The Legal Battle for Icecream

It's been a long time, right? Well I needed some serious issue to get me back here, away from my exams and  internship and more importantly, out of my warm blanket.

The other day, I attended an International Conference. It was in an amazing huge hall, great place. I was VERY impressed. 

And then, the Programme started. The Inauguration session went on forever, spilling into the time slot set for the Sessions. The Garland-putting, Hand-shaking, Speech-giving and felicitating seemed to go on and on and on. 

More confusion was created when, finally done with the inauguration, we were told to proceed for lunch, which wasn't the plan. I went to the lunch area and saw everyone getting ready to pounce on the food, only to be disappointed by one of the organizers telling them that the announcement was wrong.

Finally, the Working Sessions started.

The first one was related to Human Rights and Terrorism. Sure, great topic. I eagerly waited for the promised Foreign Delegates to speak and present their point of view. Three hours of obvious-fact-stating ("we must combat the evil of terrorism", "Rights of people are being affected", "This is a great conference and I am very grateful to be here" "blah blah blah"), I gave up hope. There was NOTHING substantial in ANY of the speeches. The lowest point of the session was when a Senior Advocate of the Supreme Court, snoring loudly beside me, woke up in the middle of the speech of one of the speakers, and said, "What is wrong with you people? Its 2.30! We want to have lunch man!" That did it for me. I walked out.

(The next session, was thankfully, a much productive one, on Intellectual Property Rights. It even got me thinking about taking up IPR as my Honors course.)

The next day, I was to present my own paper. When I reached the venue, the session was on. The topic was "Freedom of Press". I sat down, skeptical about the quality of the session. The Majority of the session was dominated by one advocate, who clearly loved his own voice. I wouldn't have minded, had he spoken ANYTHING connected to the issue at hand. My blood was boiling. I almost threw a shoe at him when, making a foreign delegate wait for 10 minutes, he introduced some random guy, and proceeded to congratulate him for some post he got. He did not stop at that. He proceeded to have a discussion on some caste getting into power, for the next 15 minutes. The foreign delegate, poor chap, was politely nodding his head and smiling, assuming they are talking about Freedom of Press.

The Lowest Point of the whole conference was the Lunch. While students stood politely in line, awaiting their turn, Senior Advocates and Judges and other "dignitaries" literally elbowed their way to the ice-cream station. One could mistake the table where ice cream was being served, as a place where maybe free gold was being distributed. And when the plates got over, the indignant looks on their faces brought my blood to boil.

I threw my spoon back on the table and walked away.

Talking like a layman in a conference meant for in-depth discussion of a serious legal matter, Fighting for Mango Ice-cream, Talking about Caste Politics (not the ill effects of it, but in fact PROMOTING and ENCOURAGING it), Careless accusations and calling a certain country a "terrorist country"... If THIS is the quality of our Senior Advocates and Judges, it does not surprise me one bit that our courts and our cases are in such a pathetic state.

My post is not meant to degrade the said conference, or to, in any way, degrade our justice system. I am merely stating facts. In fact, my post is one of the many trying to get people to realize that we need to uphold the dignity and sanctity of the courts and of the profession as a whole. My post is to show MY realization and observations regarding the low intellect regarding real legal issues, in our legal fraternity, and the dire need for a sense of dignity and sophistication that our Lawyers, Judges, Law Experts and others in this field, need, for the sake of the judiciary and the respect it deserves. 

DemoCRAZY?

Yet another defamatory cartoon. Yet another arrest.

It hasn’t been even 24 hours since my last post and I get yet another instance of another kind of vicious cycle.

Corruption has been our problem since a long, long time. It is neither an old concept nor one that is specific to India. It has been, and is, there in every country. From time immemorial.

What has changed is the awareness of the people. People were earlier carefree. “It is none of my concern. As long as nothing happens to ME and MY property, why should I care?” This attitude has let the situation grow from bad to worse. And now, my generation and my future generations are in a situation of uncertainty, deceit, and anger pouring from all sides and corruption right from the hunt for a class monitor to the seat of the President.

Cartoonist Aseem Trivedi was arrested for making a ‘seditious’ cartoon, depicting the national emblem as three wolves, and the words “Bhrashtameva Jayate” (Corruption alone triumphs) inscribed below.

Is that too extreme, you think? Or is his arrest too extreme?

Let me state my views.

The government thinks it can get away with hard earned taxpayers money washed away by the dirty, grimy waters of corruption, while we stand and watch silently, letting them take it all away? How long did the politicians expect to get away with it? Certainly they did not believe that it was going to last forever? That is over confidence, and under estimation of the power of the voice of your people, isn’t it now?

You expect people to stand up and salute to a parliament which is filled with crooks and criminals, when we know that we sweat and bled to earn the very money that is spent in the maintenance of these politicians and the plethora of scams? It doesn’t help that the people at the most important posts are silently watching the tamasha and doing nothing, not even trying to convince us properly with a justification.

So the people revolt. But there is a method even in madness. There is a way in which you emphasise your views.

Firstly, one mustn’t push it.

Let me give you a simple illustration of ‘pushing it’:

We have 6 classes of 50 minutes each. By the end of the day, all of us are tired, and in no mood for any more lectures. As soon as the lecturer of the last class enters the class, certain students, maybe in the ridiculous belief that it is good for the class, start immediately demanding for a free class. On some days when we actually needed a free class, it was justified. Then it went out of hand. Now, regardless of whether we need a free class or not, these students invariably yell and demand one.

When you harp the same old tune, however melodious it is, after some point of time, it gets annoying, irritating and downright infuriating. When you use the same technique over and over again, its value decreases.

This has what has happened with our ‘movement against corruption’.

Secondly, do not take advantage of the leniency of the other side. Going back to my ‘free-class’ example, the said teacher granted a couple of free classes owing to an exam, and a project submission due on that date. She was considerate. Just because she did that, does not give you the right to demand for a free class every single day.

Similarly, the government has given you freedom of speech and expression. Do you really want to misuse it so much and force them to take that away from you? It goes back to my previous post about self fulfilling prophecies (http://ashrisingphoenix.blogspot.in/2012/09/we-are-problem.html). Media is not helping either. Harsh words and atrociously defamatory and inciting headlines splash across the pages and flash across the TV screens all over the country. Again, I pray, let’s not push it, forcing the government to take steps that essentially take away our freedom to revolt, freedom that let us voice our opinions in the first place.

Thirdly, aren’t they the ones WE voted for? If you have to audacity to make a satirical cartoon of our National Emblem, then you could use that courage and guts to enter into the ‘rat race’ and replace those politicians. But let’s face it, that is not entirely practical. That is another murky field which we need an alternative method to clean up. Like making people aware of their voting rights. No, I do not mean go and tell them “X is a crook, do not vote for him.” That is for the voter to decide, not you. Your job, concerned citizen, is to make the voter aware of the consequences of his voting. Show him, at a personal level, how the system actually works. Let him know how, if he votes for the bad guys, it’s his own grave he is digging. Help him make an informed decision, do not put words into his mouth.

It is again, a vicious cycle. The government is giving us more and more reasons to get infuriated and act in a way democratic people aren’t expected to. And we, the citizens who are voicing are opinions, are stepping out of line.

So the solution to this problem has to come from both sides. The age old solution of stopping corrupt practices, as always, still stands. But along with that, we need to find mild ways to get the message across. Lets not get carried away by the power in our hands, the power to uproot the government. Remember, the phrase “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” applies to both sides.

WE are the problem

The people around me astound me many a times. Why do we behave like a bunch of idiots? Why do we attack others? Why do we want land, gold, money, food, water..., so much that we are ready to kill for all of it?

Over the past few days I watched a few documentaries regarding battles. The one issue that caught my attention was the Palestinian issue. No, I am not going to speak on that topic, It has been already spoken about enough. I want to find out the reason behind such occurrences.

The Arab-Israel fight over Palestine, the India-Pakistan fight over Kashmir, the Srilankan LTTE issue... the list is endless. And it exists from time immemorial. Even epics go on the same lines. Ramayana was the fight for a woman, which started with the greed over the throne. Mahabharata happened because of the ego of one man, who wanted everything to himself.

Everything points to one reason, in my eyes- self fulfilling prophesies.

Let’s take a look at the Arab-Israel issue, as that is fresh in my brain. Originally, the Jews lived on that land. Judea, home of the Jews in ancient times, was conquered by the Romans and renamed Palestine. Palestine was later conquered and inhabited by Arabs for over a thousand years. The Zionist movement arose to restore the Jews to Israel, largely ignoring the existing Arab population. Then World War I happened. Following the Balfour Declaration in 1917, Palestine was granted to Britain as a League of Nations mandate to build a national home for the Jewish people. The Arabs resented the Jews coming in to take their land. Led by Grand Mufti Hajj Amin El Husseini, they rioted repeatedly and later revolted, creating a history of enmity between Jews and Arabs in Palestine. Britain stopped Jewish immigration to Palestine. Following the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis, pressure on Britain increased to allow Jewish immigration to Palestine.   In 1947, the UN partitioned the land into Arab and Jewish states. The Arabs did not accept the partition and war broke out. The Jews won a decisive victory, expanded their state and created several hundred thousand Palestinian refugees. The Arab states refused to recognize Israel or make peace with it. Wars broke out in 1956, 1967, 1973 and 1982, and there were many terror raids and Israeli reprisals. Each side believes different versions of the same history. Each side views the conflict as wholly the fault of the other and expects an apology.

In one of the documentaries I saw, the narrator showed how much the Israelis have terrorized the Palestinians in their own homeland. When the guy questioned one Israeli official about what justification they had for it, he started the same old monologue about terrorism. Without actually saying it, he implied that those Arabs are terrorists. "And after 9/11, the world should be ready for a new kind of terrorism", he said, “Nuclear terrorism”.

The documentary showed how the Israelis are treating the Palestinians as if they were animals: stray animals that have stranded into your private land, and you’re forced to keep them there. Horrifying stories about pregnant women not being allowed to get to the hospital to deliver the baby, forcing them to do so in the vehicle they arrive in, forcing them to watch their babies die, were narrated in the documentary.

You do all this, and expect them to keep mum? Would YOU do the same in this situation? 

You speak of protecting yourself from the terrorism, and thus justify your acts of oppression. Aren’t you driving them into doing the same?

In psychology, there is a concept of ‘self fulfilling prophecies’. To understand this concept, we should know something called “schemas”. Everyone has certain theories, pre-conceived notions about everything, in their head: these notions are called schemas. One of the flaws of these schemas, is that they tend to be self fulfilling. 

Suppose I perceive a certain person to be aggressive, in reality he is not. Due to the schema I have, regarding his aggressive tendency, I act in a certain way towards him. I talk to him as if he is a lowly creature, because I don’t like his ‘aggression’. I try putting him behind bars, to prevent any harm to myself. Such acts will simply push him into doing the exact thing that I was worried about in the first place! And at the opportune moment, he might take revenge for all the trouble I put him through just on a mere notion that something existed, when in reality, it did not.

This is exactly what is happening, not only in Israel, but throughout the world. We think we know everything. We create our schemas and act in a certain way. Country Y positive, without an inkling of doubt, that X country is a threat to them. So they arm ourselves in anticipation of an attack. Looking at them, the poor country X feels threatened and arms itself too. And Y then carries a smug smile, saying “I told you so!”

No. You did not. You created the god-damn monster! Your acts, your words, your propaganda, your torture, your oppression, your stupidity, YOU.

The cycle is a viscious one. It HAS to stop. There HAS to be a break in chain. The link must be broken at SOME point. What the human race needs today is that point in time when we break the circle, break the link. Let us not kid ourselves with the illusion that we know the solution to everything. By our actions, we may in fact be creating that very problem which are 'solving'.

I-M-Patience.

It has been a very long time since I last wrote. I was caught up in work. I still am neck-deep in work, but I really need something to take my mind off of things. This semester is my fifth, out of ten long semesters. And it has been quite a challenge so far. Emotionally. No, none of the boohoo crap. It’s my tolerance. It has diminished to an extent that makes me doubts its existence. I shall talk about that in another post, maybe. Point is, I needed to blog again or else my head would just explode. And so, I shall talk about, ironically, PATIENCE.

This is quite a challenging topic for me, considering I have a very low patience level of my own. But sometimes, even I feel like some people really need to have patience, in certain relationships. Especially the romantic kind.

Why are we in such a hurry to get things done? Maybe in an era of fast food, fast communication and fast forwarded lives in general, we expect our problems and their solutions to fast forward too. I have news my friend. Not gonna happen.

In a very short span of time, several friends of mine had a glitch in their relationships. And they just gave up. Too soon, I felt. It got me wondering. One cannot just enter into a relationship and assume it to work on its own. You need to work it out. And the solving will take time too. You can’t just snap your fingers and expect everything to get back to normal.

True, some of the fights are small. You can sleep it over and it gets solved the next day. But not all spats are of the same magnitude. Some need sorting out. Voluntary sorting out. Laying down bare facts on the table. A voluntary dispute resolution, if I may say so. Coming to an agreement. Setting a limit, extending others.

Patience is the key. And there are no duplicates. And you can’t pick this lock. So no instant solutions either.

Another feature I saw common in these occurrences, for want of a better term, is best described by a concept in law called “volenti non fit injuria”. In colloquial words, it is best explained as, “you had it coming”. If this element is proved by the party you are suing, you can kiss your case goodbye.

So is the case with relationships. You break a person’s trust, you can’t expect them to forgive you with open arms. If they do, congratulations, you’ve found yourself a keeper. If not, congratulations, you are dating a normal human being. No one is Mother Teresa. If you have ego, it is reasonable that the other person will have it too. Someone HAS to let go of their ego. Why not be the one? Do you not cherish your relationship? What is more important here?

However, one very important warning I HAVE to give is, do not take it too far. Yes, let go of your ego. But not so much that the other side starts taking you for granted. Let them know they cannot walk all over you, and expect you to stay still. DO NOT stay still. Don't become a doormat.

And with this, let me get back to raising my blood pressure over all the irritating people around me.