Every law has a purpose. To control every aspect of each person’s life is not one of them. Law cannot make you behave a certain way or tell you to walk in a straight line. Everybody wants to live in a peaceful world. But how do we decide the cost of that peace? Does peace come out of fear of punishments for every misstep that you take? We might come to think that peace comes from freedom. But then all the deranged perverts and criminal minded people shall also have freedom. We don’t want that. Here we start to make rules to prevent the evil side of humanity from destroying our peace. Slowly, we realise that people are lying in their businesses- they say one thing and do the opposite. How can we deal with a person who gets into an agreement and doesn’t honor it later on. So, we make more rules so that people don’t step away from their contracts. One after the other, many aspects of human lives are carefully put together in the forms of laws and rules, and people are put at the risk of penalty if they keep doing those things. Wives were not treated well in their matrimonial homes- there were repeated incidents of suicides due to lack of dowry, domestic violence and other forms of torture upon them from husbands and in-laws. A grey area was found which was letting the evildoing in-laws roam scot-free. So, laws were made about dowry-deaths, cruelty to wives, and domestic violence. Howsoever misuse these provisions may have seen, but there has been a positive impact from these laws.
Laws are only made where a human act is causing problems in the society, which disturbs the balance of life. On top of it, law is only made where these acts are deliberate. Law cannot go to the extent of punishing a person for not touching feet of his parents, or for not keeping in touch with them on a regular basis. Many of human actions can cause deep emotional and mental pain, but we cannot frame and codify them into laws hoping that it would solve the problem. Law cannot force you to care. Although when your negligence can cause someone’s death, law makes it punishable. As members of civil society, law expects a bare minimum from human beings- to not hurt another person physically, and in some ways, mentally too. Law cannot tell manufacturers to only provide best quality products. But it can penalise them for a sub-standard one which falls below the threshold of acceptability. Law cannot force citizens to respect every person of every race, color, religion, but it can penalise some disrespectful acts which are unacceptable. Crimes like hurting religious sentiments are quite subjective in nature, and traditionally should not be a law; but as we said earlier- every law serves a purpose. In a country like India which diversity living in every locality, laws like these serve as a means to ensure that there is a lawful outlet to make sure people respect the diversity. Perhaps some laws that exist today do not qualify the tests to be a law as per the established jurisprudence (science of law), but law is a dynamic concept. It keeps evolving with people’s needs.
Law cannot make turn a group of individuals good human beings. A society that keeps requiring more and more laws to regulate itself, is suffering from many issues answers of which are not located in law. Still they try. Not every country suffers from the problem of female foeticide, so, they have no need to stop individuals from determining the sex of the child in mother’s womb. India may still need for some time- probably until such time when there is not a single unborn child aborted for the reason of being a female.