The basic rule for not getting duped is “if it sounds too good to be true, it is not true.” So a friend of mine asked me whether Milinda Moragoda is too good to be true. If we believe him will we get duped?

Being highly intelligent, my friend supplied the answer himself: “He says all the right things, except for his advocacy of the death sentence.

This got me thinking. I had not really given much thought to the death sentence. I am not the kind of guy who’d let a single policy position get in the way of a good woman or man getting my support. Beggars cannot be choosers.

Still, this seemed to be something of a litmus test for my intelligent friend, so I looked up the Milinda Panha, the ancient Buddhist text which recorded the philosophical exchanges between the Greek Bactrian King Menander (Milinda) and the erudite monk Nagasena 2,000 years ago in what is present-day Afghanistan:

“ . . how, venerable Nagasena, is a robber to be subdued?”
“Thus, great king: if deserving rebuke let him be rebuked. If deserving a fine let him be fined, if deserving banishment let him be banished, if deserving death let him be put to death.”
“Is then, Nagasena, the execution of robbers a part of the doctrine laid down by the Tathagata?”
“Certainly not, O king. Whosoever may be put to death, he does not suffer execution by reason of the opinion put forward by the Tathagata. He suffers by reason of what he himself has done.” (Bhikkhu Pesala, The Debate of King Milinda. New Delhi, 1991, p. 56.)
I have immense respect for the wisdom embodied in this text, but this was so not persuasive. According to this logic, Amila Sandaruwan, the child who suffered and died because his mother threw him in the river from the Kalutara Bridge, brought it upon himself. Not his mother, not his father, not the child protection authorities, not the politicians who failed to create the social safety net to catch this fragile life. But perhaps the Venerable Nagasena’s justification had greater resonance for the King’s namesake…
But not so much as to include it in the justice section of his manifesto:

• Build a justice system which works for the citizen, not for vested interests
• Foster a society which protects the rights of citizens who in turn recognize their obligations to society
• Make the law work for everyone so that there is respect rather than fear of the law
• Overhaul the administration of justice system through legislation if necessary to speed up the delivery of justice
• Ensure that law enforcement and prosecution work and that criminals are brought to justice
• Place a special emphasis on addressing the problems of child abuse and sexual harassment
• Encourage implementation of laws against domestic violence and sexual harassment
• Rehabilitation programmes for substance abuse and alcoholism
• Develop a new generation of lawyers and jurists who can meet the challenges of the 21st century
• Legislate the Victims and Witness Protection Bill
• Bring into effect a new Equal Opportunities Bill with necessary safeguards

In fact, the death penalty seems to be out of sync with the Agenda For Influencing The Government, especially the line about wanting the law to be respected, not feared.

There are, as far as I can tell, two basic rationales for the death penalty. One is to create fear. That is why I have always thought that the Americans should televise their executions and Chinese should have firing squads on Tian’anmen Square; secretively doing away with criminals seems to miss the whole point.

This is where the Kandyan kings got it right, at least in terms of feudalism. King Sri Vikrama Rajasimha’s (1798-1815) executions were spectacular: children pounded to death in mortars, offenders ripped apart by Kitul trees, elephants stomping the enemies of the king/state to death, women drowned in the Kandy Lake, and so on. If not for the bit about wanting people to respect, not fear the law, I would have thought Moragoda was trying to get in line with the new feudalism.
Feudalism, old and new, requires fear.

The other rationale is that some people just cannot be reformed so they should be killed. It is more or less settled science that paedophiles cannot be reformed (this does not extend to other crimes, murder and such). So short of perpetual incarceration, chemical castration, electronic anklets, and all sorts of convoluted and expensive means, execution is the only way to prevent the recurrence of paedophile behaviour.

Milinda Moragoda was the Minister of Justice who disclosed that 29 percent of all cases before the Sri Lankan High Courts involved child abuse (in some judicial districts approaching 50 percent) and flagged it as a high-priority issue. If the advocacy of the death penalty came as a reaction to learning that paedophilia was rampant in the Dharmadvipa, I could very well understand it. But he was advocating the death penalty long before that. So the conclusion is that Milinda Moragoda is not too good to be true. Most of his ideas seem pretty good, some even brilliant. Except one. He thereby passes the dupe test.