Lamppost decor

"The only way to rid the country of corruption is to hang a few of you on the lamp post.”

Justices S B Sinha and Markandeya Katju of the Supreme Court of India


Lamppost decor


Nehru liked to say he would hang black marketeers from the nearest lamppost. It impressed you when you saw the remark in printer’s ink on newsprint but provoked mirth when he delivered the self-same threat at public meetings. There was his well-bred appearance to contend with and that reedy panditji voice. The black marketeers, operating brazenly, first flush republican idealism notwithstanding, were unmoved. You need a mob Mr. Nehru, they were thinking, and a Madame Lafarge to lead it. Alternatively, you need industrial grade spite. The kind of vitriol employed by the Raj officials who put an enormous number of quiet old trees to grisly use or fired natives rather handily out of cannons. You need provocation too, 1857 style, and not a nation built on a very serviceable version of ahimsa.

Besides, if you look at the history of the thing, the only person who ever made it to being hung on a lamppost, upside down at that, was Mussolini. You need to be a full fledged dictator to make that exalted cut, mere price manipulation doesn’t hack it. Still, lampposts have always been popular in hanging lexicons if the idea is to vent ire and let off steam in the manner of all idle threats.

But verily, if you really want to strike terror into the hearts of the corrupt, then start with a series of fact-finding tours in pukka sarkari fashion. They will be very popular in themselves but a lot depends of course on who you ask. If you ask potentates from sandy climes they will point to their collection of excellent cat o’ nine tails bought from state-of-the-art S&M stores on 42nd Street. They will also show you their rack of glinting home grown scimitars oft used to separate wheat from chaff or chaff from chaff- it makes no difference. They have docile and well behaved populations in these places that prefer to leave all the “commission” paying work to their betters.

If you ask the Caucasian first world they will refer you to several of their dungeon museums (and Guatanamo Bay Resort and Spa) which graphically demonstrate a hoary tradition. There are wonderfully slick garrotes, rack and pinion used for much more than mere steering, clinging and penetrating Iron Maidens, bucolic water wheels mit built-in body harnesses in first-class rot-free leather, pincers, gouges, other light implements.

Tremendously eye-opening these tours would be. It must be realized, the fact-finders would write, that it is far more effective to mutilate and harm the totally innocent. It would set a fine example of what might befall one when one does nothing at all to offend. It would keep everything orderly because the innocent, being truly horrified at their fate, always make a most satisfying noise amplified manifold by their near and dear. Contrast this with the damp squib, the knowing reprehensibility of the purana paapi.

Puraana paapis may well provoke bleats of wrath from the likes of Supreme Court judges SB Sinha and Markandeva Katju but what is talk of lampposts but mere nostalgia for the mythical days of corruption-free street lighting?

The fact of the matter is that we desperately need instruction. We need drum courts, summary executions, impalements outside the Houses of Parliament, heads on spears to decorate our bridges, a neat row of crucifixions along Raj Path in emulation of the Appian Way. All this and more of such salutary deterrence is what we need. But to get there, we need to shorten the constitution, nay tear it up altogether! We must do away with inefficient notions such as human rights and democracy. Is it not a waste of taxpayer’s money when the obviously corrupt lay claim to due process? What about natural justice hey, that red thing in tooth and claw that has served man and beast alike for millennia? No, enough! Let us call up the vigilante squads (and Clint Eastwood) and turn the lamppost to work up to its true potential.

(700 words)

March 9th, 2007

By Gautam Mukherjee
Also published in The Pioneer www.dailypioneer.com on Sunday 11th March 2007 under "Dialogue" in the "Agenda" section.