While mob justice is a worldwide concern, its impact in Bangladesh has severely intensified in the post-uprising period. However, the term ‘mob justice’ cannot be meaningfully analysed without first understanding the concept of ‘justice’ itself.
Justice is one of the most aspired yet least defined terms in political theory. Philosophers spanning from Plato to Adam Smith have formulated theories of justice that include certain elements. However, in my opinion, these definitions, per se, fail to capture the comprehensive domain of justice. For instance, Plato defined justice as the peculiar excellence of mind and injustice as its defect. Although this definition covers a broad area by employing a teleological approach, Plato’s tripartite division of society into entrepreneurs (appetite), auxiliaries (spirit), and guardians (reason) can be criticised for promoting a static and hierarchical social order. John Rawls’ theory of justice, comprising ‘equal liberty principle’ (everyone has the same basic rights and freedoms) and ‘difference principle’ (social and economic inequalities are permissible only if they benefit the least advantaged members of society) show promise. However, it stands weak when it is concerned with legal justice, whether substantive or procedural. Robert Nozick’s entitlement theory is confined to property allocation. Hence, a thorough grasp of justice warrants a context-sensitive approach for better understanding. Yet, it is clear that fairness is a common term underlying all dominant theories.
Contrarily, a typical mob justice scenario involves hostile conflicts and deaths or injuries of the so-called accused. It can be defined as a situation where a crowd of people take the law into their own hands, act as accusers, jury and judge and punish a criminal suspect or an alleged criminal on the spot (Robin et al). In other words, the mob in these cases usurp the role of the executive to investigate a case, that of the judiciary to try the case, convict and punish the wrongdoer, and that of the legislature to legislate the punishment for the alleged person. By arrogating to themselves the functions of the State, the mob, therefore, strikes at the very foundation of a State built on a social contract. Emphasising the indispensability of an organised State, Thomas Hobbes aptly observed that ‘without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war […] of every man against every man’.
If justice is thought to be a thesis, mob justice appears to be the antithesis to the very crux of it. By usurping the power of the state in whose hands they have no excellence, the mob acts contrary to the Platonian theory of justice. Mob justice also defeats the Aristotelian formulation of distributive justice by indiscriminately killing or injuring every alleged offender, whether minor, female or the aged. Rawls’ equal liberty principle and Nozick’s entitlement theory are beats of a distant drum. Evidently, no theory of justice offers a synthesis in the Hegelian dialectics sense to harmonise ‘mob justice’ with ‘justice’. Therefore, the expression ‘mob justice’ itself is a misnomer, for the actions of a mob negate, rather than uphold, the fundamental values of justice.
Within our constitutional dispensation, Articles 27 (equality before law), 28 (prohibition on discrimination), 31 (right to protection of law) and 32 (right to life and liberty) are necessary concomitants of distributive justice, whereas Articles 33 (safeguards as to arrest and detention) and 35 (protection in respect of trial and punishment) reflect procedural justice. However, the procedural legal justice outlined in Articles 33 and 35 is shattered into pieces when the mob arbitrarily executes punishments.
To conclude, mob justice in Bangladesh has now escalated to an alarming extent, with incidents of accused persons being attacked even on court premises. The recent incident of a Hindu man getting lynched to death over allegations of blasphemy in Bhaluka, Mymensingh bearing the evidence of it. If the continued exposure to so-called ‘mob justice’ persists, it will inevitably result in a loss of public confidence in the legal system and a blatant erosion of the rule of law.
The writer is law student at the University of Dhaka.
