Disjointed affairs of India

Whether on the issue of Kashmir, COVID or CAA, the government's strategy lacks clarity

Indians find themselves in the unusual position of having a charismatic and strong leader at a time in history when leadership is required but is missing. Even some in his large fan base are likely to admit that the country is in drift and entirely divided when it is required to come together to face a succession of crises that threaten to become a catastrophe.

For more than three months, India’s Muslims have been in rebellion against a law that seeks to make them stateless at best and incarcerated at worst. There is no demand for this law and there is no data to show that India is being overrun by undocumented migrants. And yet, the Union government is marching us towards a future that has alarmed the world.

Across the country there are large groups of people gathered at every hour of the day and night, remaining there to show their resolve. No government official has visited them or spoken to them directly so far. On the contrary, there has been an open contempt of them, and a visceral hatred of the protesters, what they stand for and their faith. But at last count there were more than 135 of these gatherings and they will not dissipate on their own. 

Indeed, they will gather momentum and become more passionate in two weeks’ time when government officials begin to knock on doors, seeking information that will be used to deal with people in the same way as they have been dealt with in Assam. 

Even at the most pacific of times, this would be an inadvisable course to take for a democratic nation with a minority of 200 million, but in these times? The world’s economy is in meltdown (an overused phrase but appropriate at this time) and it is fighting a fast-spreading plague for which there is no cure. Even at this time, the Modi government is carrying on with its ideological agenda. However, it is doing this without any control over events and without any leadership or direction. 

It has been more than 100 days since the passage of the Citizenship Amendment Bill. But the rules for the new law have not yet been framed. That means it cannot be implemented. Challenged by provinces and groups and individuals for constitutionality, the Modi government chose not to defend it vigorously but to seek more time. A willing (I would venture to say complicit) judiciary has played along and kicked the can down the road. One fails to understand why Mr Modi did what he did. The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) was pushed through Parliament with alacrity and strong intent as the first step towards a nationwide National Register of Indian Citizens. But having run into the wall of protesting Indians, it appears to have been shelved. The resolve has melted. Amit Shah’s bombast has been replaced with dithering: Mr Modi’s exact words on an issue that has torn the nation apart and invited global intervention are that “NRC has not yet been discussed”. This is abdication, not leadership.

Illustration: Ajay Mohanty

The Assam NRC that threw up 1.9 million people declared stateless was also shelved with the assurance that it would be redone with the CAA (i.e., having filtered out the Hindus from it). But there is no sign of that either. These 1.9 million people are adrift and have had to live their lives for more than six months, and into the foreseeable future, not knowing if they and their children will be in jail soon. This is cruelty beyond comprehension— and remember, that the majority of these are Hindus.

There are 799 people detained in Assam’s camps at the moment. Of whom 95 have been jailed for more than three years for no crime other than having failed to prove to the satisfaction of a contract employee that their citizenship is genuine. And 26 have died in the last three years. The point here is that because Mr Modi has dawdled on the CAA after having rushed it through, the Hindus in these camps (who should find it easy to come out now that the CAA is law) still cannot because the rules have not yet been framed.

Elsewhere, in Kashmir there is no strategy for what is to come. Article 370 was hollowed out in a flash of inspiration (again it was challenged and again the government sought more time and again the judiciary gave it). The move has brought direct intervention from the US House of Congress for the first time in our history. The government said this week that Kashmir would have its special status restored and discussions were on to bring it back to statehood. To what end then did we have all the drama and deliberately bring opprobrium on ourselves? Why invite the world to see that we had gutted a democratic polity and put elected leaders in jail and the entire population in various stages of virtual confinement? 

The same sense of drift and lack of ideas have followed the national response to the coronoavirus. In the same nation where schools and colleges have been closed, the Uttar Pradesh government is promoting a religious gathering and expects to bring a million people together. This is madness and the world will take note of it. The coronavirus is a global problem and there will be responsible states and irresponsible ones. The world will view Indian visitors and the state with extreme prejudice if we are seen to be endangering the planet and its people with our casual stupidity. 

One can carry on and on with the sort of things that we seem to be doing for no particular reason and without any long-term thinking. The decision to nominate former Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi to the Rajya Sabha, and its ramifications for the way the judiciary will be seen in India and abroad would require more space than is available here. But even briefly: A man is accused of sexual harassment, absolved under opaque circumstances, the accuser’s family then abused, following this there are judgments in favour of the government from the accused, the survivor is reinstated and Justice Gogoi given a sinecure. This is an appalling sequence of events and will have repercussions. It should not have been pursued at the best of times but for some reason it has been at the point when we are mired in trouble.

The nation needs to deprioritise all the things that have been deliberately foisted on us in the last few months. We need to normalise and the only way to do so is to immediately call off the citizenship law madness, to immediately end the Kashmir drift and to focus on the contagion called Covid-19. We need to come together as a people to fight this new threat, and that bringing together can only come from the prime minister. If there was ever a time and need for all of us, whether or not we voted for his party, to see him lead us away from disaster, it is now.