Independence Day: The Shackles of Freedom and the Long Shadows of Justice

 **August 2006**

There is one earth-shattering historical fact which, leaping over all the voluminous past and present load of August, defines the month, at least for the Indian citizen—the title page of this month.

What is it?

Well, it is August 15, our Independence Day.

What cause have I got to celebrate?

The institutions of the country are meant to help a common citizen of India like me in the better realisation of the self, through aiding and helping our cause mentally, physically, spiritually—at all levels.

But what cause are you left to celebrate when the very liberating tools are used to put shackles, leg irons and chains on your body by the persons who are in their seats to help your cause, but decide to—take a deep, deep breath of power—torture you?

There can be no greater crime against you.

But all this goes unnoticed because the persons doing it wear the clean, polished shirts of constitutionality, legality and the rule of law.

It is a terrible whitewashing of misdeeds.

You stand alone as a bespattered, tortured, wrongdoing individual.

The same has been my fate.

The last refuge, the Supreme Court, shining in its unstinted, unstigmatised and hallowed glory, is lugubriously basking in the sheen of its judicial glory.

The mighty banyan, with its sturdy canopy and long-hanging roots, oblivious to the weeds sprouting under the sphere of its shelter.

For the fifth time during the last three or four months, our court case date has been deleted from the order of proceedings.

Every whim and fancy of the larger parties and individuals with mightier interests is getting undue priority, while our case is being pushed—somehow, and without a word—into the background.

I not only smell something rotten here; rather, I would say frankly that it is no mere coincidence born of the large number of cases pending in the court.

Our case is being bedraggled into the dusty back corridors.

If those who say that justice delayed is justice denied are right, then we have been denied justice a long time ago, because nothing practically has been done so far.

It is not a tedious case involving cumbersome elements requiring a long and winding process to resolve the issue.

It is a simple case.

An obvious yes or no.

So even if we hear *yes*—and that seems improbable—then, unfortunately, it will be too late for me to celebrate the victory of the rule of law.

For the path thus far has been an interminable ordeal, smelling of all the wrong facets of the misuse of power by those who are supposed to protect you as their subjects.