[Urbanstudy] Text Posting1

[surbhi tiwari]

Dear all,
  this is SURBHI TIWARI Sarai Student Stipend 2006 Awardee. The title of my research work is 'The Corrupt Son of the Erupting City : Kolkata in Law and Lovely Matters like Relationship.'  Here, to remind you once again, I attempt to thematically explore the dispute on child-parent rights as a conversation mapped by the city and as it exists through reference in a legal case text.
   My current posting (text below) is reflexive of my original interest though it is trying to seek new directions. I shall await your comments which will help me strike a balance.
  Thanking you,
  Surbhi.
  ___________________________________________________________________
   
     Ageing in the Courtroom: Dialogue and Value-Images of Civil Offence
   
    In the space of my first posting, I’m trying to study the conversational map of a child-parent case - in a reconstructed form. The actor-persona are child, parent, judge and by default - the observer. Subsequently, I try to understand the ‘layout’ of this conversation and the necessary background of the participants and the reality-effect they elicit.
   
  Two problems specifically have been posed for the time being :
  1. In the legal space of spouse-parent conflict, how is the conflict sociologically different from general criminal or other civil cases? 
  2.While we do this, how do values or normative images of old age appear and influence our empirical legal approach?
   
  We begin with the dialogic reconstruction of a court drama: 
   
                              ‘A Fine Family’?
  Judge: what is your monthly income?
  Son: Rs. 10,000
  Judge: Are you the sole earner in your family?
  Son: Yes, no.
  Judge: Yes or no?
  Son: We are two brothers, I am the eldest, we live separately.
  Judge: I asked are you the sole earner in your family?
  Son: If I count my younger brother I am not. But given that we live separately I am.
  Judge: How many immediate dependent members are there in your family
..I mean among those who stay with you?
  Son: All are dependent on me - my wife, my son and my parents.
  Judge: Your father complains of mental and physical harassment metted out to him and his wife by you and your wife, is that correct?
  Son: No, if it were so why did he not allow the police to arrest me?
  Judge: Arrest you? Now why was that? There has been no decision on the case yet.
  Son: You can ask the ‘head’ police of our para, if you do not believe me.
   
  Judge adjourns the case for the afternoon and summons the head constable.
   
  Judge: What is this arrest  jhamela?
  Head Constable: Sir the old couple were being ill-treated for a long time, I had enquired in the neighbourhood; also prior to my enquiry  the old man had come to me pleading for help though he did not lodge a formal complaint .Whereupon I called the son and warned him that if in future he continued to mistreat his parents actions will be taken against him. However, within a week the old man returned with his old story. I asked him to go back home and rest assured. Next day when the grandson had left for school I came and tried to reason with the son. He was most discourteous. In order to threaten him I tried to arrest him. However, at that moment the old man burst in tears and started shouting and pleading. Ki bolbo judge babu oe amake dhamkaye dilo! (What shall I say, Judge sahib, he threatened me!)
  He said, ‘I had come to complain to you so that you could help me, not asked you to wreck my household. What is this State that can not look after its citizens?
              __________________________________________
       
   The reason why I chart this conversation, in minimally reconstructed form is that, through this we may realize the dialogical details of the so called family conflict.
   A murder, rape, theft, etc are criminal instances, almost in the manner of single episodes. Yes its origins can be long stretched, in order to become an offence a single outstanding deed must be performed. Again, it is true that such crimes can be performed on family members but the law shall not see them as belonging to the realm of family disputes but as crimes at large. But then what constitutes the category of family disputes/conflict? In my opinion one differentiating feature is that here the ‘ordinary small’ things if not done /performed will be taken as constituting a violation of familial duties or conversely doing  certain things shall mean an offence. The repetitious, ordinary everyday nature of  their occurrence separates them from the single big episodic nature of  large crimes.
   
  In this respect what constitutes as mistreatment towards the old parent? Beating, not providing food and medicine, not giving company, taunting and cursing, not allowing visits of relatives and friends, not allowing to watch favourite television programmes. Conversely what constitutes the category of a ‘corrupt son’ ?( the corrupt daughters are certainly not excluded.)  I shall enlist a few things which normally allows one to be branded corrupt in family terms, vis-à-vis, child-parent relations. These are, not providing  home, food and medicine  and of course cheating parents of their property or other monetary holdings. Thus as High Court judge Mr. Aseem Baneerjee states, child-parent  conflicts are basically conflicts related to  maintainance and property rights. However the more interesting part of judge Baneerjee’s observation is the subsequent markers he enlists for such a conflict, wherein the image of the corrupt son emerges more vividly.
   
  First, there is no doubt that such a turf is basically embedded in economic causes. The other two factors are, generation gap and preconceived notions, that is, of mistreatment. I suppose a discussion of the second cause is not required therefore I plunge into the third right away. By this Banerjee means that  before the actual ‘corruption begins, there exists a notion or fear of the same, and which he feels acts as a catalyst in fermenting the  deed. After marriage a son is not supposed to remain the same as he was before, this supposition can be empirical however it is normative as well. Within the family and outside in the society there is a tendency to suppose that now the earlier relations will undergo changes, and that too negative consequential changes. Banerjee further feels, based on his experience, that these conflicts generally arise with the eldest son. The eldest daughter-in-law marks the first intruder and thus hostility with her is more aggravated.
 Obviously he leaves scope for doubt by raising the question of discrimination between sons, one again supposes that the eldest is unfairly discriminated against the younger sons.
  So the corrupt son is the elder son who is married and upon the pronouncements of his wife treats his parents unfairly, to say the least.
  The above observations show that nothing is not per se empirically established- these our conscious unconscious presuppositions or lay observations. Moreover, a civil offence has  privacy as a guarantee; where as  plain criminal events have to smuggle in secrecy. But when a family feud enters the courtroom, it is imperative that facts now be established irrespective of the immunity of values relating to privacy, family image etc. How? With this question erupts the age old debate between morality and legality, between legal  positivism and legal moralism, between familial normativism and legalistic scientivism; simply put - between fact and value .
   
  The question of fact-value becomes important also when one party in the conflict belongs to the ‘traditionally’ vulnerable section. As old people do. In this, a case between child-parent is analogous to “feminist’ cases where the woman is seen as the vulnerable- the subaltern. The prior appreciation of vulnerability is a value that makes possible the validation of a relevant charge. In feminist jurisprudence, that women are weak and vulnerable acts as an apriori; the empirical details follow later. Taking into account the  conversation I chart above, I don’t doubt for a moment  with whom the reader’s sympathies would lie. The old parents would inevitably be pitied. Why? Why is it that as readers we don’t ask more questions. For instance, do the old couple really need financial help, what are the pressures on the adult child, in our case the son.
   
  Personally I rarely found myself asking these questions. A conflict between the old daddy and the young son? The decision is very simple, the son must be wrong. This however is a probability. As those ‘men-study’ sympathizers will tell you from their feminist encounters.
   
  Therefore while we made an appraisal of the presuppositions of a spouse-parent conflict, we saw that we have been unconsciously indoctrinated with the dose of certain images, of which we are passive consumers. Thus before I  embark upon analyzing the promised case study (finally)  what I propose to do, in my subsequent posting, is to study the cultural  imaging of old age and old people  and the way they are manufactured in the urban space of the city. Because values -after all -are validated culturally. 
   
   
     


				
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