The loosey-goosey, Schrodinger’s Cat noose

Many times I had asked this question of myself and of my readers too: To be truly politically correct, like in Chairwoman or Chairperson, we must also have hangwoman / hangperson. When I typed in “hangwoman”, I expected the MS Word red squiggly and I was not disappointed. If “hang” and “man” can come together why not “hang” and “woman”? Well, I got the answer [1]. This is an article about the government of Sri Lanka being on a recruiting spree, two people, for the post of hangman.

“One woman was turned down on the ground that her gender would make her emotional.” I have two points to make here, one an aside and the other, on a matter I want set aside permanently: death penalty.

First the aside: The Economist’s Style Guide, after giving due space to feminists, quite pompously points out that gender is a grammar issue, dealing with words, and sex – no matter how queasy one may feel mentioning it in mixed company– deals with people. I will give it straight from the guide (http://www.economist.com/style-guide/gender) “The primary use of gender, though, is in grammar, where it is applied to words, not people. If someone is female, that is her sex, not her gender.”

As much an aside as it is, I still have one meaningful, at least to me, question: was it the woman’s gender or sex that made her unfit for being a hangwoman? If we had had only hangman even for a woman, perhaps she would have been safe from being excessively emotional. Should we then ignore political correctness to give equal opportunity? A highly wrought question. A woman hangman, there is a nice ring to it.

Now, to the more substantive point. Why did the newspaper deem it necessary to mention that a woman was denied the opportunity to kill a human being under the benign eyes of the state? Of course, it is a point of human interest and the continuing saga of women being linked more tightly to emotions, the right or left brain, I do not know which. The case of the woman is one of a few more human interest items here: a total of 178 people, including the woman, responded that included “a man with one eye, auto-rickshaw drivers, retired military men, labourers, and a university student whose many attempts at securing other employment failed. Ten aspirants were rejected mostly because they were too old or too young.”

Let us explore the human interest side of the above aspirants as the newspaper has reported. Old and young alike aspire to kill others. That is very nice. The old are the exemplars that the young can follow! Now, there are two positions. Had one of them been given to the old and the other to the young, it would have been a perfectly balanced execution squad for the country. Why did the Sri Lankan prison department not see this? Obviously because they did not hire me as their consultant.

But, I would not have wanted that assignment. Why, is it because I am pathologically opposed to death penalty? No, because there would not have been any money. The strap line for the article says “Wanted: two government idlers, little pay, fewer prospects.” If the job for snapping the head is low, how can remuneration for the head hunter even be at sustenance level? Now, you understand.

Why did the vacancies for the two positions arise so suddenly? One of two hangmen retired. That is OK. The second, wait till you hear this, “was promoted”. But the article also says, “Sri Lanka has not hanged a man in over three decades.” Promotion for having nothing to do, that too over thirty years? This can only mean that the promotion is not based on merit. No meritocracy in death penalty, I have to conclude.

What about the university student? You do not understand. The government prison department was trying to help the employment scene in the country. “If you want a job, ask us. We can let you loose on the killers, and rapists too, and you merely kill them. But, you are not killing them, understand.” Fine logic, particularly attractive for the university student.

But one may ask, why this sudden interest in hangmen?” Well, this is the season for rape and murder, of young girls, in India and Sri Lanka. And, that is the fodder needed for the politicians to get into a tizzy and they dutifully did. They want to resurrect the practice of execution. But it cannot be the numbers: there are 369 convicts on death row and a further 471 who have appealed against their sentences, a total of 840. For two hangmen, at the rate of one hanging per day and 250 days a year for each (discount two day weekends and another 15 days holidays), it is a job for one year and about 8 months. Even if you add drug lords and child molesters, the numbers cannot add up to something overwhelming.

This could be why the president of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapaksa has not authorized an execution. Not the dovest of doves, peacefullest of the peaceful, he is just waiting to have a gala number that he can reenact the lions and Christians drama in Rome, in full force and to the full delight of the people, I suspect.

One last observation: the job advertisement was published only in the “state-owned Sinhala-language newspaper”. Why not in English and Tamil newspapers? We do not want to hazard a guess or two, do we?

The noose in Sri Lanka is loosey-goosey. But, when it will tighten and around whose neck, nobody knows.

The situation is very much like Schrodinger’s Cat, being alive and dead at the same time.  But, is that the way to treat human beings, no matter the ferocious crimes they had committed?

I do not think so. The cat has to exist, survive and stew in its own juice, but not live, at least till it realizes why it is stewing. In Sri Lanka, India, China, the US, indeed any country.

Raghuram Ekambaram

References

1.    Hanging about, The Economist, October 6, 2012