(A satire triggered by recent developments)

The Indian Penal Code is being replaced with an updated one, the Indian Penile Code. It replaces legally prohibited acts and crimes punishable with fines, imprisonment and capital punishment, with authorised acts against women and children, against the weak and the deprived, the oppressed and the marginalised that will henceforth be encouraged and approved, celebrated and feted.

It will now be sufficient to show that such acts meriting approbation:

• are committed by men with or without the active participation of women.
• promote the downgrading or subjugation of certain minorities listed in Schedule X.
• are committed by individuals and groups from the ruling party and sympathisers.
• are committed in the name of non-Abrahamic faiths and enforce beliefs, customs, claims and remedies.
• retain traditional gender roles and promote allegiance to today’s interpreters of the past.
• seek to instill pride and patriotism through unsubstantiated claims of being the tallest, largest, biggest, greatest, fastest, richest, quickest, most ancient, most modern, and more broadly, the bestest; and vigorously promote and defend such claims.

With a view to incentivise desired behaviors (now deemed heroic under the new Code), those demonstrating the above acts will be rewarded, celebrated and feted by some or all of the following means:

• Garlanding, traditional tilak and distribution of sweets;
• Victory processions through the streets;
• Special functions to recount and reinforce acts that merit the widest approval;
• Building of statues of prescribed sizes based on the gravity of the acts;
• Offering of seats during elections at the appropriate level based on enormity of impact;
• Award of licenses, contracts, clearances;
• Appointment to important positions.

As a follow-through, revisions in curriculum for the study of law, policing and crime prevention are being conceptualised to be in tune with this new Code for the New India. It is learnt that the leadership in the institutions dealing with the above are already aligned with the intent of the Code and have already been making changes with the tacit approval of the authorities.

It is also recognised that the entire system dealing with dispensation of justice will need urgent reform. Since the notions of crime and punishment are being reimagined for New India, new jurisprudence will need to emerge very quickly. It will be another first for this country!

It is worth pondering why such progressive thinking hadn’t gained ground much earlier and why the country had to wait for this long. Perhaps we were prisoners of a colonial mindset, and our real freedom has come just in the last decade. We are better off with moneyed cronies than with the Congi commies.

People have chosen the ancient past over modern science (that Western conspiracy!) to guide everyone else into the future. To guide us on the path to good days, we will have one authoritative version of our glorious history, a mythical geography and borders, our hoary culture, and of course, each other. The last, I am not sure of. Meanwhile, the forests, lakes and rivers will be sold out and devastated as we alternate between invoking Mother Nature and feeding the Demons of Greed.

The truth is, we have replaced colonial masters with others who ape them and their noxious contempt for the rights of people. Collectively, we have said goodbye to our good sense; narrow allegiances have shrunk our worlds and the compassionate sweep of our gods. The gods have probably turned their faces away from what looks like a lost cause, and are in a huddle about the next edition.

I recommend silence, prayer and fasting—the first two help avoid questions and the last could help build buffer stocks when hunger looms.

Image: Mohan Ranganathan