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Changing Ideas of Justice

VANDANA DHOOP

Vol. 54, Issue No. 18, 04 May, 2019

Vandana Dhoop (vandana.dhoop@gmail.com) is an independent consultant working on

forest rights in India.

Is it time to introduce restorative justice to the Indian judicial system?

Irecently read an interesting article about “restorative justice,” which was practised in
South Africa to ensure justice for victims of apartheid. The article highlighted how
instrumental restorative justice was in healing and giving peace to a largely racially
segregated and thereby aggrieved population. This piece brought back memories of my
classmate Rachel (name changed).

Rachel was the first person I was introduced to on the first day of my Spanish class. A high
school student, she was born and brought up in Minnesota in the United States (US). She
was spending a year in India with her maternal grandparents and wanted to continue her
Spanish lessons while in India. She was very friendly and would greet everybody with a
warm “hallo,” but her eyes were always sombre. Unable to guess the reasons for her
yearning, I came to believe that maybe she longed to return to her life in the US.

I enjoyed the Spanish classes a lot, especially the last session of every class when we
discussed topics of relevance in turn showcasing our newly acquired Spanish skills. We had
a sizeable proportion of lawyers in our class and the topic for discussion that day was “la
justicia” or “justice.” The session demanded that everyone prepare at least a paragraph in
Spanish on the set topic and read it out in class. Although it has been three months, I can
still recall Rachel’s presentation.

Where everyone displayed strong skills in both Spanish and their understanding of justice,
Rachel had taken a very different route. She had chosen to narrate her own story, using it to
uncover a rather astonishing revelation about the criminal justice system. She asked us to
imagine a situation wherein a murderer was enabled to face the family of the person he had
murdered. Could this be possible? How would both parties behave? Rachel was a toddler
when her father left her and her mother. This incident forged a strong bond between Rachel
and her mother. However, a few months after Rachel turned 10, her mother was brutally
raped and murdered by two teenagers while she was returning home from work. They were
caught by the police and were in jail serving rigorous imprisonment. After her mother’s
death, Rachel’s custody was given to her grandparents who shifted from India to be with
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her.

Practitioners of restorative justice or mediators tried to get in touch with her grandparents
in order to help initiate a dialogue with the teenage killers; however, they refused any such
attempts.

Mediation in the process of restorative justice means bringing the victim and the offender
on the same page, and preparing them for an interaction with each other. This interaction
helps the victim face her fears and decide the punishment she wants for the offender.
Rachel had waited to turn 18 before she could initiate mediation with her mother’s killers.
Last year she initiated the mediation process when she turned 18. She believed the process
would help her achieve closure, which would further aid her in making peace with her
mother’s death. It was taboo at home, she said, to talk about what had happened to her
mother. Her grandparents never addressed it and hence were far from accepting it. She had
come all the way to India to involve her grandparents in the mediation so that they could
heal and come to terms with the past.

I could see how anxious she was to meet with her mother’s killers. I couldn’t help but ask
why it was so important for her to meet with them when she knew their actions were
barbaric. They were not worthy of this gesture. Their wrongdoing had robbed them of being
called “human.” I am sure everybody in class shared similar thoughts. Rachel answered my
question with a single word: healing. She said she knew the offenders were punished
following due process of law, and “justice” had prevailed. However, all of this ran contrary
to how she felt as a daughter. She felt alienated by the justice carried out. Her experience
told her that instead of giving her strength, the court verdict gave her years in therapy and
a difficult childhood.

Through mediation she aimed to bring her life back on track. I still remember what she said
next. It was incredulous: “This past year I’ve been in touch with the killers, through letters
... You know, Mich has a beautiful cursive handwriting. In the letters I can sense repentance
for what they had done and gratitude for my efforts to connect with them. Who knows the
humanity my mother always taught me might translate into forgiveness for them?” As
Indians we are conditioned to believe in the despondency attached with the idea of being a
criminal. Once a criminal always a criminal is largely a popular principle. But, have
we attempted to understand the dehumanisation a criminal undergoes in prison (that was
actually meant to be reformatory)? In the same way, the justice system in India alienates
and dehumanises the victim too. The victim never occupies the same space in society she
did before. This is where restorative justice helps. It believes in the inherent goodness of all
humanity and hence offers a scope for restoration of both the victim and the offender into
society. The community, including the victim, as a whole engages in a dialogue to decide the
punishment for the offender, thereby recognising a possibility of reform.

In India, where capital punishment is a popular mandate, can this be a viable option? Can an
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introduction to principles of restorative justice help us rethink our ideas of justice,

humanity, and non-violence? Is our society ready to accept victims and offenders as one of
our own? India has taught the world non-violence. It’s possibly time for our country to
introspect and adhere to its own teachings.