take care of themselves, to be sensitive to the contexts in which they live and work. To this extent, and this extent only, I take exception to the liberal campaigns that highlight women's rights to dress any which way and go anywhere and do anything—that as with other rights temporarily abrogated in the interest of safety, these rights should be self-limited, to prevent the occurrence. The attitude of objectification (even of one's self) is after all the primary wrong for which rapists, like other consumers of popular entertainment, are never punished, as opposed to the crime of violence for which they might be. I refuse, at this point, to join in the cynicism and proclaim that women are better off not living altogether, because all it does is discourage people. If we're going to make use of our anger, the least it needs to do is last out.
I don't want to go into wordplay, but the question of degree is the first qualifier. There's productive discontent, and then there's the sort of rage against the machine, which is apparently anarchic and actually cynical and self-reinforcing. The former may sound rather wishy-washy, but the latter quite peters out when faced with personal settings or socially awkward situations.
My preference is evident; the distinction between the two, not so much. Self-analysis can hardly be the standard. Hypocrisy must be one, so that you don't advocate through your methods what you're opposing in principle. Another perhaps moderation: rape may be as black-and-white as crimes get, but rapists are not necessarily round-the-clock, dyed-in-the-wool criminals.
At the same time, the degree of a crime is an obfuscating question. The rape of a three-year-old by her father is not less of a rape than that of a resisting woman by her otherwise-loving husband (assuming such things can happen) but they certainly merit different reactions from other people, including courts. Gang-rape might have a higher tendency towards violence and mutual reassurance or encouragement among the aggressors, but that very excessiveness results in both, as aforementioned, a more extreme reaction from others, but also a different internal reaction for each rapist. The actual difference may be a greater defiance in some cases, but in others like the 16 December 2012 gang-rape, to more horror and shame for each. With such a high rate of repeated offenses, however, remorse as a corrective is both essential and unlikely.
The degree of anger generated by a crime, the mundane or shocking circumstances of its perpetration, cannot in any case affect the process of justice delivery. Besides the insufficiently discriminating need of anger for a target, anger is not the preserve of those in the right. (a pun! and in retrospect, intended) Nor does a violation of rights, or a crime, necessarily leave its trail of anger. Justice, or rather the judiciary, is a process to which one has a right, and subsequent to its initiation, anger has no role. So online petitions and protests for capital punishment for all rapists are not just regressive and futile in terms of modern liberal paradigms, they are also against the logic of the state system all citizens endorse (or all the ones concerned here, in any case).
Anger provokes undeliberated opinionizing, as in the case of the columnist in today's ToI who suggests a judicial reform of no appeal in rape cases as one way in which the system not just can, but needs to tighten its belt. Or, of course, half the Indians on Facebook in the last five days. But this seems not to break through to the sort of police officer that the Tehelka expose (here) describes. Which is probably because these policemen know the most important weakness of anger and make their bread and butter off it- that all outrage has a deadline, and that it is too soon for 'justice' to ever be won before boredom strikes. But I don't want to be cynical. Public memory is no mystery, it is the responsibility of the media. Unfortunately, the current 'Breaking News' trend seems headed the other way, towards continuous forgetfulness. It is also the responsibility of the State machinery to provide both reasonable statutes and sensitive, efficient personnel. Both of these are definite bodies which can be held to account, at least in some measure.
But it is also the business of people to take care of themselves, to be sensitive to the contexts in which they live and work. To this extent, and this extent only, I take exception to the liberal campaigns that highlight women's rights to dress any which way and go anywhere and do anything—that as with other rights temporarily abrogated in the interest of safety, these rights should be self-limited, to prevent the occurrence. The attitude of objectification (even of one's self) is after all the primary wrong for which rapists, like other consumers of popular entertainment, are never punished, as opposed to the crime of violence for which they might be. I refuse, at this point, to join in the cynicism and proclaim that women are better off not living altogether, because all it does is discourage people. If we're going to make use of our anger, the least it needs to do is last out.
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