The citizenship wreck

The Constitution is a vision document for the nation. In its 70th year of formulation, the revered book has, for many people, become a document of resistance; and its preamble, a song of dissent.

It has been a fortnight since Parliament passed the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, but protests against the law continue to mount. The Constitution has become the leitmotif of this agitation, with protesters holding up copies of the document to remind the government of the promises in its preamble. The CAA, they say, violates the Constitution’s objective of securing justice, liberty, equality and fraternity for all Indian citizens.

The intensity of the protests has stunned the government. It is not just the Muslims who have hit the streets, but a cross section of people, including Hindus, who are against majoritarian politics. A turning point in the agitation was the police action against students at Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi on December 15, which amplified the intensity and spread of the protests.

In Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Delhi, the police cracked down on angry protesters, slapping cases on them and shutting down the internet. The situation stirred opposition parties into rejecting their customary cautiousness, as they began organising protests in their strongholds. The chief ministers of nine states declared that they would not abide by the CAA, nor support the proposed nationwide National Register of Indian Citizens.

Another defining moment in the agitation came on December 20, when thousands of protesters gathered outside the 17th-century Jama Masjid in Delhi. Waving the tricolour, they raised slogans, striking a historical chord. In October 1947, after partition had torn open deep rifts, freedom fighter and Congress leader Abul Kalam Azad had visited the masjid and made a fervent appeal. Resolve all doubts about your homeland, he told fellow Muslims, and choose India instead of Pakistan.

Seventy-two years later, the community was in need of reassurance again. This time, it was not a Muslim but a dalit who gave it. As protesters gathered outside the masjid after Friday prayers, Bhim Army chief Chandrashekhar Azad dramatically appeared on the steps, carrying a picture of B.R. Ambedkar and a copy of the Constitution. Azad had been dodging the police for hours, and his defiance electrified the crowd.

The same day, protests were reported after Friday prayers in several cities in Uttar Pradesh. Two days later, in a bid to quell the spreading agitation, Prime Minister Narendra Modi signalled a change in policy. Accusing opposition leaders of “spreading lies”, he said: “The law is not against Muslims. There has not been any discussion on the NRIC. There are no detention centres [to house non-citizens].”

The government is treading cautiously as it prepares to start the process of updating the National Population Register ahead of Census 2021. The NPR’s objective is to create a comprehensive identity database of every “usual resident” of India—those who have lived at a locality for at least six months and plan to live there for at least the next six months. The Union cabinet has allocated Rs3,941 crore for updating the NPR and Rs8,754 crore for the census.

There are fears that the NPR will lay the foundation for the NRIC; the government will have to work hard to repel those. States like Kerala have already declared that they will not start the NPR update, leading to possibilities of Centre-state showdowns.

Even though the CAA, by itself, does not impact Indian Muslims, there are widespread fears about the BJP’s stated intent to implement the NRIC nationwide. Over the years, the Muslim community has been marginalised politically, as opposition parties that represented their interests were either weakened electorally or began toeing a soft-hindutva line. The voiding of Article 370, the ban on triple talaq and the Supreme Court’s Ayodhya verdict were seen as decisions that further pushed Muslims to the fringes. The coupling of the CAA with the NRIC has so stoked fears that they have finally hit the streets.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah had been repeatedly saying in Parliament that the government was committed to implementing the NRIC nationwide. But the BJP and the government now blame the “misinformation campaign” linking the CAA and the NRIC for the protests and violence. Two days after Modi’s statement, Shah signalled a climbdown over the matter. “There is no need to debate [the NRIC], as there is no discussion on it right now,” he said.

To clear the air, the BJP has decided to initiate a massive outreach programme. It hopes that the party’s 17 crore enrolled members will engage with the people and come to the government’s aid. The party has already conducted training sessions for its spokespersons in an effort to win what it sees as a perception battle.

“[The citizenship bill] was part of the freedom movement, which had certain unfinished aspects like the implementation of the Jawaharlal Nehru-Liaquat Ali Khan pact that guaranteed security to all minorities,” said Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, BJP vice president and Rajya Sabha member. “Since Pakistan did not keep its word and minorities were persecuted, it became necessary for India to enact amendments to its existing citizenship act. That task has now been completed.”

Party leaders have been holding rallies and media conferences across the country to deliver this message. BJP working president J.P. Nadda recently led a massive march in Kolkata to counter West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s call for a “civil disobedience” movement against CAA.

But what the BJP terms as “misinformation” has already spurred a wide-ranging agitation. Students in universities in Pune, Chandigarh, Chennai, Mumbai, Jadavpur, Jaipur, Bengaluru and Kolkata have joined the protests. Regular protest sites like Jantar Mantar and India Gate have been occupied by left-leaning social groups and student organisations. Demonstrations have even been held at IITs and IIMs, which are not known for political activism.

“We are concerned about the government’s decision to enact this law,” said Amit, a Delhi University student at Jantar Mantar. “This is the first time that I am here to protest. How can there be a law based on religion?”

Student protests of the past had forced governments to act. The Nirbhaya killing in 2012, the suicide of dalit scholar Rohit Vemula in 2016 and the JNU controversy the same year had all spawned agitations that drew widespread support. If the JNU protests of 2016 had made student leaders like Kanhaiya Kumar and Shehla Rashid left-wing icons, the anti-CAA protests have seen Jamia students like Ladeeda Farzana and Ayesha Renna projecting faith as central to their political struggle.

Particularly worrying for the government are allegations of police brutality in BJP-ruled Uttar Pradesh. Lucknow has been on the boil since December 19, when the opposition Samajwadi Party held a rally and activists called on protesters to gather at designated areas. Even though the state government was aware of the possibility of violence, it let the protesters assemble. When stones were thrown and vehicles set on fire, the police brutally cracked down on the agitators, resulting in deaths and injuries.

The strong-arm tactics appear to be the result of the BJP’s internal troubles. More than 100 party legislators had staged a sit-in at the assembly a day before the Lucknow protests, saying they were being muzzled by the bureaucracy and the police. BJP sources said this unprecedented show of defiance had prompted Shah to give a dressing-down to Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. “The CM was told in very clear terms that he was losing his grip over the state,” said a senior BJP leader.

The state government seems to have used an iron fist to retain the grip. Internet and messaging services were shut down at 3pm on December 19. In Muslim-dominated areas of Lucknow, the police broke into homes and rounded up ‘troublemakers’—including women, children and the elderly.

The first death reported was of Mohammed Wakil, 32, a resident of Sajjad Ganj area. The police claimed it had not fired a single shot during the protests, yet the postmortem report revealed that Wakil had been shot point blank. The same day, a 15-year-old who was on his way to his aunt’s home in Old Lucknow was also shot.

An auto-rickshaw driver, Wakil was the eldest of four siblings. He wanted to buy groceries and medicines for his pregnant wife. “He left around 4pm,” his younger brother Mohammed Sareef told THE WEEK. “When he did not return by six, I called his phone. I also wanted to warn him about the protests. The person who answered the phone told us that my brother had been shot and was taken to the trauma centre of King George’s Medical University. When we got there, we found out that he had died.”

After the crackdown, Adityanath issued a statement saying that violent protesters had been identified with the help of closed-circuit cameras, and that their property would be auctioned to pay for the damage to public property. He has promised to obtain the reimbursements in 30 days.

“People are angry over many issues in the state,” said a senior SP leader. “There is a readiness to rally around anyone who will take on the government. Our strategy earlier was to ponder the possible repercussions of a movement and then undertake it. Now it has changed to an ‘act first, think later’ approach.”

According to the office of the director-general of police, 164 first information reports related to the protests were registered across UP till December 22. As many as 889 rioters were arrested, while 5,312 persons were in precautionary custody; 16 people have died during protests—14 of them from bullet injuries. In addition, 108 people have been arrested for posting more than 15,000 inflammatory messages on social media.

There have been major clampdowns in BJP-ruled Karnataka, too. Dakshina Kannada district was placed under curfew after violent protests resulted in two deaths, allegedly in police firing. While the state government has been accused of resorting to “undemocratic” means to quell dissent, the BJP has been blaming the Congress for instigating violent protests.

“Around 2,000 Muslims youth had gathered for the anti-CAA protests [in Mangaluru] between 4:15pm and 5:30pm on December 19, in violation of the prohibitory orders under CrPC (the code of criminal procedure),” said an FIR registered against 29 protesters. “They possessed gravel, sticks, soda bottles and other lethal weapons, and [they] intended to torch the Mangaluru North police station.”

Congress leader and former chief minister Siddaramaiah alleged that the violence was “state-sponsored”. “The government has imposed section 144 to clamp down on the protests. Internet has been shut down. This is the second emergency.”

With the opposition riding the anti-CAA wave, the BJP’s state unit has come out with a 50-page booklet explaining the provisions of the act and answering frequently asked questions. The booklet is being circulated statewide and pro-CAA rallies are being organised to counter the protests.

Barely a year after the BJP won the Lok Sabha elections decisively, the challenges for the party seem to be mounting now. It lost power in Maharashtra and Jharkhand recently, while the opposition, which has been struggling to find a common ideological ground, is feeling energised.

With the Congress, the Trinamool Congress, the SP, the DMK and the left parties all throwing their weight behind the anti-CAA protests, the BJP now faces an uphill task. It has to keep its disgruntled allies together and ride out the current wave of protests, even as it prepares for the assembly elections in Delhi and Bihar later in 2020.

—with Puja Awasthi and Prathima Nandakumar