The widespread outrage at the Jessica Lall verdict and the subsequent protests against the Indian criminal justice system are not only about righting a wrong committed in the past, or standing up to powerful bullies, or levelling the field for the political elite who have always got away with too much, too easily. The staggering support for Jessica — mobilised by the media and other civic sector organisations — points to a new awareness across India wherein average citizens realise the importance of public opinion in a democracy as well as the power of their own voice to alter the law.

Stoicism, fatalism and defeatism, the ordinary Indian finally seems to have understood, only make the system weaker and the law more obfuscating. Lived experience has taught Indians that the law reflects the same, clear and consistent meaning across time and space. It acquires significance because of the context it operates in, and the context in turn acquires significance because of the values and beliefs of the people.

Put another way, Indians have finally recognised that the law that governs their lives is a cultural construct that acquires meaning on account of the political and historical context within which it operates. In any given context, therefore, several alternatives of the truth contest for legitimacy at the same time. It is on account of this surplus of meaning that words (unstable signs that in themselves are neither neutral nor self-effacing) and the law that they body forth have always been easy to manipulate.

... contd.