The lokpal Bill passed by Parliament will not succeed. Arvind Kejriwal has also doubted how far this bill will succeed. He has his own version of the lokpal. But I am convinced that if his version of the lokpal is passed, even that will not fulfil the intended motives.
Any law, oral or written, can never succeed in keeping society, polity, governance or any human activity lawful. A law comes in words or letters. And it intends to bind and regulate human activity. But, fortunately or not, there is a spirit behind everything, including human activity, whether it is of the mind, or in the form of the word and deed. The presence of the spirit behind everything is acknowledged when people say, as Pranab Mukherjee said in his first speech after becoming President, that they will “preserve, protect and defend our Constitution not just in words but also in spirit”. It should have been enough to say that “I will preserve, protect and defend our Constitution”.
But the Constitution, which is perhaps the most important element of our law, comes at the commonly perceived level in the form of letters or words. And it is possible to violate a law at the level of its spirit while making it elusive to prove, establish or even be aware for a long time of its violation at the level of the letter. So it can be very cunningly proved that the law is being adhered to at the level of its letter while it may be violated and abused at the level of its spirit. The spirit is by definition not gross. Gross things of all manner can easily be made out.
let me take one example, we can all see and feel the body. But what about our mindIJ Has anybody seen the mindIJ I am not talking about the brain — that we can see. That’s the hardware. I am talking about the software that runs in it — the mind. Has anybody seen itIJ Felt it with the sensesIJ I am getting spiritual, but pardon me this offence. These days things spiritual are often subjected to extreme ridicule and disdain. It almost appears profane to have uttered the word ‘spirit’. But I will come to that later, in another column of mine, which, incidentally, or coincidentally, is named In letter & Spirit. So we have not seen the mind. But it does exist, doesn’t itIJ Nobody has seen thoughts and feelings. But they also exist. They exist not at the gross level, but at the subtle level.
No wonder spiritual traditions like yoga say that we have a gross or physical body and a subtle body where subconscious thoughts and emotions reside. Just like the physical or gross body can be seen and the subtle body exists but cannot be seen, gross violations of the law at the level of its letter can be seen but subtle violations of the law at the level of its spirit can exist but not be seen. At least not easily seen. And therein lies the loophole in all kinds of law. The bigger criminals intent on really big crimes, people who plan to play a long and fruitful innings as a criminal, know that their greed and hunger for the fruits of crime stand a chance of being satiated only if their crimes stay unproved and undetected for a long time, hopefully their entire lifetime. Who cares for life after death, even if there is oneIJ So, while committing crimes, they turn into spiritual criminals, and employ their vicious intellect and other powers to keep their violations of the law unproved and undetected for a long time at the physical or gross level of the letter of the law.
All kinds of complicated and elaborate law enforcement devices and frameworks can be put in place and we can carry the pleasant impression that now violations will be reduced, if not eradicated. But as I said, there is a spirit behind everything, something that is there but cannot be pinned down, bound, gagged and throttled by gross things like letters and words.
Something that cannot be defined and expressed by the letter. look at the law. It comes in tomes and tomes of words. Often, it reads: “sub-clauses 48 (xiii) e and 19 (xi) p of clause 35 (vii) m of sub-section 5 (ix) k of section 1 (ii) c of of so-and-so act read in conjunction with sub-clause xxx of clause pqr of sub-section yyy of section abc of so-and-so act lay down that if such-and-such is ... along with such-and-such, then such-and-such is established with the condition that ... such-and-such ... What is all thisIJ Why is there need for so many words, so many sub-clauses, clauses, sub-sections, sections and actsIJ
All the time the attempt is to bind human behaviour and action. But why did the need for such a complex jungle of words ariseIJ The problem is that just as real adherence of the law is at the level of its spirit, real violation too is at the level of its spirit. When the need to bind and regulate human action arose in civilisations, just a few words were established as the law. But realising that it is possible to get away with violation of the law by keeping the violation hidden at the level of the letter, clever criminals became unbridled violators.
The violations of the spirit of the law are felt somewhere in the collective human consciousness of a society or community. It is just that this realisation is somewhere in the unconscious or subconscious terrains of the psyché.
Finally this realisation surfaces at the collective conscious terrain of the collective psyché. And it is then very clearly seen that the law had been violated in many ways at the level of its spirit but the violations were not detected and proved. Work can only be done at the gross level of the letter. So the laws kept becoming more and more stringent and in that process more and more laden with letters.
One truth, however, has not registered in the common public domain — the spirit can never be bound, whether by letters or by any other form. So a thousand lokpals of all shades may be established, but the spirit of the law they try to enforce can still be violated by those bent on
violations. More on this in the next column.
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