It is a frontal attack on democracy, an audacious attempt to undermine the rule of law and an open attempt to garner illegitimate advantage by violent intimidation.
The senseless torching of public buses, the devastation of government property and the vicious sundering of a policeman’s skull is not dissent; the reckless violence that jeopardizes schoolchildren in school vans and puts lives of bus commuters at risk is not lawful protest. It is the ugly face of anarchy. The violent protests over the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) is a frontal attack on democracy, an audacious attempt to undermine the rule of law and an open attempt to garner illegitimate advantage by violent intimidation.
Democracy is not a free for all where anything and everything goes. It is an orderly system whereby a people’s mandate is channelled into law via Parliament; a system that also provides for dissent albeit in a civilized manner via peaceful public protest, expressions via media and recourse to the courts. Holding the government hostage by indulging in senseless violence is not one of them.
Youth is a wonderful and idealistic part of human life. However, the temptation to blindly romanticise all actions of students must be resisted; we cannot give blanket approval to anything and everything that they do. CJI Bobde rightly remarked: “Just because they happen to be students, it doesn’t mean they can take law and order in their hands.”
Rather than orchestrating street-side brawls, universities as centres of learning would be better off conducting scholarly debates on the CAA.
Having said that, the government must be cautious in handling the CAA related disturbances: a ham-handed approach must be avoided. The detention of apolitical personalities like Ram Guha and others serves no purpose apart from highlighting and inflaming the issue. The government could have done without it.
The foremost lie that needs to be nailed is that the CAA discriminates against lawful Muslim Indian citizens. It does not. It in no way disenfranchises the overwhelming majority of India’s 200 million strong Muslim population who happen to be lawful residents.
Muslim migrants who have illegally entered India for economic reasons or otherwise constitute anywhere between 1-2% of Muslims in the NRC figures from Assam (19 lakh that include people of all religions). These illegal migrants have been excluded from the ambit of the CAA.
To treat a Hindu, Sikh or Christian fleeing persecution and sometimes even death in these countries on par with a Muslim voluntarily and moving sans visa into India for economic reasons or otherwise is different from the former case.
This reality must sink in, moderate voices in the Muslim community must prevail and it is desirable that the broader Muslim community who are all citizens come out openly to support this bill.
The fact that the most violence was centred around the West Bengal districts of Malda, Murshidabad, Uttar Dinajpur, Howrah and some areas in South 24 Parganas and North 24 Parganas is ominous: for these are the very districts that have exhibited the most demographic changes in the last few decades most likely due to illegal migration.
Attention was drawn to this phenomenon in these specific districts way back in the1990s by T.V. Rajeswar, an IPS officer, Padma Vibhushan awardee and ex-Governor of West Bengal in a series of articles in the Hindustan Times (“Creation of a New State”, 7,8 and 9 February 1996; also quoted by Arun Shourie, Right on Course, 9 October 2004. Indian Express) wherein he warns: “There is a distinct danger of another country, speaking predominantly Bengali, emerging in the eastern part of India in the future, at a time when India might find itself weakened politically and militarily.”
The violence in West Bengal therefore has sinister implications.
More disturbing than the immediate violence is the long-term implications for the Constitutional framework of the nation by the utterance of a host of Chief Ministers including Mamata Banerjee and Pinarayi Vijayan. The dare not to implement the CAA goes against the Constitutional directive that laws enacted in Parliament are accepted and implemented by all states; if not it would result in total chaos and undermine the very process of democracy. Such statements need to be condemned summarily.
In conclusion, this unruly protest violates every tenet of our democracy; it is an exhibition that marginalises the plight of persecuted minorities, one that is fuelled by misinformation and plays inadvertently into the hands of anti-national elements waiting for an opportunity to exploit. It must be called out for what it is.