Justifying lesser evil with greater

“A few were shot dead, a few were stabbed to death and the remaining few were beaten to death,” this is not a famous dialogue from any of the movies in stead it was a well-known dialogue from the controversial Manakadu speech of M. M. Mani, CPI (M) Idukki district secretary. On May 25, 2012, there was a meeting held at Mankadu, in Thodupuzha town and the district president was expounding his party’s stand on the political murder of T. P. Chandrashekaran, the president of revolutionary Marxist Part.

With his contentious speech, M. M. Mani was unfolding the stories of political murder, vengeance and the slaughtering of political arch enemies that political parties carry out to strengthen the parties and to remain in power. We can’t conclude his controversial speech as just a slip of tongue, invariably all the parties have eliminated their political arch enemies.

Here, what we should understand is the context in which M. M. Mani made his statement. He was justifying his party’s stand on T. P. Chadrashekaran’s gruesome murder that, this sort of butchering is not anything new to his party and this slaughtering is nothing when compared with the series of political assassinations that the part had already executed and in fact that made him say that “A few were shot dead, a few were stabbed to death and the remaining few were beaten to death,”   

Killing one single person is being considered as a lesser evil when compared with the carnage of so many people so in fact M. M. Money was justifying the bloodshed of T. P. Chadrashekaran, as the party had already slaughtered so many political arch enemies. So he was telling public that they need not to make a fuss out of the killing of T. P. Chadrashekaran.  Thus, M. M. Mani was justifying lesser evil with greater.

M. M. Mani’s contentious speech is just an instance to establish the fact that we all justify our lesser evil either with our own greater evil or greater evil committed by others. Often, we employ this kind of justification and argument in our daily life to keep our stand clear and project us spotless.