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Of Justice & Revenge

SARBPREET SINGH

 

 

 





Hopkinton, Massachusetts, USA
May 15, 2015

It is a little past 3 pm. I am in my car driving to pick up my son from school. My radio is tuned to WBUR, one of our local NPR stations.

The conversation on Radio Boston today is about whether Dzhokhar Tsarnaev will receive the death penalty for his part in the infamous Boston Marathon bombings two years ago.

The jury has reached a verdict after a mere fourteen hours of deliberation and the radio commentary, somewhat surreally takes on the character of a blow by blow description of a sports event, as the entire 24-four page verdict is read, one ‘aggravating factor’ and then one ‘mitigating factor’ at a time.

It is almost an anticlimax, when the news anchor declares that the young man has been sentenced to death.

It appears that justice has been served, as U.S. Attorney General Lorretta Lynch and Boston Mayor Marty Walsh hasten to remind us.

That might be so, but I have to admit to a nagging feeling of discomfort.

My thoughts turn to an event I attended, exactly a month ago, at the glorious Old South Church in Boston, which is right at the Boston Marathon finish line, where the bombs exploded to years ago.

As beautiful, uplifting music plays, I walk down one of the aisles of the Church in full baana (vestments of the Khalsa), bearing a glass bowl. In lock step with me, down other aisles walk an Imam, a Rabbi and a Christian Minister, all of them carrying a bowl similar to mine.

As we pass each pew, we pause and hands, some young, some old, some pale and some olive skinned, are stretched towards us to toss little folded slips of paper into our bowls.

It is One Boston Day. A day when the city pauses to honor the “resiliency, generosity, and strength” that its residents showed on that terrible day two years ago, when terror slammed into Boston, turning a genial, much-anticipated event into a horrific nightmare. Reverend Nancy Taylor, Pastor at the Old South Church and Revered Laura Everett, who runs the Mass Council of Churches, have organized this beautiful Interfaith event to mark One Boston Day where I am privileged to represent the Boston Sikh community.

In the pews sit many victims of the Marathon bombings and their friends and families. It is a solemn moment and yet a healing one. An uplifting one!

My bowl starts to fill up as I walk down the aisle as the congregants write their burdens down on their little slips of paper and toss them in. We reach the last pew and then turn back, bearing in our hands the burdens of the congregation, who like millions across the world have been unwittingly caught in the crossfire of hatred and bigotry which has somehow become an indelible part of our existence.

After a prayer and blessing by one of the ministers on the Interfaith panel, I switch places with one of my fellow bowl bearers and we walk down the aisles again, this time offering our bowls to the congregants seated in the pews.

Different hands reach out, in an amazing show of fellowship and generosity, to carry a stranger’s burden. To embrace it. To pray that it be lifted.

Everyone in the church cannot but feel blessed. The bonds that bind us together, that often seem so tenuous under the weight of all divisions and hatred we live with, at that moment feel wondrously strong!

Today, as I listen to reactions to the sentencing of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, I cannot help wondering: How might those generous souls who came together in that beautiful moment a month ago, how would they be reacting? Could anyone among them be jubilant today?

I don’t’ think so! I hear my heart say.

There can never be any justification for the heinous crime that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his brother committed. Yet, even setting aside the ideology and politics that continue to swirl around the death penalty for a moment, and thinking purely as a Bostonian who was horrified by the Marathon bombings, I am unable to take any comfort in today’s decision.

To be honest I feel a sense of loss that I am trying hard to understand.

In the words of Kabir, the 12th Century mystic who was neither Hindu nor Muslim and yet both, and whose writings are honoured by inclusion in the Sikh Scripture, The Guru Granth Sahib:

kabeer jor keeaa so julam hai laee jabaab khudhaae ||
dhafathar laekhaa neekasai maar muhai muhi khaae
||200||

Tyranny, no less, is the brutal use of force;
The tyrant’s reckoning lies await.
And when the day of judgment comes,
It’ll be delivered on his very face
||200||

Despite the Sikh faith’s unequivocal commitment to justice, there is absolutely no room for vengeance in the Sikh ethos.

The life of Guru Gobind Singh, whose family suffered greatly in his lifetime at the hands of tyrants, epitomizes this perfectly. While he chafed at the injustice, opposed it and distilled the principle of fighting tyranny into the very being and identity of his followers, he never once descended into the bottomless pit that is vengeance.

An unshakeable faith in a higher power, who is all-knowing, all-seeing and just, as articulated by Kabir, is the bedrock of this ideal.

A passion for justice elevates us. Makes us noble.

Vengeance on the other hand, robs us of our humanity.

I believe that is where my vague sense of loss comes from. I feel that the dignity and grace that I felt and experienced on that unforgettable day at The Old South Church has somehow been tarnished by today’s verdict.

Sparing Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s life, despite what he did, would have healed us further. Taking this misguided young man’s life in retaliation for his horrible actions will not bring peace or ‘closure’ to anyone. On the contrary it will add one more burden to the ones that we already carry.

For today, we have been robbed by Vengeance, posing as Justice.


May 17, 2015
 

Conversation about this article

1: Niranjan Singh (Amritsar, Punjab), May 17, 2015, 7:18 AM.

One of the first acts by Ranjit Singh when he became Maharaja of Punjab was to abolish capital punishment. It remained the law throughout the territories and the tenure of the Sikh Empire, even after subduing the brutal and oppressive Afghans.

2: Brig (Ret.) Nawab Singh Heer (New York, USA), May 17, 2015, 11:23 AM.

S. Sarbpreet Singh ji has made us sit back and think. There is sometimes a very fine line between justice and revenge. Enlightened persons believe in pardon whereas we as mortals are asking for revenge -- a life for a life. We need to think if they did wrong, are we doing right? Even Jesus Christ said, "O God, pardon them for they do not know what they do." In Sikhism, our Fifth Guru, the Ninth, and then the Tenth Guru sacrificed everything but never had revenge in mind. As a society, what stops us from going for pardon instead of revenge? I think, in our heart of hearts, most of us would have been happy had we gone for pardon! We all have our own views; I will still say may God bless these young men for they did not know what they were doing.

3: Yuktanand Singh MD (Michigan, USA), May 17, 2015, 4:41 PM.

As I read the above article, it is ironic that there is also a picture on the front page, a Sikh pointing his handgun ('Pros & Cons Of A Sikh Regiment In The British Army'). If the Sikh in that picture reads gurbani and agrees with relying on divine justice advocated in the above article, then who is he shooting at? Why join the army at all? The answer becomes clear as mud when we mix compassion, reliance on divine justice, or fostering peace and brotherhood between religions as the real solution against war and violence, with issues of national security. We must not confuse crime against us with crime against the nation.

4: Yuktanand Singh MD (Michigan, USA), May 17, 2015, 4:42 PM.

It is easy to criticize blind justice, but life and limb of hundreds of citizens takes precedence to having compassion for a heinous criminal. We all know that the root cause of terrorism is oppression of the weak by the powerful. In this respect, anyone who votes for war is a terrorist by default. I do not believe in capital punishment either. This misguided young soul could definitely learn from his mistakes if given a chance to live. But the time to show compassion is before, not after a terrorist has already been created.

5: Yuktanand Singh MD (Michigan, USA), May 17, 2015, 4:45 PM.

Consider this: This will not happen in America today but in the old times someone who was proven a terrorist beyond any doubt would be hung upside down in the city square and shot, thereby subjected to a gradual death. We will be quick to label this as barbaric or as revenge. It is not. Guru Gobind Singh ordered that the criminal masands be burnt to death in hot oil. Why, when he could have simply banished them or had them beheaded? I am also quite sure that he did not feel proud of, or rejoice in burning them to death.

6: Yuktanand Singh MD (Michigan, USA), May 17, 2015, 4:47 PM.

I do not agree with the court sentence, but for a different reason. Capital punishment is not a good deterrent, particularly of terrorism. 'Sparing his life' the taxpayers would be burdened with the feeding of yet another terrorist for life. What crime did they commit? The answers are not so black and white. Sometimes showing teeth is necessary to maintain peace and national security. Guru Gobind Singh forgave crimes against the Sikhs or against his own family but crimes of the masands required him to set an example. Compassion needs to go both ways. We have an urgent need to protect all our citizens from further violence. Being 'soft' towards a terrorist would be a sign of weakness, not strength.

7: Ajit Singh Batra (Pennsville, New Jersey, USA), May 17, 2015, 5:20 PM.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev did not express any emotion when the jury was evaluating punishment for his crimes. That is, death imposition or life sentence without parole. It seems his maxim of life was that he was going through a good cause; that is, death or life sentence will bestow true life to him by God through prayers by his community.

8: AD Singh (India), May 17, 2015, 9:56 PM.

I diagree with the author. This misplaced sense of "compassion" has created more problems than solutions. Is the author suggesting that this person be forgiven and released back into society and cause more harm? The only other option is to confine him in prison for life which is even worse than death. In the same spirit, are we willing to forgive the cold-blooded murderers of 1984?

9: Jasvir Kaur (Calgary, Alberta, Canada), May 17, 2015, 11:13 PM.

The ideology these brothers followed is alive in their community. They knew exactly what they were doing. What did they think was going to happen to them when they ran like cowards after committing this crime? You have to separate the judicial system from your own personal religious beliefs.

10: H Singh (Delhi, India), May 18, 2015, 4:51 AM.

Just some fact checks on the readers comments: Guru Gobind Singh sent Banda Singh Bahadar from Nanded to Sirhind to ensure that the perpetrators of the crime against the Chhotey Sahibzaadey were punished. To resist tyranny is in our blood; that is how we have survived despite Mir Manu's proclamation that we had all been annihilated (300 years ago)! We will not take the first step, but when Painde Khan - the Mughal 'war hero' - challenged Guru Gobind Singh, Guru Sahib let him fire the first arrow; when he missed, Guru Sahib did not hesitate to kill him with his own arrow. There was no revenge in this, just standing up to tyranny. If that results in the loss of the tyrant's life, so be it.

11: Harsaran Singh (Indonesia), May 18, 2015, 7:47 AM.

Whatever Sarbpreet Singh ji has written in his article hardly needs any historical references to prove his point. Let us look around us or for that matter surf the 24x7 news feeds, what do we see? Killing, suffering, pain. Those of my fellow readers who rightly refer to Sikh history and the fight against injustice and tyranny should also remember that times have changed. The present world order for sanity, peace and forgiveness towards everyone, even those who choose to take the wrong path. We have examples in front of us that the idea of "eye for an eye" does not work anymore, instead a hell of a lot of people get blinded, with justice still being elusive.

12: Rajinder  (Hong Kong), May 18, 2015, 8:55 AM.

Could I get some clarification about Guru Gobind Singh ji and the errant masands? I would like to learn more.

13: Ajit Singh Batra (Pennsville, New Jersey, USA), May 18, 2015, 4:31 PM.

Guru Gobind Singh ji believed intensely in the philosophy of love. He sacrificed his father and his four young sons so that others might live. He had to fight battles only as a painful duty but continued to tell the world, "Only those meet the Lord who cherish love". I did not know of the saakhi of the masands being punished by Guru Gobind Singh ji, as described above, because of misappropriation of money collected for charity and community service from the sangat. Other than the fact that he prepared people for active resistance to "organized evil", he continued to express the message of Guru Nanak which is "Love and Truth".

14: Yuktanand Singh MD (Michigan, USA), May 19, 2015, 11:00 AM.

Here are a few links on masands: 1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masand 2) Search for 'masands' at http://www.thesikhencyclopedia.com/ 3) https://www.allaboutsikhs.com/sikh-institutions/the-sikh-institutions-manji-masand - The episode of punishing the masands is found recorded in a well-respected history of the Sikhs (copied below from sikhsangat.com): Translation - When the masands were struck by such a perverted thought, they also got a copy of the sacred Guru Granth Sahib burnt. They also got their own place of worship constructed at a place where they had committed such a heinous deed. (14) Dohra. They disintegrated the Sikh congregations at many places. And merged these splintered groups into their own following. When the Guru came to hear about such a development, He ordered an immediate execution of the masands. (15) Chaupai. When the Singhs received such a decree from the Guru, they massacred and burnt alive all the masands. Some were slaughtered; some were buried alive in walls. Still others were dragged and roasted in cauldrons of boiling oil. (16) [Page 31, Panth Prakash, Rattan Singh Bhangoo, Ch 21 verse 16.]

15: Rajinder (Hong Kong ), May 21, 2015, 2:22 AM.

Thank you, Yuktanand Singh ji. I shall be reading all that you have recommended.

16: Harmander Singh, (London, United Kingdom), September 07, 2015, 5:50 PM.

Sarbpreet Singh has encapsulated in a few words the sense of inadequate justice when no matter how severe the sentence it still does not give balance to the losses suffered. It was a pleasure to meet Sarbpreet Singh in April 2014 when Sukhjinder Singh (Fauja Singh's son) and I ran the Boston Marathon a year after the bombing. Both of us were greeted with warm hospitality by all locals in coming to standing strong with them.

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