December 2019.Economic slowdowns are tough to digest and terrible to live through. But eventually, the path to recovery is clear as the scars of past recessions make for good maps. But it is when a nation is at the precipice of losing its moral compass, that things can spin off the axis into a place that no one wanted to go or knows how to come back from.
The idea of India is based on plurality. Secularism is more than a word inserted into our constitution’s Preamble; it’s the very essence of what makes us, us. Crucially, it is also not something to appease Muslims with. Fact is, throughout the world, India has wielded immense soft power precisely because our founding fathers were inclusive and chose neutrality as the state’s religion. We are Gandhi’s India, home to all those who chose to stay back during partition. Without any lines thereafter. Which brings us to the hopscotch called the CAA-NRC.
There are many issues with the double whammy of the CAA and the NRC, and here is an incomplete summary of the horrors. Protesters say that the Citizenship Amendment Act is against the spirit of the secular nature of our constitution, as it makes religion a criterion for citizenship. The ‘genius’ legal pirouette is that by itself it might not violate the constitution in letter – its defendants remind us that the constitution doesn’t apply to foreigners. The incendiary potential of the CAA becomes apparent once you combine it with the NRC. If say, a Hindu and a Muslim are unable the prove their citizenship under the NRC, the former might be saved under the CAA while the latter can be rendered homeless, stateless. ‘Less’, in the worst possible way.
Then there’s the petulant-but-pertinent point of the 2019 election results – If de facto, everyone has to prove their citizenship, then how are the votes received valid? Unless it’s the convenient notion that at the time of the elections, everyone was an Indian citizen – and only now, once the power equation has been settled, do they need to produce the proof.
Others draw attention to the fact that the very logic of the Acts is elastic – some countries are in, others aren’t. Persecuted minorities from 3 Islamic countries of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh are in, but persecuted Hindus from say, Sri Lanka are out. The government says the CAA specifically addresses the people affected by the partition and hence doesn’t look at other countries. But then it excludes the Balochis and the Ahmadis, who were part of ‘undivided India’ and whose persecution is well documented. Even the idea that persecuted Sikhs, Hindus, Jains and Parsees will find refuge in India presupposes that India is their natural home – but by exclusion, not so for Muslims. Here’s another example – everywhere else, the CAA-NRC combo potentially means illegal Muslims are out – but given the fears that Bangladeshi Hindus granted citizenship will change the ethnic demography of the N.E. states – the government is speaking of ‘tweaking the NRC’ for them.
Yesterday, Arvind Kejriwal, Delhi’s CM, pointed out an irony that would be laughable if only tears didn’t come first: We’re willing to create citizenship documents for those who aren’t living in India, but will deny it to those who have been living here for generations – because they don’t have any papers. And when we can’t create jobs/houses for our own people, how will we do so for these new citizens?
But enough about India for a minute. Let talk a bit more about our neighbours. The CAA-NRC has upset Bangladesh, our one clear ally in the subcontinent – by the presumption that our favoured minorities are being persecuted there. But that’s not all. Tragedy becomes farce when you read articles about how Pakistani Hindus have rejected the offer in CAA. They’d much rather be in Pakistan than come here, they assert. A few anti-nationals there have even had the gall to tell us that the Acts violate our constitution.
Ravish Kumar questioned bluntly the need for any Indian to have to stand in line to prove their citizenship, while Santosh Desai spoke eloquently about ‘a problem of solutions’ – the CAA will benefit a minor few, while the number of people it anguishes far outnumber them.
Others have brought out how implementation with a Type II error rate of just 5%, will mean that
67.5 million people
will face action, equalling the human displacement caused by World War II. In comparison, 8.8% Aadhar holders reported errors in their details.There is also the unspoken economic cost of implementing the NRC. There are as yet, no figures of the thousands of millions needed to set up booths and hire officers PAN India. In Assam alone, it cost 1120 crores and there are grave doubts over its accuracy. Now factor in the cost in people-hours that will be wasted as a productive populace fritters unaccounted minutes standing in queues instead of putting their shoulder to the wheel and pushing the economy and their families forward. Plus the suicidal business sense of turning productive, revenue-generating ‘citizens’ into cost-generating illegals. Not to speak of the inhuman, unacceptable moral price of the idea and sight of the detention centers themselves – as there is no other country we could possibly send these un-citizens back to.
Harder still, is to put a tag on fear. The average Muslim on the street is afraid they will be singled out, despite whatever the government says. The average Muslim has had to prove their patriotism many a time before these bills came into being. Sadly, neither does refuting Jinnah’s two-nation theory nor dying in wars with Pakistan seem to make them Indian enough. From the plumber who comes to fix the taps in our house to our financial advisor to colleagues who work in the industry – if they share something in addition to the same faith, it is the worry of a similar fate.
Now let’s assume for a minute that all of this is a figment of our liberal imagination (no pun intended) or a plot by an Opposition so lame they possibly couldn’t organise a birthday party or a conspiracy by Pakistan who manage to somehow stir up our pot whenever they want to, hoodwinking scores of leather boots and rows of 56” chests. But even if all of this is fanciful hogwash, the question still remains. Is this needed now? Or ever?
Maslow spoke about a ‘hierarchy of needs’ many moons ago, but perhaps his lecture wasn’t part of the course on Entire Political Science. An economy struggling with basics should surely have other priorities – there are gaping primary needs that need our collective, undivided energies before we twiddle with un-necessities. And neither the CAA nor the NRC are the most critical issues confronting us – not today, hopefully not ever.
The PM spoke about ‘Sabka Vishwas’ along with ‘Sabka Vikas’. The latter has quietly slipped away from the ruling party’s lexicon – with employment at a 45 year low and literally all sectors showing a dip, ‘Achche Din’ can be seen only in internet memes. On the question of ‘Vishwas’, the party must ask itself this: Does it really think the optics of this exercise go towards reassuring minorities, whatever its intent and even the facts may be?
The good news is that onus of the fight for India’s soul hasn’t been placed only on the marginal population’s shoulders. Indians everywhere are protesting. #HindusAgainstCAB was one of Twitter’s better moments, and many of those who voted the government in are now saying this isn’t what they voted for.
The ruling party has a penchant for unleashing “bold decisions” and springing “masterstrokes”. But there’s bold and decisive, and then there’s bold and decisive and good. While a bull in the ring is a majestic creature, the same inside a china shop is a different kind of beast. Context is everything, and not all motion is progress.
The CAB was rammed through with brute majority in the parliament, and the protests on the streets (at least in Jamia and AMU thus far) have been quelled with brute force. But for all of the government’s assurances that ‘No Indian citizen needs be afraid’, people are anxious. And contrary to stated belief, urban naxals aren’t behind the protests – only concerned citizens identifiable by their Indianness – with the likes of IPS officers who quit over the issue, and a
94-year-old freedom fighter.
If the best orator the nation has had in recent memory can’t convince the people, maybe he should be the one listening.The PM called himself the ‘Pradhan Sevak’ – the prime servant – of the people. If he really means what he said, perhaps he should bow to the roar on the streets and steer India away from the abyss. There is no loss of face in realising you’re wrong. If anything, it’s the difference between a politician and a statesman.
Jai Hind.
(P.S. The views expressed are personal, those of an Indian, a Hindu and someone unaffiliated with any political party – in that order.)
(Image courtesy The Print)
