Bleeding Heart Liberals Vs. Realists

My Last post was about the conviction(and now, the sentencing)of the infamous Manu Sharma, written in a very self-righteous air, about a topic that has been championed by both the media and the citizenry of India, to a degree that may be categorized as sensationalism.

My friend V, in a brilliant response, offers a different viewpoint from what I went on about, and has made some interesting remarks, while offering a more realistic picture of things... All points being well taken, I offer the following defence- Note that while these issues may be endlessly debatable, I believe the only things worth debating over are the ones with no obvious right or wrong...

My friend makes a very valid point when he speaks of how we have come down to causing financial ruin in exchange for an act of murder. Life, truly; cannot be equated with money. And by doing so, i.e, reverting to money as a means of payback, we are equating money with a human life, thus degrading its infinite value, and lending credence to the idea that in this way, justice can be bought or sold. If a mortal crime such as murder could indeed have a monetary value, many of us would be glad to shell out the cash and have our enemies bumped off.
Then comes the point of mixing our professional lives and our personal lives. We as Indians do put an inordinate amount of confidence in a person, when we need to be concentrating on the Business that the person does. It's a reality I have had the opportunity to observe at close quarters. But this is a cultural phenomenon, and there is no need to justify a certain cultural trait to anybody else. The fact is that there is no set standard among all the professionals in the world, as to what is 'personal' and what is 'professional'. We all have our own limits and distinctions, and such distinctions can vary wildly from person to person, workplace to workplace. True, certain organizations issue policy regarding workplace behaviour, but it is up to the professional to interpret these guidelines and implement them. But this is besides the main issue, that is, using financial clout to undermine a particular person's Buisness, in response to what was primarily a personal act. Does this sort of vendetta have any effect on those who are too rich to be affected by a loss of buisness?

Finally, I believe that my esteemed friend V has not been able to recognise the power of Boycott. After all, It has helped to free nations from Imperial rule. When the citizenry of a nation sees that the system is not working, it is but natural that they will resort to whatever means available, in order to see that justice is done. Social and economic boycott has been part of our sociological composition for quite a long time now, acting as a kind of built-in system for ensuring(or rather enforcing) mores and norms; and while it may not equate a judicial system, it is a means of registering and acting on a society's collective angst. If one intends to bring a criminal to justice, one cannot just boycott that person into confessing his or her crime. It is a part of the whole sum of things that constitutes the whole idea of justice. And as Citizens, it becomes a part of your civil duty, to do your part in the process, even if it seems petty, and as in this case, raises certain questions that may put many of us in a moral quandary, and asks us to blur the fine lines that divide the personal and the professional.

After all, can it be said that it would have been more civil if we just turned a blind eye to the state of things, and carried on? wouldn't that be equally de-humanising as equating a human life with money? And is the first precept of a democracy not the ability to publicly question all that has gone wrong, instead of leaving an ineffectual system to (not) sort things out?