On December 11, 2019, Parliament passed amendments to the Citizenship Law that sparked an unprecedented national protest movement against legislation and other government policies that discriminate against Muslims and violate constitutional standards. A year later, after the riots in Delhi and the Covid-19 pandemic ended public sit-ins, Scroll.in considers the impact of this remarkable moment in Indian history.
Last year, when the Center passed the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, thousands of Indians from across the country took to the streets in protest. From large cities and campuses, the movement spread to small towns and villages. In most of the country, it was run by Muslims, but not limited to members of the community.
The CAA put non-Muslim undocumented immigrants from neighbors on the fast track to obtaining Indian citizenship. For the first time, religion openly became a criterion for Indian citizenship. It was also feared that the law, along with a proposed National Registry of Citizens, would become a tool to discriminate against Indian Muslims. As Muslims protested the disenfranchisement, citizens of all faiths came out to defend the secular values of the Constitution.
A year later, Delhi and its surroundings are again full of protests. This time, it’s farmers unhappy with the three farm laws hastily passed by the government amid the pandemic. It is feared that the laws will leave farmers at the mercy of ruthless market forces, destroy small farmers who cannot compete and threaten food security.
For months, protests simmered in Punjab, out of sight of the capital. Now the farmers have marched towards Delhi, demanding the Center’s attention. While the most visible face of the protests are Sikh farmers in Punjab, farmers’ unions from several states have joined them.
In both cases, the Center run by the Bharatiya Janata Party exposed its discontent with dissent, its drive to discredit, silence and repress. But the responses to the anti-CAA and the peasant protests reveal who the Center considers citizens and who it sees as mere subjects without the right to have rights, which issues are within the scope of democratic debate and which are not.
‘Traitors’ and ‘terrorists’
With both protests, the BJP sought its old manual: weaponizing minority identities and presenting them as threats to the nation-state. Last year, it was the Muslim women of Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh who became a synecdoche for the anti-CAA protests. This year, he’s the bearded, turbaned farmer from Punjab.
When protests against the CAA broke out last year, the prime minister himself suggested that the protesters could be identified by their clothing. Burkhas, hijabs, caps and beards were suddenly deemed incriminating. Counter-protests began, with chants of “desh ke gaddaron ko, goli maaron saalon ko”: shoot the traitors. In the run-up to the Delhi assembly elections in February, the chant was unfolded by Union Minister Anurag Thakur. Social media was flooded with fake images and images suggesting that the protests were a sinister conspiracy to destabilize the state.
When farmers marched on Delhi this year, elements of the BJP were quick to label them “Khalistani terrorists.” English-speaking farmers were considered suspects. But if they were really going to be considered anti-national, the farmers had to be linked to citizen protests. A popular conspiracy theory suggested that an old woman in Punjab was actually Bilkis Bano, who became the star of Shaheen Bagh and is now supposedly protesting for a fee. Some suggested that the Sikh farmers were actually Muslims in disguise. The head of the BJP’s IT cell, Amit Malviya, posted manipulated videos of the protests on Twitter.
Farmers marching to Delhi were greeted with water cannons and lathis. The Haryana police force, following the example of the Center, dug trenches to prevent them from entering the capital. But a special kind of violence was reserved for anti-CAA protesters last year. The Delhi police ransacked the campuses and beat the students. In BJP-ruled states such as Uttar Pradesh, Assam and Karnataka, protesters were greeted with gunfire.
Talks and repression
However, after the initial reaction to the farmers’ protest, the government spoke a different language. For a time, he tried to insist that they were misled by vested political interests. But then he gave in even more. While rumor mills on social media are allowed to continue, the Center has invited farmers to talks and is open to negotiation on farm laws. The farmers, for their part, have called a national strike and demanded a special session of Parliament to repeal the laws.
Citizen protests developed very differently. Like farmers this year, most protesters struggled to speak constitutional language. Protest spaces like Shaheen Bagh sprung up across the country. The tricolor was removed and the preamble to the Constitution was read. It did not matter.
The government and security agencies responded with violence, mass arrests, interrogations and charges of conspiracy. In Delhi, protests mainly ended community violence in February, where more than 50 people, most of them Muslim, were killed. Shaheen Bagh held out a bit longer, but was forced to end the pandemic shutdown in March.
Citizens and subjects
The difference is determined both by the content of the protests and by the protesters. Farm laws may be up for discussion, but the CAA is not. It is part of a longer battle of civilizations to redefine secular India as a Hindu nation.
So far, the CAA has largely been a symbolic gesture: a year after passing the law, the government has yet to notify the rules and it is unclear how many people will be able to prove both religious identity and religious persecution in neighboring countries. . obtain citizenship. But it is a nod to the annals of Hindutva, where India is a natural home for Hindus, a Hindu society that must close its ranks against other Muslims.
In doing so, the Center points out that Muslims in India exist in a state of exception, in which they can no longer take their rights as citizens for granted or make demands on their government. Even the farmers gathering today on the outskirts of the capital acknowledge their “privilege” to protest. Sikh men wearing kirpans, or daggers, may enter the arena of democratic protest, albeit with some reluctance. Muslim women who cope with the winter cold with their children may not.
.
