What's Superior - Religion or Law

This is a very very tricky question; the answer more often than not would be different in different contexts. But it’s a really important question at this moment in India.

We all, in our lives as civilians are expected to follow or abide by two things as per our social setting, religion (am taking the discretion of treating caste also as a part or an equivalent of religion as it’s just another form of division) and law. There are two interesting cases that India at this moment is debating and arguing about, two completely different contexts but they both involve religion and law as the center piece of the argument and more importantly life of someone at stake as the backdrop.

Case 1 - A boy and a girl from certain rural parts of the country love and marry without approval of their families and society. As they married with in their family (they are siblings), it was out of question for them to seek approval of any of the above before their wedlock. The khap panchayat sees it as dishonor to it and ordered killing of the couple for this misdemeanor wholly supported and backed by the family of the guy/girl. When the doors of justice were knocked at some court, the honorable court condemned the ruling and act of the panchayat. (For complete story here)

Case 2 - A 20+ guy from across the border infiltrates into our country and mercilessly massacres dozens of lives with his companions and unfortunately (for him) survives while all his partners in crime die in the process of this mini war. After playing hide and seek in his response to the Special Court trying his case for almost a year and half, he finally is found to be guilty of the crimes he did which the entire world saw bits and pieces of every now and then on different forms of media. He manages to get a death sentence on several counts, bringing some sort of closure to the kith and kin of the victims. Majority population of the country is praying for his execution immediately without any delay for him to play any other games with the friendly law of the country (he was given the food he liked in jail, he got a lawyer for free to prove he was innocent, though all of us knew he wasn't innocent, more over he got such a royal treatment, on day of the verdict he appeared in the court in a nice white kurta pajama. Human rights people got him nice treatment from the cops & what not).

Both these cases deal with death as the verdict, in one it’s given by a caste based outfit and in another it’s given by the body of law in the nation. As far as I've known and learnt, no religion teaches to kill, none of them teach 'an eye for an eye' behavior. But still the khap panchayat managed to kill young guys and girls for loving and marrying in the name of honor, in multiple cases. Whose honor? For whose sake?  They only loved, they only got married, and it’s in order with the civil society's code of conduct. Why worry so much about caste? Is death the only way out? Will they get back their honor by killing those innocent, loving humans? All this was done and the law of the land couldn't do much, instead the khap panchayat advised the judicial body to not interfere, such a shame. This is a total disregard and ignominious behavior towards the legal system of the country. How do we punish them?

In the second case, though majority of the population wants kasab to be hanged ASAP, there are a lot of people who are actively lobbying towards banning or revoking capital punishment in the country. They say, our religion and leaders (spiritual) have not taught us to kill. We have always been taught to be merciful, to transform people from being wrong doers to being good humans. The judge while giving his judgment mentioned that reforming kasab is out of question, he is a killing machine and deserves only to die. In this case death has been awarded for killing, contrasting to the first case where death was given for loving. But now law sees killing as the only option while religion says reform is still a way that could be tried. We shouldn't start this game of tit for tat or tooth for tooth.

I am very confused as to what my opinion on the second case is, while am very clear to my mind that in the first case killing the young couple was the most brutal acts of crime post Hitler era. While the killing spree that kasab and his team went on for was as atrocious as it could have got, for which reason my mind says kill kasab, hang him, hang him now, don't give him any more time, he has already got 18 months of extra life, he should have been shot at site the day he was caught (not that we have got any extra ordinary links or clues while having him in our custody, he has been taught well enough to hide and die rather than speaking the truth). But heart says did your religion and gurus teach you to be supportive of violent acts? Agreed that this violence is to kill a killing machine and is also endorsed by law but don't we think so much even before hurting an ant in our daily life? Now we are talking about killing an adult. Will this do any good to further terrorist acts or will it deter them from pursuing such inhumane crimes?

The side affects of executing or not executing him could be any of the following as far as my mind can think.

1. If he is not hanged, his handlers would use this as an example to enroll many more kasab's into their gang by assuring them their lives even if they were caught (just like kasab).
2. If he is not hanged, they could do a kandhar type hijacking they did few years back to get him free and then we'd lose both justice and may be lives of our loved ones as a few paid their lives during kandhar.
3. If he's not hanged, we'd have to take care of another terrorist in our already overcrowded jails, we'd be spending money on his life for several decades, that money could be used for some developmental activity in the country to stop terrorism. We have already spent a lot doing a fair trail while keeping him alive and in the pink of his health.

1. If he's hanged, may be LeT may plan another attack to show retaliation and revenge(his hanging is a non incident for them to cut down their terrorism, they sent him with a plan for him to die after the attack, unfortunately for them their plan failed in his case causing some distress)
2. If he's hanged the confidence level of the Indian citizen in the law of the land would increase manifold (it already has to a great extent as we tried kasab very fairly and are giving him what he deserved best - death)
3. If he's hanged may be many other criminal outfits will take a lesson out of it and slow down on their delinquencies.

There can be many more arguments for and against the life of this animal in the form of a human. But I am not really able to decide what’s superior to me, Religion or Law; head says the killer doesn’t deserve to live but heart asks, is that the only way out? This is a real life test and let law take its own course and religion do its own thing. After all law says – Satyamave Jayete and religion says – Live and Let Live. Neither is worth ignoring, so let’s just be truthful and accommodate nice things in our life, as truth has won its battle and justice has been done, now it’s a test to our religious beliefs, is this man worth to let live? I don’t have an answer, do you?

Today’s Favorite Line – There is anger or sadness behind every smile (mostly)

Today’s Favorite Song – So Sick (Ne-Yo)