By Shafeeq R. Mahajir
A comic strip. An infant toddler Pebbles Flintstone. A vocabulary confined to “Abba dabba goo goo”. If she was happy, she’d go “Abba dabba goo goo”. If sad, she’d go “Abba dabba goo goo”. Angry? Want something? “Abba dabba goo goo”. Young readers could let their imaginations run riot, make of it what they willed. Young, unpolluted.
Enter adulteration. Sorry, adulthood. That kid is now a seasoned.by.the.weather and grown.up.temporally human being. Seasoned is qualified here as by weather because otherwise seasoned would imply one who has experience, which meaning is, given actions, not merited. Chasing 600 years of governance, 6 years is inexperienced. Grown up too is qualified here as only temporally else grown up would imply one with maturity, which meaning, given actions, is also not merited. Resembling, because to be human is to be above ideological hostility, feel compassion, be able to handle disagreement, open to thoughts different from your own, accept others’ rights… One who hates or despises, is a bigot, tramples upon others’ rights, exercises authority arbitrarily or cruelly, cannot govern, only oppress.
Unlike Zarathustra, he speaks gobbledygook. Complex phrases like “seamlessly integrated fifth-generation juxtaposition” sound intellectual, mean nothing. “Abba dabba goo goo”, he goes. Actually, it doesn’t matter what he goes, because it is cyclical, self-serving what.is.in.it.for.me talk, a clever façade of nice-sounding phrases selling nightmares packaged like dreams. Sounds good, means nothing.
In an erupting volcano of citizen frustration and realization of having been led up the-absent-garden path revealing instead ravaged land with unmistakable signs of more trauma to come, videos showed policemen smashing vehicles, plain-clothed helmeted men brutally attacking girl students, oblivious to the difference between using force to control a mob, and violently thrashing unarmed girls huddling together to protect each other. Police helmets could be purchased anywhere, providing ideal goon cover, so infiltrating “ideological soldiers” can have a field day molesting, assaulting, camouflaged as police personnel.
Matters were not taken up urgently. Anxious students’ anxieties increased. What if some additional bones were broken, more spirits broken in the interregnum? Courts would not have seen videos of police smashing vehicles, but will the video evidence not be used by judges to call the State, the police, to account? A Chinese premier had notoriously asked “When you look at things in a historical perspective, what are a few million lives more or less?” Post campus eruptions, newspapers had ADGG all over again.
Discussion, Dissent
“Don’t let vested interests divide society, says Modi” ran one headline. Who excluded Muslims? “Debate, discussion and dissent were essential parts of democracy”… Were. Past tense. The Constitution says you can dissent. The PM suggests this is past. Clearly, what happens thereafter, the State shall decide. ADGG?
And dissent?! Dissent it is that reportedly landed quite a few in unpleasant spots, and seasoned (see definition above) politicians know what they are talking about. It is a tribute, they say, to the spontaneity of truth, that we never say someone blurted out a lie. Blurted out, unguarded, is the truth. One can’t be too careful interpreting gobbledygook.
Another headline goes “Shah: Students being misled, no Indian will lose citizenship.” Maybe he means what he says… but wasn’t he the one who made an interesting admission: solemnly stated past commitments were mere jumlaas… If the truth about solemn commitments believed by masses is they are only jumlaas, what of mere press statements? Being cautioned, let’s go diagnostic, apply the ADGG-test, read between the lines.
Definition of Indian? Enter Passports Act 1920. Amended. Foreigners Act 1946. Amended. Citizenship Act 1955. Amended. Foreigners (Entry into India) Rules. Exemptions crafted. The next amendment could be anything. Definitions seen to be in a state of flux, convenient abused flexibility bends definitions.
Citizenship
No “Indian” will lose citizenship. ADGG. Who remains an Indian, with changing definitions, is a different matter. That part, left unstated, unarticulated, requires the attention. That little part is lost in the crowd of words, and to make sure it is lost a whole lot of verbosity is thrown at you. Long sentences, convoluted explanations, sanctimonious assurances, and carefully slipped in unnoticed, the hidden intent. You need to search for it, look for it between those lines… Paraphrase a great thinker, Aé ahlé taáleem zauqé taáleem kkhoob hai lae’kin Jo reading between the lines na jaané voh taáleem kya?
HM says come what may CAA will not change. Confident posturing can betray great insecurity. Out of 400-odd Universities he says, only 22 are protesting. ADGG. Where just G.Os. can manufacture Maha-Vidyapeeths, numbers are irrelevant. As the saying goes, “One, with the law, is a majority.” 22 of the best, others mostly on paper? ADGG.
With students’ unions till recently aggressively supporting the government, who could organise students across the entire nation at this speed? Go Gujarat. “Kriya aur pratikriya”, we heard. State’s kriya and janata’s pratikriya? Videos show uniformed policemen throwing stones into a campus. “Disciplined” policemen cannot throw stones into a crowd of students. Videos used to identify and arrest troublemakers in Kashmir, can be used here to identify and discipline rogue policemen. If not, an administration that chooses not to, identifies itself with rogue policemen, and tarnishes both force and administration.
Nations aren’t geographical areas within borders. They are people who come together determined to govern themselves by rules and regulations based on common sets of shared values and principles, and rights they acknowledge vest in each of them. Agreeing with my brothers this shall be our constitution if tomorrow I take steps violating those values and principles, negating those rights we jointly agreed vest in both, I betray both trust and Constitution. Where nations are governed by Constitutions on which oaths of office are taken, one who betrays the Constitution violates oath of office, betrays the nation. Anti-Constitutional therefore means anti-national. A General, charged with betraying a nation’s constitution, was recently held guilty of treason.
Reports stream in of girl students attacked, thrashed brutally, of teargas shells fired into a library. No chasing mobs, no dispersing crowds. Just brutal vicious assault. Objective: break the spirit of resistance, the spirit that Bhagat Singh, Ramprasad Bismil and Ashfaqullah Khan immortalised. Governments don’t do this. Oppressors do. What lies ahead must be met, in self-defence, and defence of the nation. Every student body must organise itself, persuade every citizen group to vote sense, come next elections. Have members man every single polling booth across the nation, and ensure a fair vote. Those who sacrificed now, were beaten, brutalised, died, deserve their names etched in national memory. And maybe University portals.
No “kadi ninda karthe hain” saw any apprehension in lynch mobs, and with good reason. Deliberate State inaction allowed test-trickles of lynching to escalate to waves of mob terrorism. That was an ADGG test: would society react, or could they get away with it? They got away. Now, a fresh test: the NRC-CAA test. Society’s responses show its had enough.
When crucial witnesses against high-profile people die, dissenting voices land up in prisons, dissenting politicians see house arrests, dissenting judges suffer accidental deaths, an anxious populace must be excused fistfuls of salt: listening to words they seem to have heard the unstated.
Shafeeq R. Mahajir is a well-known lawyer based in Hyderabad