We Need to Dig Trenches Before Phase
Two of State Terror Is Unleashed
Jawhar Sircar
(6th March, 2020, The Wire)
Last year in December, when agitations against the
discriminatory Citizenship Amendment Act had just begun, in an article
published in The
Wire, I had
stated:
“No one can predict how long the public anger will be
sustained and how the Modi-Shah duo will retort, and with what ferocity and
vindictiveness. One prays that communal conflicts do not break out in this
charged atmosphere or are even manufactured to split the movement.”
Now that this riot has been successfully operationalised
and lives lost, but no split between Hindu and Muslim protester could be
engineered, we need to analyse what we are really up against. Over the last
several weeks of sleepless nights, the issue has metamorphosed from independent
protests against the Bill to the law to a much wider nation-wide,
multi-religious struggle against authoritarianism and communalism.
Three hated abbreviations – CAA, NRC, NPR – finally
brought out the hitherto-cautious but harassed Muslims onto the streets, sick
as they were of five years of endless torment. He found immediate and
wholehearted support from secular India that suddenly sprang out of the dark
that it had been pushed into by aggressive majoritarianism. They waved the
national tricolour everywhere with patriotic fervour, to swish away fond hopes
of those very same mischievous elements who had opposed the adoption of this
flag to taint with suspicion the nationalism of all Muslims.
What is more fascinating is that ordinary Muslim women,
housewives with babies in arms and angry young educated girls, who had never
before stood up to state power, took an unprecedented lead. The younger
elements took special care to flaunt a hijab over their heads and shoulders to
demonstrate that they could very well be modern, revolutionary and Muslim
simultaneously, without any contradiction — defeating the game to wean them away
with relief from ‘triple talaq’.
Lakhs of first-time protesters, both young and old,
joined the demonstrations. They demonstrated that they had, indeed, conquered
the fear of fear and that itself worried the regime the most. Indian history
will not easily forget the Sikhs and Hindus who joined the protesters as a mark
of solidarity, setting up food camps and providing blankets to fight the biting
cold of a harsh winter.
From Shaheen Bagh to Park Circus and a dozen other spots
all over the country, the air is thick with endless tales of camaraderie, as
countless Hindus, Sikhs, Christians and Buddhists rejected the special status
offered to them by the CAA, to stand beside victimised Muslims.
But having said so, we also need to seriously interpret
the events of the last 10-12 weeks and realise that the Delhi riots constitute
the first major response of a regime that scorns democratic discourse and its
patience is running out. The violent masked storm-troopers sent to smash and
beat up dissenters at Jawaharlal Nehru University was only a short trailer of
this regime’s new PPP or Private Public Partnership model, under which messy
violence is outsourced to experienced goons.
The state guarantees them immunity from police action and
the present JNU case is a testament to this. The regime also expects judges to
be compliant or face an overnight
transfer. To feed the belligerence of a section of trigger-happy
policemen, the PPP state then targets them to selective sites like Jamia Millia
Islamia and Aligarh Muslim University and other trouble spots in Guwahati,
Mangalore, Lucknow or Chennai.
It is imperative to realise that Modi is not Indira 2.0.
While dictatorial Indira Gandhi surely crushed all opposition and, like Modi,
always smelt conspiracies everywhere, she did not inject poison into the body
polity that outlived her. Modi’s legacy may take decades of painful
chemotherapy to contain, even after his dispensation becomes just a bad memory.
He is the first to accord respectability to communalism, and though future
India may cap the holes from where racial reptiles emerged, they will still be
slithering in rage, under the ground.
The second difference is that Narendra Modi certainly
does not share Nehru’s or Vajpayee’s commitment to democracy and no one can
predict how he will behave in the face of a debacle. Even autocratic Indira
took the electoral rout of 1977 in her stride, but after two unbroken decades
in power, at the state and central level, Modi and his extreme proximity to the
army are both worrisome. Never before has the Indian public been taught to
celebrate and worship the armed forces and the ‘nation’, just because this
regime desperately needs to cover up its complete disappearance from the
freedom struggle.
The recent riots are actually the regime’s limited-over
response to the nation-wide agitation against the attempt to tamper with
citizenship laws. It is also home minister Amit Shah’s manner of expressing
displeasure at the voters of Delhi for rejecting
the BJP in the recent polls, by giving India a
dress rehearsal of how vulnerable Hindus are in the face of Muslim
belligerence, that led to the death of two police officers.
This narrative obviously ignores basic facts, that are
known even to international media outlets, that it was mainly
Muslims who were slaughtered. So, the
foreign media is told to shut up. Those who have handled riots know how
critical the role of gathering intelligence is as soon as the first wisp is in
the air, and how swift pre-emptive arrests can prevent a conflagration.
These were not only absent, but BJP strongman Kapil Mishra was
allowed to pounce on the agitators at Jaffrabad and Chand Bagh on Sunday,
February 23 — which directly led to the riots. All the rioting was,
interestingly, concentrated in a small part of North East Delhi, locally called
trans-Jamuna or Jamuna-paar.
This thin slice that lies to the east of the Jamuna
river, contains less than 10% of Delhi’s voters and assembly seats and it is
here that the BJP recently won 6 of its 8 seats, with one more seat close to
it. All the riot-affected areas like Khajuri Khas, Maujpur, Karwal Nagar,
Seelampur, Bhajanpura are in this BJP stronghold. It is here that the police acted
like mute spectators when victims, mainly Muslims, were killed or grievously
injured, and their homes, shops and vehicles set on fire. The rest of Delhi
that voted against the BJP was not, or could not be, set on fire — not even
Shaheen Bagh and Jamia Nagar.
The point is that Kapil Mishra’s incendiary speeches and
tweets violated half a dozen punishable sections of the Indian Penal Code, not
only now but even months ago, when he led mobs shouting “Gaddaaro ko goli maro”
(kill the traitors). He is given a free pass for such remarks because he
represents the core beliefs of the BJP and the RSS. He may well be using a
wildly-successful, punishment-free formula of ‘riot and bloodshed’ to catapult
himself from state to the national level.
Incidentally, had conscientious judges of the Delhi high
court not actually viewed the recordings of Kapil Mishra’s provocative
speeches, and had two refreshingly-bold judges of the Supreme Court not pulled
up the Delhi Police, the riots would have continued unabated. The most glaring
transformation that one notices in the highest courts is that justice and
relief appear to be very judge-centric and emanate from a few, while many
deliver homilies, without actually fast-forwarding the restoration of human
rights. Tragic.
To cut to the chase, we are in for a long haul and need
to dig our trenches before selective arrests begin and phase two of state
terror is unleashed. But, any going back on the citizenship issue will surely
lead to further depredations on badly-cornered Muslims and the vast majority of
Hindus who still believe in tolerance and plurality — even if many voted for
Modi for what they perceived to be his leadership qualities and the
multi-multi-crore big-capital financed convincing campaign.
The fact that Hindu and Sikh protesters have
wholeheartedly adopted the very provocative slogan ‘Azadi‘, the poem ‘Hum Dekhenge‘
of the Pakistani anti-establishment poet, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, and even Varun
Grover’s ‘Hum
Kagaz Nahin Dikhayenge‘ has reassured Muslims of support and also
thumbed the nose of the Hindi-Hindu hardliners in the battle for the
Indo-Gangetic heartland of India. Even so, the present non-political,
crowd-financed agitations have their limitations and we cannot gloss over these
issues.
Yet what overrides such mature worries is that it is not
just a protest, but has started resembling what Jean Jacques Rousseau described
as the ‘General Will’ when people unite selflessly at certain historic
intervals for the greater common good, rising far above concerns of the self.
The three-month agitation is thus plural India’s long-awaited reply to communal
terror and to the blitzkrieg of legislative bulldozing, thanks to a
self-seeking, fragmented and rudderless opposition.
It is rumoured that in some states, the police are using
non-police weapons while firing at protesters so that casualties cannot be
traced back to them. It is also realised that the sheer sadistic brutality with
which UP and Karnataka crushed democratic agitations may well be repeated. But
these do not deter them and may actually encourage others to join the movement.
This unfazed inner strength of Gandhi’s satyagrahis had
amazed the world, as the demonic use of state power did not frighten them.
History may be re-enacted by these agitators during
Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary, when the Modi government only pays
lip service to him and many Hindu fanatics openly worship his killer, Godse.
The long lathis that police used to crush dissent and smash evidence-recording
CCTV cameras are not dreaded any more. Fear is not a deterrent for those who
have given their hearts and soul for what they believe.
We appear to be witnessing a historic phase when
‘society’ transcends the individual. This is when the community becomes the
centre of all social activities, not the hearth, when, life, laughter, meals,
joy and sorrow are all shared in common. We see it somewhat at a few dedicated
places of worship and in genuine community service, but a protest camp is much
more serious.
What gives us hope is the sheer vibrancy of the culture
of protest that has burst out and the deep involvement of the participants.
These spawn a spontaneous creativity that is exemplified by defiant poems,
challenging songs and teasing slogans that resound everywhere. Equally visible
is provocative graffiti and imaginative public art.
What it all hopefully means is that the individual
protester has subsumed himself into the ‘greater cause’ and is now willing to
fight it out till the end, irrespective of consequences.
https://thewire.in/politics/delhi-riots-caa-nrc
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