Bilkis Bano: Symbol of perseverance

Bilkis Bano is a household name across the nation and beyond. It has been so for the past over two decades – after the Gujarat riots of 2002. She represented womanhood’s struggle in its most pitiable form, punctuated, on the other side, by cruelty of the worst kind reinforced by the high-handedness of the law-enforcing mechanisms. The Supreme Court order this week cancelling the remission order of the Gujarat government has restored the 14-year life imprisonment for 11 men – a gang of communalists — who had raped her and killed seven of her family including her three-year-old daughter whose head was smashed on a stone in Gujarat’s Dahod district in 2002.
In a landmark judgement the apex court noted the notoriety behind the Gujarat government’s remission of the jail term. The BJP government did so by first obtaining a Supreme Court nod for remission of sentence of a convict on humanitarian grounds and used this as the base to arrange release of the other 10 convicts. In law, however, there’s no clause to punish wanton actions of a government. Overall, the present SC order is no more than a small relief to Bilkis Bano. It noted that the rape and murder case had been transferred out of Gujarat to Maharashtra and the conviction took place there. Hence, it said, Gujarat cannot grant the remission. It’s likely that the BJP-led Maharashtra government would now act the same way as the Gujarat dispensation did and these men could, at any time, be let free. Hence, too much optimism on the present SC order is unjustified other than that it took an independent line and didn’t allow itself to be influenced by the government.
What should be noted at this juncture is the viciousness that pervades public life in situations when religion and politics mix. It was poignantly evident in the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992, which resulted in riots and deaths of over 2000 people, followed by its after-effects like the Gujarat riots that killed an equal number in 2002. Had law been given a chance to settle the Babri dispute rather than an organised mob taking law into its hands, influenced as they were by a mix of religion and politics in 1992, the deep social divide that marks public life here today on communal lines could have been averted. Those who gained from all these were the politicians, who won power and a chance to lord over the nation. Without influences from the past, there is neither a present nor a future. It will take generations of tireless efforts to heal the wounds inflicted on the nation’s body politic by wanton actions of such maniacs.