Bharara describes this book as a treatise on “the rule of law, and faith in the rule of law”. Such a treatise is desperately needed in India today. Why? Because, as is the case with most non-Reformation cultures, our culture is inherently against the spirit of the Rule of Law.
Most Indians understand neither the anti-Law nature of our culture, nor the benefits of the Rule of Law. The principal benefit to citizens is that the Rule of Law holds the powerful to account. Because of that, the powerful, who do not like the constraints of the Law, always try to avoid being held to account by weakening and/ or distorting the Rule of Law.
In fact, in our culture, even the powerless try to pretend to power (“Do you know who I am?!”) either to escape being held to account themselves or, contrariwise, to try to hold others to account – as if holding people to account might be a matter of personal power rather than of the Law. After all, in the eyes of the law, it doesn’t matter who you are, what matters is whether you are in the right or in the wrong.
That is why both the Rule of Law, and faith in it, require careful and systematic nurture. And that is why they are so easily eroded – as we can see even in countries such as India and the USA whose success has, from the start, been built entirely upon the Rule of Law. In the USA, there has been a much longer history of the struggle to uphold the Rule of Law. Of course, we in India have had our own history of the struggle to build and retain the Rule of Law, where valiant individuals and groups have struggled to strengthen the Rule of Law, whereas our rulers have so often and so widely tried to erode and smash it in an effort to put in place, instead, the Rule of the Powerful.
The process of hitting against the Law by the powerful started almost imperceptibly from the beginning of our existence as an independent nation (i.e. by Nehru). Over time, moves against the Law became increasingly significant under governments headed by Congress, as well as by governments led by BJP. Now we see before our eyes a thoroughgoing attempt to transform the Law from a system designed to benefit citizens to a system that supports only Modi and his cronies.
Though the Rule of Law was also most widely-eroded in the USA by Trump (was that one reason why he and Modi became such fast friends?), Trump’s worst moves were nothing like as damaging as Modi’s. That is my view, not Bharara’s – for he makes no direct comment upon our situation in India.
What Bharara does is that he presses into service his experience as America’s most high-profile legal official, providing real-life stories of Law and of its violation, deepening our understanding of Justice, and asking tough questions regarding mere legalities versus substantive law versus Ethics.
His book is a highly readable reminder of how easy it is for us human beings to get things wrong, especially when it comes to dispensing justice – which is why it is so important to uphold the Rule of Law.
Bharara’s calmly-reasoned and mordantly-humourous reflections take on both the Democrats and the Republicans, making the role and the inner workings of the justice system in America accessible to people who have either never tried to understand it, or have failed to understand it.
Most valuably, he suggests the lessons which his wide explorations have for everyday life – by implication, for everyone everywhere in the world:
“The law is an amazing tool, but it has limits.
The law is not in the business of forgiveness or redemption.
The law cannot compel us to love each other or respect each other.
It cannot cancel hate or conquer evil; teach grace or extinguish passions.
The law cannot achieve these things, not by itself.
It takes people—brave and strong and extraordinary people.”
We in India have had many such people, which is why we have survived and even flourished till now.
The question this book poses is whether each of us is inclined to listen, to understand, and to support the struggle to rescue the fast-sinking ship of our Republic by becoming “brave and strong and extraordinary people”.
Purchase Doing Justice by Preet Bhara here.
