Suddenly, it seems India is exploding again. After the abolition of Art 370, which was more of a dud bomb from the detractors’ point of view, it was almost certain that the naysayers would be waiting for something explosive to showcase their anti-India flavour. But even they wouldn’t have expected the protests over a law, the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) 2019 which had seen four years of legislative action to generate such pent-up energy. As many as six Chief Ministers say they won’t implement it as if they have a choice. And detractors of ‘India First’ of all hues from mainstream marginalised political parties to armchair communists, from wannabe student leaders to plain hoodlums, lumpen elements and fear mongers, the protests look like a rainbow of what India is not.
The CAA is specific and direct. The citizens who are minorities and are religiously persecuted in the three neighbouring countries which call themselves Islamic Republics would get Indian citizenship following a certain procedure. Then, where is the question of India getting destroyed in this simple act as the Bharat Bachao rally of Congress seems to suggest? Are we not a country where 80% are still Hindus? Are we not a country who had taken in refugees from all other religions including the one that is protesting now? Are we not the country where around 20% people belong to other religions and live and prosper peacefully? Shouldn’t we stand by our brothers of faith when they are being mercilessly persecuted? Have we not given citizenship to many Muslims from other countries? Are we making an exception in this case by excluding certain people? These are the questions floating about the nation now; and to borrow Bob Dylan, “the answer my friend in blowing in the wind”, which only if we choose to see.
It’s important to know who are these people protesting and what is behind it. Besides the number of people who will get benefit out of the CAA, the real numbers are the people who have somehow sneaked into India and are now trying to blend into the citizenry in general. For all practical purposes, these illegal aliens are talking like citizens, walking like citizens and now protesting like citizens. What chutzpah! Where do they get such courage to throw firebombs at our forces and set our Government property on fire?
Here lies the Achilles Heel of a soft state which the Modi Government is trying to harden. The real force behind the protest are the vote bank seekers, who having lost the faith of the nation, now pin their hope on these rootless aliens. Take the Congress for example. After the 2019 poll debacle, they now spend their energy to spread hatred against India abroad in cohort with the exiled Leftist intelligentsia who lecture in big universities and act as theoreticians for the Maoists. Take the case of the TMC. Badly shaken in General Elections, it sees ‘Lotus’ in every event that the nation takes for establishing itself in the world. So, the lotus eater is suddenly all agog with anti-India fervour and leads a march backed by illegal aliens to retain whatever vestige of power she could even at the cost of the nation. The other smaller parties are caught in a quandary and take illogical decisions which ultimately dilute their credibility. The Sena, for instance, is caught in an ideological conundrum in its hunger for power. The same is the case of the SP and the DMK. The real cause of the protest is not the CAA; it’s the survival of the principles of appeasement and power at any cost.
But the sufferers are the people of India who after tolerating the antinational protests are still labelled as intolerants by the same people who now fill the streets. They perhaps forget that the principle of equality as enshrined in Article 14 is meant for only citizens and those who are in this country and have not been conferred the rights of a citizen cannot claim the same right by default. The Chief Ministers who show bravado and populism by refusing to implement a Central law, that too in a subject on which the Federal Government has exclusive jurisdiction (Entry 17-List-1 Central List Art 246), should once read the Constitution by which they all swear while taking oath.
This is not the time to take sides but to introspect. What happened to the minorities in those three countries where their share in population came down from 20-odd percentages to less than two in a span of a half century? Where have all these people vanished and why? And compare it with what has become to the numbers of the so-called minority in this country. The contrast is stark. Today, as a citizen, I must ask if I would accept slow ethnic cleansing in the so-called pure States and sit quiet or take a least disruptive action of granting the persecuted shelter in the land of their origin. We have chosen to forget the lands of Taxila, the Mohenjo-Daro, Harappa and the Bamiyan Buddhas or the Sharda Peeth. At least, let’s not forget these people for history’s sake. Or we will be a truncated nation forever.
For the large numbers now rioting on the streets and a few leaders behind who chose the seemingly easier route to power, time has come to cast their lot either with the ‘New India’ or the old divisive India where appeasement rather than national priorities ruled the roost. For, if they support, with them; if they don’t, without them; and if they oppose, despite them, India is determined to move ahead.
(Dr Samantsinghar is State secretary, BJP, Odisha, and a former college teacher)