By Soroor Ahmed, TwoCircles.net,
The recent controversy has exposed the shortcomings of both the Lokpal Bill of the government and the Jan Lokpal drafted by the so-called civil society groups. There is no dearth of people who find faults with both the versions––and in other versions, which have come up too.
The fact is that, unlike divine laws, the man-made ones do have scope for defects and none can rightly claim that theirs is the best version.
Laws are essential for running any country or society. One cannot imagine the concept of a lawless state.
Ever since its birth, humanity has been busy making laws. There is a strong belief among almost all the religions of the world that God used to send his Messengers to implement his law so that there could be peace and balance in the Universe. The Holy Books revealed on different Prophets––Moses, Jesus, Mohammad––all over the world are thus Law Books too as they guide the humanity how to lead life and how not to lead it. All human beings are equal in such a society.
There was another concept in practice in the West till a couple of centuries back. According to it, Kings of the respective empires used to be the representatives of God on earth. Their verbal orders were the laws of the land. No one can dare to disobey or challenge them. This view was in total contrast to what the Messengers of God taught to the humanity.
However, with the emergence of western democracy in the late 18th and early 19th centuries the concept of law started changing radically. With the enactment of secular codes in different countries the role of morality and the concept of Final Judgement after death started diminishing.
A set of laws were enacted in most countries of the world which said if you commit such crime you would be punished by the government. There was hardly any provision of reward for the law-abiding citizens. If you are law-abider it is just all right, you do not need to be rewarded.
However, the divine laws brought by the Messengers for humanity had the scope of reward and punishment both. According to this concept, God knows that a person can transgress and violate any law, howsoever, stringent it may be. He or she can secretly commit any crime and may never be known even by the best police and legal system of the world.
The divine law says that if you commit crime and remain unnoticed you would be caught and punished on the Day of Judgement, when all the human beings would be brought alive. This strong concept of the past kept people in general away from committing crime, when the police machinery was not so up to date. Not only that the Holy Books, for example, Quran, says that if you are law-abiding persons you would be rewarded Hereafter, that is on the Day of Judgement. This concept of reward and punishment played a key role in maintaining sanity and stability in many civilizations of the past, which are now often considered as uncivilized.
Ancient Prophets, sages and even in the present era persons of wisdom always gave more emphasis on changing the attitude and approach of human beings, rather than amending laws or enacting new ones at the drop of a hat.
There may be little or no scope for the divine law in the largely secular world now, yet there always exists a scope to reform human beings and make them more law-abiding citizens. Laws and legal institutions in several western countries may have a lot of lacunae yet they are implemented in a much better way than in many Third World countries.
Be it Anna Hazare or anyone else they have been making all out efforts to enact Jan Lokpal to weed out corruption not knowing that the new law will be useless if the men and women on whom it is going to be implemented are hell bent upon breaking it.
It needs to be recalled that the existing Indian Law was used to pass judgement against the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on June 12, 1975. Her election to Parliament was declared null and void. But she hit back with enormous ferocity and tamed the entire judicial system of the country––even the Supreme Court, the custodian of Indian Constitution. She threw all the norms to the wind and went on ruling like a dictator for next 21 months. So what can a Lokpal and Jan Lokpal do when hundreds of legal luminaries could do nothing in mid-1970s?
True men like Gandhiji launched several movements against the imperial British laws, which were unjust and unequal and allowed the rulers to exploit the ruled. Yet he never failed to reform the countrymen and women. He would undertake fast for self-purification and not just for enacting new law.
And after the independence of the country he went on to undertake a unique fast between January 13 and 18, 1948. True this fast provoked an RSS activist to assassinate him, yet he never changed his stand. He sat on fast to press the Jawaharlal Nehru government to pay Rs 55 crore which was due to Pakistana and thus abide by International Law. He took this step as the Indian government’s stand of not paying the amount, according to him, was morally wrong. He succeeded in changing his own government though for this he had to sacrifice his life.