India’s relationship with its women is marked by a crude contradiction. The nation loves to deify women as symbols of strength and virtue. Yet, simultaneously, Indian women are subjected to unspeakable vilification and violence: the data on diverse criminal acts that women endure are compiled by the National Crime Records Bureau each year. It is only fitting that the tallest leader of the nation, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, would remain complicit in this immorality. Mr Modi, as his speeches would show, is apparently a great advocate of narishakti. Yet, as the affidavit of the Gujarat government to the Supreme Court revealed, the prime minister did not feel the urge to stop the Centre from giving its nod to the release of the 11 men convicted of gangraping a pregnant Bilkis Bano and slaughtering several members of her family, including an infant. Among the seven entities whose opinion was sought by the state on the premature release of the convicts, only two — the Central Bureau of Investigation and the special CBI judge — resisted the move. The Union home ministry, manned by the prime minister’s trusted lieutenant, was among the endorsers of this mortifying decision. The rapists walked out — on Independence Day — to a public felicitation.

The logic of remission, granted on the basis of the policy of 1992, in this instance is not the only matter of concern. What should shame the collective conscience of the nation and its institutions are the signals given out by Mr Modi’s elected regime. That not every Indian citizen — including the victim of a heinous crime — is entitled to protection under the rule of law; that there can be grounds for compassion for the convicts of a particular community in spite of the enormity — inhumanity — of their transgression; and that the State can take a prejudicial call on the dispensing of such leniency in contravention of the principles of equality and justice. Incidentally, Mr Modi’s peers have not shown a morsel of contrition even after the exposure of the Centre’s involvement, with a Union minister justifying the decision by pointing to existing legal provisions. The reason for this brazenness is evident. In their pursuit of a majoritarian agenda, the Bharatiya Janata Partyled government has, quite often, lost sight of the markers of morality. The outcome of this orchestrated blindness has destroyed lives: Bilkis and her surviving family would attest to that. It is also destroying a pluralist nation.