The police and the lawyers, two groups that are supposed to be the guardians of law, have contributed to a shameful spectacle by going at each other in the national capital.
How could they take law in their own hands? Conversations in Delhi’s streets and public transport are invariably about which group deserved the thrashing more but there’s hardly any outrage over this question.
Of course, it is not that the public isn’t used to witnessing rule of law being disregarded. Public opinion has invariably tilted to the side of the police in cases where extrajudicial punishments have been imposed upon dehumanised and ostracised groups.
There is one example, from 2016, of such an incident in which the police and lawyers were on the same side. JNU students and teachers were attacked by a group of lawyers in a Delhi court. But the Delhi police let the attackers off. The lawyers attacked journalists too. The police had charged JNU students for sedition. And many prime-time anchors had no hesitation in calling them anti-nationals.
It isn’t clear which of the two groups – police or lawyers – has the trust of the public. In India, there is no survey to gauge this. In the U.S., however, a Gallup poll earlier this year found lawyers were the fourth least trusted group. Cops, on the other hand, were deified in the world’s oldest democracy and they were the fifth most trusted among 15 professions in the poll.
Journalists were eighth — in the middle of the spectrum, least trusted and highly trusted by an equal proportion of respondents in the U.S. Members of the U.S. Congress were the least trusted of all.
This unfortunate episode is a useful reminder of the dangers of a society turning into a mob.
