Every repressive,
authoritarian regime targets some vulnerable minority as the primary means for
its violent control of the entire population. The communal regime of Modi-Shah
is no exception. There is no doubt that the primary goal of this regime is to
divide the Indian population by attacking the vulnerable muslim community so
that the resistance to its authoritarian control does not take a unified form.
The attack on the people of Kashmir and the plans to implement the CAA-NRC-NRP
schemes are the most recent culmination of the diabolical plan to essentially relegate
the entire muslim population as pariahs of the Indian state.
Just as we expect
the students, farmers, working people, and women to take to the streets when
they are attacked as a community, it is natural to expect the muslim population
of nearly 220 million people to fill the streets in India as a mark of protest
to the global attack on them. Setting aside the protests against CAA-NRC in
Assam, it is no wonder that the first brave public protests emanated from the muslim-dominated
campuses of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) and Jamia Milia University (Jamia)
in Delhi.
Somewhat
unexpectedly for the regime, the protests by AMU and Jamia students spread
rapidly to other non-muslim campuses and communities across the country in
Kolkata, Bangaluru, Hyderabad and others. The spread of protests showed that
the people of the country finally understood that, although the muslims are the
primary target of the regime, the regime basically plans to disenfranchise vast
sections of the people, especially the poor and the subaltern, to stall any
resistance to its abysmal economic failure and to prepare the way for a
fundamentalist Hindu Rashtra.
The striking
feature of the current protests is that the muslim population has finally gathered
the courage to emerge from its justified sense of diffidence and isolation to fearlessly
launch community-wide public protests. Sensing great setback to its plans, the
regime quickly adopted the tested technique of portraying any protest by muslims
as laced with terrorist violence. To implement it, they used the other tested
technique of first provoking peaceful mass protests with aggressive policeaction. Then they used planted agent provocateurs to attack the police with
stones etc. so that the police can now open fire, carry out brutal
lathi-charge, and engage in large-scale arrests to (a) break the protests with
violence and (b) portray the protests as Islamic terrorism.
This is
essentially what happened in the attack on students of Jamia and AMU and the
massive attack on vast assembly of protesters from Jama Masjid to Daryagunj.
The strategy was used widely in UP where the murderous police of the Bisht
govt. attacked demonstrators in the ‘sensitive’ muslim-dominated areas of
Lucknow, Kanpur, Meerut etc. to provoke large-scale violence and murder. The
mixing of violence with muslim-dominated protests changed the earlier narrative
of peaceful protests by citizens such that the media was compelled to shift the
attention to ‘violence’ and the form of protests associated by it. Amit Shah
thought that the situation was falling under control.
Away from this
familiar muslim-terrorism-police action scenario carefully nurtured by the
Sangh for the large few decades, a large group of women and children from the
backward, non-elite areas of Delhi simply occupied a public area, constructed
tents, arranged for food and shelter in the biting cold, and sat down on 15
December to an indefinite day-night vigil against the draconian acts. Finally,
a wonderful group of women, mostly housewives and low-level workers from the
subaltern muslim community, defied the image of the Islamic terrorist and reasserted
their citizenship with the rest of the subaltern masses that later gathered on
the steps and the streets of the Jama Masjid. Finally, a decisive section of
the fearless muslim community sat down to stand up to the pluralist heritage of
India.
The ground-breaking
resistance at Shaheen Bagh now forms the core of the resistance against the
draconian acts. The Modi-Shah regime dare not come near to this wonderful
gathering of ‘ordinary’ citizens. The rest of the India, especially elite
non-muslim women’s organizations and the secular political parties must now
form rings of solidarity around this core group in ever-expanding circles until
it surrounds the citadel of power. Hopefully, the ‘housewives’ of the country
are listening, watching and preparing to organise hundreds of Shaheen Baghs
across the country for the rest of India to join in. The thugs of the state
dare not approach these gatherings of subaltern power. Let us take it from
there.
Shaheen Bagh is
not just an endearing example. It is a change in the narrative for constructing
a just India. Perhaps the world.
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