In an age of alternative facts, India is being told that our best young people are terrorists

[kevinUsa]

Demonstrators protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act outside the Jamia Millia Islamia university in New Delhi on December 22. | Danish Siddiqui/Reuters

No Indian needs to be told that our democracy has been under lockdown for almost a year. The Covid-19 pandemic has only made it starkly visible. This political lockdown is mostly a product of the inability of the opposition parties to offer any resistance, leave alone an alternative narrative. Energised by its electoral success, the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah regime is seeking to build a political universe of perpetual photo-ops, lubricated by sycophantic praise, with no trace of the constructive friction that principled dissent produces in a true democracy.

This project has almost succeeded. The metaphorical Ashvamedh horse sent forth by this regime has trotted unchallenged throughout the realm with only two exceptions. One of these spaces of resistance is the university campus, and the other is a political movement – the campaign against the Citizenship Amendment Act and its complement, the proposed National Register of Citizens.

[kevinUsa]

Pandemic conditions may have forced it to fade from public memory, but the political significance of the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act movement cannot be exaggerated. At a time when Modi and Shah believed that they had no worlds left to conquer, a challenge suddenly emerged from the unlikeliest of sources – Muslim women.

Unflagging moral stamina

This unique movement – symbolised by the Shaheen Bagh site in New Delhi – remained steadfastly non-violent despite repeated provocations. It was dignified and unapologetic in its Muslimness, but insisted on speaking the language of secular citizenship, foregrounding the Constitution. It managed to evoke a response all over the country, appealing also to large numbers of fair-minded non-Muslims who watched silently.

It was an informal and inclusive campaign that surprised everyone with its unflagging moral stamina. It endured months of deliberate disregard from elected representatives and fended off continual attempts to discredit it. It could only be disrupted by the orchestrated violence that merged seamlessly into Delhi’s state-condoned riot of February 2020. And then the Covid pandemic arrived like heaven-sent relief for an authoritarian state, enabling it to muzzle all public protest.

The challenge posed by university campuses is older. For all its successes in silencing opposition and moulding opinion elsewhere, the regime has struggled to capture campuses. Even where it wins student elections, it does so with faceless candidates forgotten as soon as they are elected. Right-wing ideologues attribute this to leftists monopolising positions of power in universities and keeping out other ideologies.

[PNW_Lover]

Ban these kind of posts . Totally shame on the person posted !