Don’t create a martyr out of Mohd Afzal

NEW DELHI: Should Mohammed Afzal, convicted for his role in the terrorist attack on Parliament, be executed or should his death sentence be commuted to life imprisonment? It is futile to debate the question in juridical, moral or ethical terms detached from politics.

The relevant question is: which would advance the fight against terror, Afzal’s execution or a decision by the President to change the punishment to life imprisonment?

It is quite evident from the agitation on the subject in Kashmir that the sponsors of terror would be delighted if Afzal were to be hanged and they handed over a martyr with a gift-wrapped halo. Left in jail, he would simply be a surviving symbol of terrorist failure and inviolability of the Indian state. The choice is clear.

But would not a decision to commute the death sentence be an invitation for future Kandahars? Would India not be tempting terrorists to take hostages to trade their freedom for the release of prisoners like Afzal? The answer depends on the nature of the state.

Those who assume that the state is perpetually weak and amenable to pressure would argue for a policy of ‘take no prisoners’. It would indeed take a hard state to face down terrorists holding a clutch of innocent lives at the end of an AK-47. And the Indian state has indeed acted soft, including when led by the BJP, whose leaders handed over imprisoned terrorists to the Taliban, presumably chanting POTA all the while.

But being ‘soft’ in this fashion is not a viable option for the Indian state any longer. It would be wrong to assume that the Indian political system is institutionally incapable of learning this lesson. The state has to inure itself to blackmail, if it is to prevail over terror. Given this reality, the ‘inviting Kandahars’ argument does not hold.
Of course, immediate political imperatives are not the only relevant or valid considerations in this context. Nor can morality/ethics and politics be separated into water-tight compartments.

Every sort of politics defines its own framework of ethics. And to prevail over terror, and not just over some individual terrorists, we need politics that can de-legitimise terror, particularly in the eyes of those in whose name terror is perpetrated. This calls for neither Gandhigiri nor Christ’s willingness to turn the other cheek.

Rather, it calls for political ethics in which the state tolerates a wide range of dissent and pursues modulation of dissent to achieve consent and order, not revenge. This entails sustained toughness, not occasional spikes of courage. A smooth wall doesn’t have spikes like a fence of barbed wire; but neither does it have the gaps. What about justice for the victims of terror strikes?

Giving a boost to the political base of terror by providing them with martyrs does poor justice to those who gave up their lives fighting terrorists. The point is to ensure that their blood was not shed in vain, by vanquishing terror, eliminating its political base.