The Election of Vice President of India and the Abolition of Death Penalty

By Rajindar Sachar
The process of election for vice-president of the country has started. There is a straight fight between Venkaiah Naidu BJP candidate and Gopal Gandhi the nominee of the opposition parties. I am not going into the question of who the winner will be. Nor am I going into the question who is the better of two. His tenure as Governor of West Bengal has received Kudos from all sections of Society.
I am here dealing with another aspect i.e. the place of death penalty in a civilized country like ours. This for the reason than when Gopal Gandhi’s name was announced ignoramus persons shouted hoarse against him on the ground that he had asked for commutation of death penalty to imprisonment for life given to Yakub Menon in Bombay blast case resulting in the death of many innocent citizens. Headlines were flashed out to say that Gopal Gandhi wants mercy to the terrorists. This was a mischievous and malicious interpretation of what he had said.
It is not denied that Gopal Gandhi has been a long time opponent of death penalty. I recall that about 2 years or so back law Commission of India had held a Seminar on death penalty and whether it should be abolished. I was also one of the speakers – I am for the abolition of death penalty and have written and spoken about it for decades. There almost unanimously a resolution was passed for abolition of death
penalty. Consistent with his stand Gopal Gandhi had also voted for abolition of death penalty. In fact for abolitionists like us, the judgment is not based on any individual case, but on the principle that death sentence to any one is inconsistent with a civilized society and does not even serve as deterrent and is violative of human Rights.
To those infantile critics who made so much noise at Gopal Gandhi’s asking for not hanging Yakub Menon, let us recall that some the greatest men have all opposed death penalty. Thus Gandhiji said; “I do regard death sentence as contrary to ahimsa. Only He can take it who gives it.”
Freedom fighter and Socialist leader Jayaprakash Narayan said, “To my mind, it is ultimately a question of respect for life and human approach to those who commit grievous hurts to others. Death sentence is no remedy for such crimes.”
Dr. Ambedkar during the constituent Assembly debates said, “I think that having regard to this fact, the proper thing for this country to do is to abolish the death sentence altogether.”
The High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour called the death penalty “…..a sanction that should have no place in any society that claims to value human rights and the inviolability of the person”.
President Eduardo Frei of Chile said; “I cannot believe that to defend life and punish the person that kills, the State should in its turn kill. The death penalty is as inhuman as the crime which motivates it.”
The vociferous opposition to abolition of death penalty springs from myth that it can lead to increase of murders. Facts show otherwise. Thus, in 1945-50 the State of Travancore, which had no death penalty, had 962 murders whereas during 1950- 55, when death sentence was introduced, there were 967 murders.
In Canada, after the abolition of death penalty in 1976, the homicide rate has declined. In 2000, there were 542 homicides in Canada – 16 less than in 1998 and 159 less than in 1975 (one year prior to the abolition of capital punishment).
In 1997, the Attorney General of Massachusetts (USA) said, “there is not a shred of credible evidence that the death penalty lowers the murder rate. In fact, without the death penalty the murder rate in Massachusetts is about half the national average.”
The death penalty has been abolished since 1965 in U.K. The membership of European Union is dependent on having no death penalty. This has been done obviously in the confidence that murders do not get automatically reduced by retaining death penalty.
The South African Constitutional Court unanimously ruled in 1995 that the death penalty was unconstitutional as it constitutes “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”.
At present 105 countries have abolished death penalty in law for all crimes – a majority of world states, as of April 2017.
I may also remind critics of Gopal Gandhi that when India wanted Abdul Salem for proceedings against him for the same offence of blast of 1993 in Mumbai and who was then living in Portugal, government of India gave undertaking that no death penalty would be carried out on him and that is why though convicted be has
been given life sentence.
The injustice of death as a penalty has a hoary past. Although the death penalty was briefly banned in China between 747 and 759, modern opposition to the death penalty stems from the book of the Italian Cesare Beccaria Dei Delitti e Delle Pene (“On Crimes and Punishments”), published in 1764. Influenced by the book, Grand Duke Leopold II of Habsburg, famous enlightened monarch and future Emperor of Austria, abolished the death penalty in the then-independent Granducato di Toscana (Tuscany), the first permanent abolition in modern times. On 30 November 1786, after having de facto blocked capital executions (the last was in 1769), Leopold promulgated the reform of the penal code that abolished the death penalty and ordered the destruction of all the instruments for capital execution in his land. In 2000 Tuscany’s regional authorities instituted an annual holiday on 30 November to commemorate the event. The event is also commemorated on this day by 300 cities around the world celebrating the Cities for the Life Day. In 1849, the Roman Republic became the first country to ban the capital punishment in its constitution. Venezuela abolished the death penalty in 1863 and Portugal did so in 1867.
Will the critics of Gopal Gandhi have the normal courtesy of apologizing for their totally mischievous unsustainable comments.