Sometimes people on X, which I still call Twitter, post the strangest things. Amid all the angst and outrage that has dominated my timeline over the past few days, one post stood out: we need Batman here, it said.
Yes, I know it sounds silly because the post did not refer to a new Batman movie (there won’t be one for many months) or a comic book. It referred to Batman himself.
The fictional Batman is an avenger who takes the law into his own hands and goes to places where the justice system does not reach. He knows that the law-and-order machinery is largely corrupt, compromised, incompetent, and ineffectual. So he doles out his own kind of justice, dispensing with the need for due process. At a desperate time, when nothing else works, he is the answer to the prayers of a frustrated citizenry.
Have we reached that stage in India?
Judging by the people I speak to and those whose social media posts reach me: yes, we have. Things are worse here than they are in Batman’s Gotham City.
Faith in the police is at an all-time low. People believe that involving the cops in any matter may be a mistake because they will just make money from every side and go with what the highest bidder wants. Sadly, this cynicism has now extended to include the judiciary, once regarded as the last hope for justice. Even on routine matters like bail, there is so much cynicism among the public that many judicial decisions nowadays are treated with scepticism.
Indian public is losing trust
The discontent and frustration have been building up for years, but the current wave of anger and disgust is due to several recent incidents.
One is the Gurugram hit-and-run case. As can be seen in the now-viral video, a gang of over-muscled rowdy youth in a speeding car deliberately attempts to run over (or, at the very least, hurt and harm) a young woman on a bike. What the video captured is indisputable, but the woman, identified as Shivani Chauhan aka Sia, says she had been subjected to heckling and intimidation by the men in the car even before they banged into her bike. What is also indisputable is that, after hitting her bike, the men sped off.
A public uproar forced the police to take action, but they arrested the driver only after the alcohol (the woman says the men were drunk) had left his bloodstream. Since then, the driver’s lawyer has criticised the woman, and a campaign of vilification aimed at impugning her character has been launched.
All this is bad enough, but what is more disheartening is the consensus among citizens that nothing will come of the case. Once the headlines have faded, some deal will be struck and the youths will be let off, free to run over other women.
There is a recent precedent. A Hindutva ‘activist’ (a word that TV anchors seem to prefer to ‘goonda’) bragged on a podcast about the assault he had committed at the Jantar Mantar protests. He said he could admit it because he was so politically well-connected that nobody could touch him.
The uproar forced the Delhi Police to arrest him. But the ‘activist’ may not have been entirely wrong. Within days, a court granted him bail.
The judge rejected the plea that letting free a man who brags about committing violence could lead to witness intimidation. “In today’s era, intimidation of a victim no longer requires physical proximity,” the judge said. This may or may not be true, but it does make you wonder about the number of people who have been denied bail on the grounds that they could intimidate witnesses. Clearly, the judicial view on the granting of bail varies dramatically from court to court.
Unfortunately for Umar Khalid, who has been denied bail for six years without a trial even beginning, he did not get an enlightened judge like the one this politically well-connected ‘activist’ did.
Also read: BJP’s good times are perhaps ending. But Modi is no Indira Gandhi
The longing for Batman
The cynicism about the system mounts each day as more and more revelations emerge. For instance, a pharmacy owner in Bengaluru has been arrested for supplying fake or expired cancer drugs to over 90 pharmacies. The racket has been going on for years, so it is unlikely that a single pharmacy owner was the mastermind. It could not have happened without the connivance of hospital staff and regulators.
When a system allows crooks to profit from cancer patients in a manner that can lead to deaths, it tells you how deep the rot runs.
Is it any wonder that people long for vigilantes like Batman? Nobody has any faith in most politicians. They distrust the police. They are disappointed by the judiciary. And they live in a society where even the drugs given by hospitals to critically ill patients are fake.
What is worse is that we are convinced that justice will never be done. People who are arrested, often only after public outrage and uproar, can buy their way out of criminal charges. Within weeks or a few months, they are back to doing whatever it was that got them arrested.
All talk of justice is momentary and transient. Arrests are no more than photo opportunities. As long as the cops are in the politicians’ good books, their jobs are safe. And their fortunes keep growing.
Would Batman make a difference?
Frankly, I doubt that even if he existed, he could change everything that’s wrong in India. More likely, he would just hang up his cape and cowl and weep silently in the Bat Cave.
Vir Sanghvi is a print and television journalist, and talk show host. He tweets @virsanghvi. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant Dixit)