Panopticonism in Indian Law Schools

Panopticonism in Indian Law Schools

Every law school is a penitentiary of sorts. Freedom guaranteed by a ‘curfew time’ is no freedom. It is a safety valve. The sorry state of affairs with regard to student involvement, though much touted Student Bar Bodies are constituted, is an open secret.

Foucalt might like to liken the castigating of non performers in law schools to the ‘jailing’ of intellectually differently-abled people to mad houses. If there is a tower in every jail to oversee the inmates and conformity is effectuated through strict measures of retribution then the cut throat competition for an extra line on that document screaming aloud of one’s achievements is nothing but the same.

The free mind is a closeted commodity that more often than not is disparaged such that the organised mind resorts to playing truant in certain situations culminating into a rebellion of sorts. It is very much a non sequitur that an adult of reasonable mind needs to be subjected to constant supervision by a system and a model that necessarily is built to stifle dissent or resentment of sorts.

‘And thus I clothe myself in naked villainy

With old odd ends, stol’n forth of holy writ:

And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.’

What then is the stairway to heaven? Indulgence in a little establishment-bashing maybe?

Do not forget that in this setup, designed to be nothing more than an exercise in Panopticonism, forced conformity is designed to be portrayed as ‘free will’.

Bentham convinced himself before indulging in a slumber that ghosts were a figment of imagination and not the reality. However, in the world of Indian law schools the system is the ghost. We need to convince ourselves. The race is to basically see who can convince oneself better of its non-existence. This convincing is necessary. Otherwise, how does an analytical mind with a ‘clear stream of reason’ submit to the ‘dead habit’ of conformity with a system flawed at the very core?

‘How use doth breed a habit in man.’

The CGPA is the watchman. The system is the penitentiary. We are all mad men.

Time is the essence of this contract through which we have sold our souls to the system.

‘In time we hate that which we often fear.’