Justice B.R. Gavai, standing before the people of Manipur yesterday, spoke with the reassuring tone of a Supreme Court judge, “Have faith in our Constitution. The Constitution will ensure peace returns fully to Manipur one day.”
Ah, the dreamlike quality of those words: One day!
Not soon, not tomorrow, not next year—just one day! Somewhere in the distant, vague, foggy horizon, beyond the reach of calendars and clocks, justice will finally stumble its way into Manipur. Perhaps riding a limping mule, guided by a blindfolded lady with rusted scales in one hand and a broken sword in the other.
But does the good judge not know that justice delayed is justice denied?
Imagine a man wrongfully imprisoned for thirty years, finally exonerated. “Justice has been served!” the system proclaims. But served to whom? The man whose youth was stolen? The family who waited? Or is it justice for the perpetrator who lived freely while his victim suffered?
This is the dance of delay where justice is like a dish, but in our country, it is served cold, stale, and only after the customer has lost all appetite.
In the meantime, the guilty feast on the delay.
Their wealth grows, their power expands, and their influence deepens, while the poor petitioner grows weary, his files gathering dust in some forgotten court locker.
Yet, while the number of MPs in our new, grand Parliament will grow, the number of judges remains painfully inadequate. While politicians keep increasing their salaries, our judiciary remains starved of resources.
One day we will have more judges, they say.
One day we will clear the backlog of cases.
One day justice will be swift.
But today? Today, we wait.
And what a wait it is! Ask the poor farmer who fights a land dispute for three generations. By the time a judgment arrives, his grandchildren have moved to the city, the land sold, the case irrelevant. Ask the widow whose husband was lynched. By the time the verdict is given, her hair is white, her tears dry, and the guilty man’s son is now a minister.
The courts are not temples of justice but waiting rooms of despair, in which obsolete old fans noisily twirl, while the faith of people is tested, patience is broken, and verdicts are written in the same slow motion of the ancient ceiling fans.
Justice is like a train in India. The ticket is bought today, the journey begins much later, and by the time you reach your destination, you’ve forgotten why you even boarded the train in the first place!
Yes, one day Manipur will find peace.
Yes, one day the courts will be efficient.
Yes, one day the Constitution will be fully upheld.
But for those suffering today, that one day is a lifetime too late…!
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