Uma Bharti’s response to Indore tragedy and the erosion of state responsibility

By Prof. Hemantkumar Shah* 

The deaths of at least fifteen people in Indore after consuming contaminated water, and the serious illness of many others, constitute a grave failure of governance. In response to this tragedy, former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Uma Bharti issued a statement that, according to Gujarat Samachar, included the following assertions: those responsible for the deaths must atone for their sins; they must seek forgiveness from the victims; the guilty must be punished; and this grave sin requires severe penance.

The language used by Uma Bharti is not a minor detail—it is central to how responsibility is being framed. Of her four points, only one properly belongs to the domain of governance: that the guilty must be punished. The remaining three are steeped in religious and archaic moral vocabulary that has no place in a modern constitutional state.

The first and most important question is: who will punish the guilty? The answer can only be the state. Yet in practice, punishment in such cases is often reduced to the transfer or suspension of a few officials. This is a serious distortion of the idea of justice. Suspension usually comes with continued partial salary, and even dismissal from service often amounts to little more than an economic setback. What is required is strict punishment that sets an example, but such accountability is rare. This is a harsh reality that urgently needs correction if “good governance” is to mean anything at all.

Equally problematic is the repeated use of the word “sin.” Sin is a religious concept. A former chief minister clad in religious symbolism should at least know that no criminal law in the country uses the term “sin.” The legal term is “crime,” and crimes are punished by the state. When responsibility is framed as sin, punishment is implicitly shifted from the state to God. But God is invisible, and no one can point to any concrete divine punishment. This rhetorical move effectively dilutes state accountability. In the context of governance, terms like negligence, mismanagement, or administrative failure are appropriate—not sin.

The word “penance” raises even more troubling questions. Who is supposed to perform this penance, and according to what standard? There is no measurable or enforceable definition. If offenders perform some self-declared penance, does that settle the matter? Does it imply that the state need not punish them at all? If that is the logic, then one must ask: what is the state for, and what are laws for?

Uma Bharti has also said that the guilty should seek forgiveness from the victims. This, too, is deeply flawed. Who should ask for forgiveness, in what manner, and at what time? What if the victims or their families refuse to forgive? Does forgiveness absolve criminal liability? Can an apology replace punishment? In any system based on the rule of law, the answer must clearly be no.

Human beings created states, laws, and systems of justice precisely because they realized that divine justice, if it exists at all, is neither visible nor reliable in worldly affairs. That is why crimes are punished by courts, not by gods. Concepts such as sin, forgiveness, and penance may belong to the personal or religious sphere, but they have no legitimate role in state governance.

Our Constitution does not use the word “sin” anywhere. The deliberate use of such religious language in response to a governance failure is therefore not only misleading but also unconstitutional in spirit. By framing a public health disaster in religious terms, Uma Bharti diverts attention from institutional responsibility and weakens the demand for real accountability.

In that sense, the greater wrong lies not merely in administrative failure, but in the attempt to mask it with religious moralizing. And if one insists on using the language of sin, then it is precisely this evasion of constitutional responsibility that constitutes the gravest one—though, as experience tells us, no divine punishment is likely to follow.

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*Senior academic based in Ahmedabad