Abstract

Following the attack on the Indian Parliament on 13 December 2001, most of the country’s media rallied to the slogan of a democracy threatened by Pakistani terrorism. Afzal Guru was hanged on 9 February 2013. Shortly before this sad event, journalist Vinod K. Jose spoke with the death row inmate and asked him if he had a message to communicate to the world. Guru declared:

My simple appeal is that do not allow blind nationalism and mistaken perceptions to lead you to deny even the most fundamental rights of your fellow citizens… peace comes with justice. If there is no justice, there is no peace… If you want to hang me, go ahead with it, but remember it would be a black spot on the judicial and political system of India (Jose 2013).

The Supreme Court, in a lengthy judgment dated 4 August 2005, described the attack of December 2001, in these terms:

The incident, which resulted in heavy casualties, had shaken the entire nation and the collective conscience of the society will only be satisfied if the capital punishment is awarded to the offender. The challenge to the unity, integrity and sovereignty of India by these acts of terrorists and conspirators, can only be compensated by giving the maximum punishment to the person who is proved to be the conspirator in this treacherous act (Supreme Court of India 2005).

India, sheltering under a good conscience that, given the various human rights violations in Kashmir, was less than waterproof, did everything to avoid taking into account the circumstances of the conviction of a man who was probably innocent. In an article titled The hanging of Afzal Guru is a stain on India’s democracy, human rights activist Arundhati Roy accused ‘the institutions of Indian democracy’ (Roy 2013) of collaborating in what looked, in my opinion,  like a sacrificial killing offered up to the altar of the Indian state.

The Kashmiris Maqbool Butt (in February 1984) and Afzal Guru were both hanged after spending long years on death row. However, the media coverage in these two cases was very different. No doubt social media networks have facilitated the freedom of speech, allowing groups that earlier struggled to express themselves publicly to circulate information that in Kashmir had been spread only by rumour and word-of-mouth. It is, therefore, necessary to examine the discourse of the various actors in the tragedy of which Afzal Guru was the unfortunate victim: both in Kashmir and in the rest of the country as well as in the media and in civil society.  

References

Jose, V. K. 2013, ‘A Meeting Inside Jail with Afzal Guru’, Kashmir Watch, 18 February, <http://kashmirwatch.com/a-meeting-inside-jail-with-afzal-guru/>.

Roy, A. 2013, ‘The Hanging of Afzal Guru is a Stain on India’s Democracy’, The Guardian, 10 February, <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/feb/10/hanging-afzal-guru-india-democracy>.

Supreme Court of India 2005, ‘Full Text: Supreme Court Judgement on Afzal Guru. Case No.: Appeal (crl.) 373-375 of 2004 Petitioner: State (N.C.T. of Delhi) Respondent: Navjot Sandhu@ Afsan Guru Date of Judgment: 04/08/2005’, News18, 4 August, <https://www.news18.com/news/india/full-text-supreme-court-judgement-on-afzal-guru-589761.html>.