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Dilip D’Souza on the incompleteness of “divine” or “inner conscience” justice.

We’ve had innumerable horrible crimes in India — the Delhi massacre of 1984, the Bombay one of 1992-93, the Gujarat one of 2002, the Bhagalpur blindings, assorted ghastly caste slaughters in Bihar, add your own. Pretty much never have we been able to punish the guilty for these atrocities.

Faced with this failure of justice, many people make the argument that the perpetrators “will have to answer to god”, or “must look at themselves every day in the mirror”, or “will have to live with themselves from now on.”

All of which might be true, I don’t know. What I do know is, nobody seems to be in any particular suffering because of the daily view in the mirror. What I do know is, they must know they have committed great crime and got away with it. What I do know is, other would-be criminals must look at this and know that they, too, can commit crime and get away with it.

At the very least, we need to have a non partisan Truth and Reconciliation Commission for these crimes in post independance India.