JOIN USDoes anyone remember that four short months ago India was in the grip of the largest, most diverse, most spirited civil protest movement in decades? You would be forgiven for having forgotten -- everyone’s ears are bleeding from 2020 hitting us over the head with a blunt object every few days. But we’re also being encouraged to forget, because the anti-CAA-NRC-NPR, pro-democracy protests were really killing the BJP’s vibe.
There was Prime Minister Modi, cooing homogenising thoughts into our subliminal consciousness – ‘One Nation, One Election’, ‘One Nation, One Market’, ‘One Nation, One Scoop of Ice Cream’ or whatever -- and there was the nation, displaying annoying pluralism.
If a pogrom in north-east Delhi debilitated those relentless civil protests, the coronavirus completely erased them (One Nation, One Fell Swoop). But they obviously rattled the BJP, so now, with civil society consumed by fear of contagion and staying off the streets if they can help it, the BJP is busy persecuting people in the hope of decapitating the spirit of protest. As ever, it is assiduously painting protesters as terrorists and dissent as sedition -- as ever, a poisonously anti-democratic response, fertilised by lies and propaganda.
The BJP clings to the pretence of democracy via the pretence of procedure, while subverting the former with parodies of the latter. See any number of stolen elections, peaceful protesters arrested under extreme laws, and media co-opted or silenced. Given how willingly it is buttressed by the cravenness and toxicity of all the other so-called pillars of democracy, you would think the government would be secure in its power, but that’s the thing about the bottomless psychic grudge that Hindutva carries -- any dissent, however tiny, scrapes at the wound; and nothing can ever sufficiently heal it.
Cue more grotesque procedure. Student Safoora Zargar, who made a speech at the protests, was denied bail after more than two months in jail. The judge’s order, according to legal scholar Gautam Bhatia, “takes the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, a law so stringent that it precludes judges from granting bail if even a “prima facie” case is made out, and then stretches its provisions from one side, and the facts from the other, to ensure that the prima facie case is made out. In the process, what it effectively does – as we shall see – is criminalise the exercise of one set of constitutional rights (the freedom of speech and expression), and deny the exercise of another (personal liberty).” Not even her pregnancy during a pandemic moved the judge’s mind. Yet, Kapil Mishra -- who made a speech inciting mob violence just before the Delhi riots -- is free.
Like all bullies, the BJP readily makes red-eyed moves on its own citizens and its weaker regional neighbours, but silently accepts China’s occupation of Indian territory.
Delhi Police have also charged AAP councillor Tahir Hussain, former JNU student Umar Khalid, and United Against Hate founder Khalid Saifi with a conspiracy allegedly hatched during a meeting on January 8. The charge-sheet says: “In that meeting, it was decided to have a big blast so that the Central Govt. could be shaken on the issue of CAA/NRC and so as to defame the country in the international arena...These riots were planned to be happened during or prior to the visit of US President Donald Trump in the month of February 2020.” (sic)
Besides its bizarre wounded tone, there’s a large hole in that theory. As The Quint pointed out, there was no public mention or report of Trump’s visit to India until January 13.
But who cares, right? Fans of Big Bang Theory love the sitcom’s science-obsessed geeks. Fans of Big Blast Theory love the way you can retro-engineer reality without too many people questioning you.
Or maybe there’s a better celluloid reference: Modi and Shah are our very own Nurse Ratched. We could call it One Nation, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.