The Delhi riots could not have come a worse times. The riots took place just when the US president and his family were being hosted for a state banquet by the Indian president, at the magnificent Rashtrapati Bhawan (Presidential Palace), the official residence of the president, just 20 km away.
The riots were not spontaneous and from all evidence it appears to have been engineered by few leaders, mostly belonging to the Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP). In fact, one could sense palpable tension building up ever since the government of India enacted The Citizenship (Amended) Act, 2019 (CAA) that had envisaged granting citizenship to the religiously persecuted minorities like Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, Jains, Sikhs and Parsis who had left Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, fearing religious persecution, and had sought refuge in India. The non-inclusion of Muslims in the CAA did not go well with the Muslim community.
Although the Act does not discriminate against Indian Muslims, the government’s explanation that Muslims were not included as they had not faced religious persecution in the three Islamic countries did not sit well with them.
The CAA protests have taken an altogether a new dimension: in what had started as a student protest in Jamia Millia Islamia University over CAA in Delhi, it has now spread to other parts of India. What started as a protest by the Muslims soon brought in in its fold members of the majority community who viewed the Act as being biased against Muslims.
The protests soon spread from Jamia to other parts of Delhi. The Muslim women staged peaceful protests in Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh. The peaceful protest is now going on for the last three months and has become the epicentre of anti-CAA movement. Many women from the majority community, activists and others have joined the protesters. The tactics of the women protesters by singing the India’s national anthem, flying the Indian flag, and reading passages from the Indian Constitution, which prohibits any discrimination against any citizen based on religion, has taken the wind out of the sails of the government, as they can no longer accuse the protesters as being anti-national. The government knows full well that any attempt to physically remove the protesters would invite international opprobrium. The Shaheen Bagh protest has now become a model on how to stage peaceful protests. It has also caught the imagination of people across the length and breadth of the country where similar peaceful protests are taking place.
Upon careful reading of CAA, it is clear that it will not affect the interests of the Indian Muslims. However, it can have a bearing on all those illegal Bangladesh Muslim immigrants who had illegally entered India from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). The Muslims fear that while the Bangladeshi Hindus would be given citizenship on the grounds of religious persecution, the illegal Muslim immigrants may be find it difficult to prove their citizenship, although they are staying in India for the last four decades. They fear that they may be deported. Although, how India will deport them is not clear as any such attempt will be foiled by Bangladesh. One shudders to think of what would happen to the fate of these illegal immigrants.
There is no clear estimate as to how many illegal immigrants are there in India. It is estimated that 10 million people had illegally entered India. It is, for this reason, the National Register of Citizens. The purpose of NRC is “to document all the legal citizens of India so that illegal immigrants could be identified and deported.”
The NRC list has been finalised for the Indian state of Assam where about 1.9 million people have been identified to have entered India illegally. The government now proposes to implement NRC in the rest of India.
Never before has the international media accused India of bringing discriminatory legislation that excludes Muslims. Many countries, including Islamic countries, which have friendly relations with India, have expressed their anguish against the killing of Muslims. They have also questioned the Modi government on the CAA and also for failing to protect the lives of Muslims in the Delhi riots. This has come at a time when the Indian Prime Minister has received accolades at the global stage for his foreign forward looking policy which has enabled India to build strong relations with several countries, including Islamic countries. Sadly, the Modi government has frittered away the gains by enacting the legislation and also for its failure to prevent the riots.
Immediately after Bharatiya Janta Party lost in the Delhi State elections, a local BJP leader was accused of engineering the attack against the anti-CAA protesters, which, unfortunately, led to a mob rampage on Muslims in the North East Delhi. The riots would not have happened if the leaders, mainly from the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party, had not indulged in giving hate speeches and provocative acts that triggered the violence.
Moreover, the delay in acting against such leaders gave credence to the widely held belief among the minority community that the Modi government was complicit in the matter. The role of the police is also being questioned as their timely intervention would have prevented deaths and destruction of property.
Credit goes to India’s National Security Adviser, Ajit Doval, who visited the riot-affected areas of Northeast Delhi and assured the people by giving his ‘word of honour’ that he would ensure that no further harm would come to them. His visit had a calming effect on the people.
Amid the mayhem, several stories have emerged where the Hindus had protected their Muslim neighbours by giving shelter to them in their houses. Similarly, many Muslims had ensured that the mobs did not destroy the temples located in their neighbourhood. These heartening stories make one believe in how both the communities have not allowed the mobs to destroy Delhi’s Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb (a term used as euphemism for syncretic Hindu-Muslim culture). India has always been a country that, for thousands of years, has been known for its religious pluralism for a multicultural heterogeneity.
In sum, the recent protests have shown that ordinary people have rejected all attempts by the vested interests to create fissures in the society. They are more concerned about issues like jobs, improvement of basic civic amenities, healthcare and education. The riots are a lesson for a few rabble-rousing leaders that instigating violence for garnering Hindu votes will no longer work. The mood of the country has changed: people are now looking for good governance and attempts to create fissures between communities will become counterproductive. This means that from now all the parties need to address real-time issues affecting the people and not bank on hate politics to garner votes. It is, for this reason, that Modi should act against all the perpetrators of the Delhi riots, including leaders from his own party, to stay relevant in Indian politics. If he fails to act, history will not be kind to him.
The writer is an independent columnist and commentator. He writes on socioeconomic and human rights issues