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Capital Punishment: A Relic of the Dark Ages
By : M.R.Sethi
MAN has come a long
way from the primitive stage which he spent in jungles and caves.
Gone are the days when men fought in the streets to settle their
disputes. The blood-curdling witch-craft practices and macabre human
sacrificing rituals are also things of the past.
But the existence of the death penalty still reminds man of the dark
ages. That this barbaric custom is still prevalent in the world
shows that somewhere in the human heart lurks the beast which
believes in "the primitive concept of "an eye for an eye."
Some people favor death sentence on the ground that it is more
humane, for it kills the criminal instantly whereas life
imprisonment means slow, lingering death. Winston Chur¬chill was
also of the opinion that a death sentence is far more merciful than
a life imprisonment. No argument can be more absurd. How can any
execution be humane or merciful?
It is ridiculous to assume that a culprit will prefer death to life
imprisonment. Dostoevsky once said that if, at the last moment
before being executed, a man were given the alternative of spending
the rest of his life on the top of a bare rock, with just enough
space to sit on, he would choose it with relief.
Another argument given in favor of retaining the death penalty is
that if the capital punishment were abolished, the incidence of
murder would sharply increase. But this argu¬ment does not hold
water. Today as many as 70 countries including England, Switzerland,
Norway, Israel, Germany and Portugal have abolished the death
sentence. France, too, which has the notorious distinc¬tion of
executing criminals by putting them to guillotine has decided
against the retention of death penalty. On June 14, 1981, a French
Parliamentary panel voted over¬whelmingly to abolish death sentence.
In a number of coun¬tries, though the penalty exists as a law, it is
very rarely awarded in practice. In Switzer¬land only one murder is
commit¬ted per million of population per year, while in India there
are about 10,000 (more than 29 per million) reported murders every
year. Another estimate puts the number at 15000 per year or a murder
every forty minutes.
Hanging or executing a man for a crime is only a stupid and horrible
relic of primitive society. Believing that hanging would prevent
murders is believing, like ancient Persians, that whipping the sea
would calm the storm.
More than a hundred persons are hanged every year in India. The
existence of death penalty in India, which has produced sages like
the Buddha and Mahavira who have taught universal compassion and
Mahatma Gandhi was the greatest apostle of non-violence, is a matter
of shame
Crime cannot be tackled with crime. People cannot be reformed by
hanging them. Take the example of the bloody thirsty dacoits of
Chambal. Nothing --not the bloody encounters with the police, nor
hanging, nor life imprisonment — could charge them. Yet the
Sarvodaya leader, Jayaprakash Narayan, won them over with love,
affection and understanding.
Moreover, the notion that death penalty acts as a deterrent to the
potential killers is also absurd. Gregory Ruff, police lieutenant in
Kansas, says, "I have never heard a murderer say they thought about
the death penalty as consequence of their actions prior to
committing their crimes." Even those countries where death penalty
exists, the crime is galloping day by day.
Mahatma Gandhi said that crime must be treated like a disease. The
disease cannot be cured by killing the patient. In the same way the
treatment of the disease of crime is the gallows but the
reforma¬tion of the culprits. He once wrote in the Harijan: "Destruc¬tion
of individuals can never be a virtuous act. The evil doers should
not be done to death."
According to Stephen Bright, human rights attorney, "It can be
argued that rapists deserve to be raped, that mutilators deserve to
be mutilated. Most societies, however, refrain from responding in
this way because the punishment is not only degrading to those on
whom it is imposed, but it is also degrading to the society that
engages in the same behavior as the criminals."
French Philosopher Albert Camus also said, "Capital punishment is
the most premeditated of murders."
To conclude, I quote Gandhi again: "God alone can take life, because
He alone gives it”
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