By Prashant Panday
CEO, Radio Mirchi
Watching NDTV late one night, I thought it was a comedy show until I got a big shock. It was actually a serious debate conducted by Vikram Chandra on The Big Fight – ‘Should castration be a penalty for rape convicts?’!
I watched the show again online next morning. Thankfully, Vikram clarified that this discussion was triggered by Justice Kamini Lau’s suggestion that castration should be discussed in public. A few minutes into the show, it also became clear that we were talking of ‘chemical castration’, not physical castration. Chemical castration is the administration of antiandrogen drugs by injection every three months to a convicted rapist. These drugs reduce libido and keep the rapist away from sexual attacks. But the show soon meandered to physical castration. It’s not important which form of castration we consider - the fact that as a society, we can even consider such extreme forms of punishment is scary. It’s the same as Baba Ramdev suggesting death as the penalty for corruption. If we extend this logic, we should be doling out death by the hundreds, just as it happens in China or Saudi Arabia.
Our courts take years to deliver justice. Therefore, people are angry. The judge should have sought a debate on how the judiciary should speed up its working. Not on whether castration should be considered.
In one way, NDTV did the right thing by triggering off the debate. But it should not have packed the panel with so many women (and one man) who had the same view. Only Ranjana Kumari was arguing for sanity and as expected, she was being out-shouted. In a serious debate like this, what’s the need to have an audience which is expected to applaud every extreme suggestion made by the panelists? After all, not applauding, or taking a contrary view, could be seen by many to be supporting weak rape laws.
The real truth is that as a society, we are immature and emotional. We love extremes. And we like to wear our honour, dignity, patriotism, religiousness and everything else on our sleeves. Just look at our Hindi channels. Every soap has a very easy-to-identify vamp and an equally easy-to-identify ‘honourable’ heroine. Our society demands that our characters be identified clearly as being in one camp or the other. We don’t like the in-between. It’s the same with law-making. Our emotions often dictate what laws we have. If we went by the passion on the show, we should immediately allow castration. But if this happens, very soon, we will have a second ‘brain drain’ movement, with tolerant, liberal people leaving India and going to more tolerant countries.
Feedback: prashant.panday@timesgroup.com
