But this woman was not convinced, so I asked her how she would feel if her son were hanged from the nearest tree for a crime he may have committed but without receiving a fair trial. ‘If he commits a crime, I will never defend him’, she had said. It was surreal when a few months later, her only son was hauled up on suspicion of drug dealing and beaten up in the lock-up even before his lawyers could reach him.The mother was frantic – why could the cops not have brought him to court, why did they presume he was guilty, she kept repeating over and over again. Her son was so traumatised that the family shifted to the United States with him. They have not returned.Clearly for many of us, sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander. Many Indians do seem to value blood and gore more than peace or non-violence. I recently ran into an ardent admirer of Narendra Modi, whose son has lost his job, whose daughter-in-law tries to enhance the family income by going door to door serving home cooked meals and whose grandchildren are facing a stark future.He is comfortable on his pension, which I pointed out came from a job he held during Indira Gandhi’s tenure as PM and which was secured with a school and college education he had received practically free during Jawaharlal Nehru’s time. He was somewhat subdued and chastened but not for long. He accused me some time later of being a Gandhiwaadi, as though that was a crime and said, “Godse ne koi galati nahin ki”.
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