Selective Law Enforcement and Its Impact on Societal Norms

Societal norms often lead to the selective enforcement of laws, with many minor infractions overlooked. This article explores how such leniency can desensitize individuals to the impact of their actions, as seen in a recent incident involving cricketer Arshdeep Singh.

There are things that we believe, as a society, that are against the law but should not be. Certain actions remained outlawed even though the context in which they occurred has long since changed. Most of these are archaic and deliberately unenforced, but they can be enforced when authorities decide they want to make an example of people. Others are selectively enforced.

If you are driving at 70 km/h on a road with a 60 km/h speed limit, but are not drunk or handling your vehicle rashly, and it’s a quiet afternoon with no traffic around, nobody cares. Even if a policeman flags you down, there’s every chance you get away with just a reprimand. Perhaps you had an emergency, maybe you just didn’t realise that your foot was a little heavier on the accelerator than it should have been. More than that, most drivers do not think it is wrong. Because they read the intent of the law, which is to ensure safety, and this has not been threatened in any manner. In India, if you are driving late at night or early in the morning, it’s not uncommon to get rebuked for stopping at a red light by the car behind you. It’s considered normal to ignore the stop sign in those circumstances.

The problem is that most laws and rules exist for reasons beyond the most obvious one. There are consequences to breaking them —often for people other than the one who transgresses—that are unseen and have no immediate effect. The feeling is one of having gotten away with it, and if that happens often enough, the law in question is taken as a general guideline rather than one that needs to be followed assiduously.

MUDDY PITCH

Which is why Punjab Kings fast bowler Arshdeep Singh perhaps did not think he had done anything wrong when he used the word “andhera” in a reel featuring Mumbai Indians’ Tilak Varma, intended to be playful and funny. For all his 27 years on this planet, Singh has heard people make fun of others based on their looks. Being a turbanwearing sardar, he was probably the butt of the joke as often as not. That explains his usage, but it does not make it okay.

Firstly, this is about how Tilak felt in the moment, but it’s even bigger than that. Singh and Varma have played a lot of cricket together, as opponents and teammates and are friends. It’s possible that Varma did not even register the slight. Or, if he did, he brushed it off as nothing more than harmless banter. But others have pointed out how it scarred them more than they even realised.

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L Sivaramakrishnan has spoken at length about how a dark chocolate cake once left him feeling lonely in a moment of celebration for his birthday. Abhinav Mukund, another cricketer from South India of dark complexion, tweeted in 2017: “fair isn’t the only lovely or handsome guys” and narrated incidents from his playing career that left him feeling distinctly uncomfortable. “When I was very young and came into the system, I was called karuppa (blackie) in one of the early net sessions with the Tamil Nadu team,” another cricketer who did not want to be named told this correspondent. “I was young, the team was full of players who I had grown up admiring, and most of them were really good guys, so even though it didn’t feel good, I said nothing,” he noted.

Years later, when the same cricketer stopped someone from using the pejorative nickname, it was brushed off. If you had said it when you came in, I would have respected you, was the response. But, because he brought it up years later, after the moniker had stuck, he was not taken seriously.

IT’S JUST WRONG

The problem is not about getting away with it or not; it is that the larger system does not recognise that doing this is wrong. There was a time when anyone with monolid eyes was called “chinki ”, but doing so today would not be acceptable in any context. Singh has played enough cricket, including global International Cricket Council events, where he would have received training on what racist and discriminatory behaviour is, and what bullying is. He should know better.

Cricketers are held up to higher standards in India than the common man, often unfairly or unrealistically. Partly because they are role models, and partly because they use their public image to great profit through advertisements and now content. With that comes scrutiny, because it can affect large sections of the population, especially the young and impressionable. In this case, one hopes that someone has spoken to Singh, as no official action has yet been forthcoming. Because if that has not happened, these incidents will repeat.

Blaming Singh alone is easy, but the system has failed him as much as it has failed Varma. And till recognition of this comes, none of us is going to be genuinely kinder to those around us.