Posted:
Correction: when I said Mullah Omar, I actually meant to write Maulana Masood Azhar...but got the incorrect name in as the former was in the news last week.😳No, I have not heard Golda Meir...but I will surely check it out soon.I understand what you are trying to say when you speak of rehabilitation of those arrested. But I am not sure there is any possibility of any reverse brain-washing happening which could make them realize the senselessness or the repurcussions of their actions. A lot of these young men (and women) take up arms due to the repeated propaganda/lies/truth/partial truth they have been fed for years...even though they are quite young (and I am only talking about the terrorists like the one caught yesterday in J&K...not the hardened criminals heading the terror organizations)...how do you go about changing their mindset...specially in an establishment like ours where the overwhelming majority is baying for their blood when a stray terrorist is caught and any voice opposing the death penalty is seen as anti-national? 🤔@bold: right, we could have expected the nationalists to do so only if they were true nationalists. For now, we have to make do with the pseudo-nationalists bellowing away. 😊
When Kasab was hanged, I had a German boyfriend. He was a politician (at the state level, not quite the candidate for the Chancellor's seat, lest you think so) from The Greens (Party), and was very vehemently opposed to the death penalty, which is largely consistent with my own views...
In the matter of Kasab though, I could never really figure out what other alternative there was... Keeping him alive in a high security prison was expensive for the state treasury (that money could be used for uplifting and empowering the poor, or on protection of the environment even); setting him free was certainly not an option - so in my view, whether or not he should be executed was an ideological dilemma. My ex-, though insisted that the fundamental arguments against death penalty cannot be rendered void by invoking economic arguments in favour of it, or even for the lack of alternatives.
That argument meandered on and on for a while, until I asked him what he believes the correct punishment for Hitler would be - had he been responsible for genocide in the current age, and were he to be caught alive... "Hitler could be punished with death", I was told... and then we argued some more...
I don't quite remember how that argument ended, but I was reminded of it again yesterday after reading this editorial on the TOI:
As it is, death is final. It snuffs away all chances for reform and rehabilitation.
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