By: Umar Nongjai
In present societal trends, It may be suitable to recall a phrase given by German-American Philosopher Hannah Arendth “Benality of evil”.She explicitly explained the phrase in her book “Eichman in Jerusalem” which was published in 1963.In her book, she narrated a story of taking part a court trial of Adolf Eichman which held in Jerusalem. Adolf Eichman was a Nazi military Officers under Adolf Hitler Government in Second world war. He was a man who was the key figure of the events like Holocaust. In his trial, judges asked to him that why you did such a heinous crime? He replied in a normal tone that “Duty is Duty”.At last, the court gave the verdict that Eichman would hanged to death for war crimes.From this trials, we can conclude that their is no enimity between Eichman and Jewish people, he did because of the blindly following the orders of higher authority.Hannah Arendth’s fundamental theory is that ghastly crime like Holocaust are not necessarily committed by pyschophats and sadist, but ,often, by normal, sane, ordinary human beings who performs their tasks with a bureaucratic deligence.
In our society, their is no culture of questioning to the higher authority.This hierarchial fabric present in every aspects of our life may produces a lots of Eichman. A society will be automatically a imperalistic society ,if their is lack of questioning Culture.
Suprisingly in our society, people gives respect to those man in which the blood of carnage are still stuck in their hands.For instance Maya Kodani,MLA from Naroda,allegedly handed over swords to the mobs that reportedly massacred 95 people in Gujarat riot of 2002.She is a gynaecologist who ran a clinic and was later appointed as minister of women and child development under Narendra Modi.
Jagdish tytler was, allegedly,one of the key individual in the 1984 pogrom against the sikhs.He was a prominent educationist who established institutions like Delhi public school.A Congress party leader, he had been a minister in the union government. This genre of people living in our society with a lot of respect.
In Manipur as many as 1,526 people were killed by security forces in alleged fake encounter.We never get justice for them.Today, people ask themselves that why the security forces did horror act because of the follow-up the orders of higher authority.The alleged people of this crimes are still living with a dignity in our society.Can we equate the development done by the quilty persons with the pain of the victims.
Crimes committed by someone are becoming normal in our society, if he/she jumps inside the wall of mainstream politics because people equating development with the human tragedies.Ethical disection is the need of the hour for every aspects of our life.
To prevent from manufacturing Adolf Eichman like People in our society, we need to impart the culture of questioning to the higher authority.If an obligation is given to us, we need to Ethically disect that duty if it not feasible with the moral,we should skip that obligation.