“The end may justify
the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.” – Leon Trotsky
So said the thinker and writer
who put his intellectual heft behind the communist revolution in Russia. When
we look at the protests against the citizenship amendment act (CAA) across the
country, we wonder if there is any single argument which justifies the end
these anarchist protests seek. Under the leadership of Aam Aadmi Party, which
took a cue from the West Bengal’s TMC rule, the National Capital of Delhi
stands like an isolated island of anarchy, cut-off from the relatively peaceful
UP and Haryana. As the lawmakers like Amanatullah Khan of AAP in Jamia build
fake narratives to create riotous mobs, an ugly spectacle of unscrupulous and
immoral politics is for everyone to see. Delhi Government puts to use Waqf
Board money to fight legal case for those convicted of violence in Delhi and
other states; in West Bengal, Mamata Bannerjee government assures compensation
to those who died in police action against the rioters in another state from
state exchequer twice what she offered to the martyrs of Uri. As the events are
unfolding, even the pretense of legitimacy which the lobby of intellectuals
tried to create around these riots is gone. The government of West Bengal which
holds the responsibility of Law and Order is covertly and overtly supported the
large-scale violence in the state in the name of opposing an act passed through
due constitutional process from both the houses of parliament and vetted by the
Honorable President of India. Aided by a conniving media which is no longer
content to report about the politics, rather wants to define the politics of
India, the elected Government of a state entrusted with the responsibility of
keeping the citizens of the state safe, has become an active participant in a
violent protest against an act which it is duty-bound to implement in their
state. A weak opposition gives the media an opportunity to indulge itself with
the role of a self-appointed guardian of democracy, creating one absolutely
immoral system in which journalists, even those holding the grand-sounding
title of chairman of Editors’ Guild of India, have no qualms in calling the
second defeat of Congress a personal loss and to conspire openly for a quick
change of regime. This explains the silence of the guild on a journalist Rizwan
who was about to be burned down by the rioters in UP but the same guild going
ballistic on the alleged insult of a shady journalist.
This
mindless violence in the name of upholding secularism and opposing a law that
does not in any way touches the citizenship of Indian citizen, rather offers
some relaxations to the non-Muslim minorities trying to escape persecution in
Muslim states who have arrived in India before 2014, in terms of reducing the
term of naturalization from the current 6 Years to 5 Years. The way Islamists
in the garb of secularism and democracy have responded to the cause of those
unfortunate Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists of the three Islamic
nation has taken off the garb off the face. It has been much hyped as a
student’s movement standing against a fascist regime. In the end we find that
the protests have come from two staunchly communist universities namely, JNU
and Jadhavpur University apart from Muslim-run Institutions like Jamia Millia,
Aligarh Muslim University. Protests by small groups in some other Institutes
have also been reported, but those can honestly not be termed as students of
the university as a whole protesting. To keep things in perspective, these
three four largely Muslim universities (yes, the defenders of democracy and
sentinels of secularism reserve 50% of their seats reserved for Muslims and
decline dalit reservations even while being funded by the state which funds
them from a secular fund of Hindu-majority nation), form a minuscule percentage
of a total of 821 Universities recognized under the UGC of India. I wonder if
protests by Islamist-Communist combine in 4 Universities can be considered as a
representative of Student’s voice in 821 Universities.
As
the violence of West Bengal was followed by Violence in Jamia, and then by AMU,
and wanton violence in Gujarat, Kanpur, Muradabad and other Muslim-dominated
areas, the masks were quickly down. The anti-idol-worship Nazm of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, quickly gave way to the Quranic chants of La-Ilaahi-il-Allah and Naara-i-Taqbeer, the masks quickly dropped
down. As the investigations in Jamia now tell us that the fake ID cards were
being issued months in advance to allow for the rioters to come and hide in the
JNU campus, we know CAA is just an excuse. It is just a way of demonstrating
religious supremacy. Many are not happy that the eternal embarrassment which
the power that be placed on the Hindus is now chipping off.
The left (when I say left, I mean
Congress as well, since the two have long since become one) has no option. A
discredited ideology which has no takers in the real world, faced with ever
depleting foot soldiers, trying to fill up the ranks with rabid Islamists and
fanatic Muslims trying to hide their designs of religious crusades with grand
words of intellectual even though impractical communism. The incongruence of a
progressive thought and regressive violent religious ideology unveiled too
quickly as Shehla Rashid, a fanatic Islamist and an ex-Communist charged the
left of trying to forcefully grab the Muslim movement. Not that it was secret
to any one on the ground. The protest which invariably happen in
Muslim-majority areas and in Islam-dominated universities fools no one with the
posters of Gandhi and Ambedkar. The Dalit Ambedkarites mean for the Islamists
nothing more than what they themselves mean to the communists- expendable
idiots. The target is not the state, not the act. Their target is Hindu renaissance.
The way a Hindu identity is intermingled with the national identity of Bharat,
a resurgence of Hindu faith whether you suffix it with a ‘Tva’ or ‘ism’, puts a
spanner in the plan of Balkanization of India. This is not acceptable to the
leftists or the Islamists.
Having
run out of the secular arguments, they protestors were quick to bring in the
Dalit story in the context of something which started a fortnight back
pretending to be a Dada Sahab Phalke but ended quickly being Dada Kondke, a
caricature, nothing else. Ambedkar quotes were quickly brought in to render
legitimacy to the anarchists holding cities under siege. I am sure if Dr.
Ambedkar was alive today, he would disown all those who forget that the biggest
beneficiary of CAA will be those left-out Dalit Hindus and Christians of
Pakistan who were kept there by the first Prime Minister of Pakistan ostensibly
to clean the toilets. Not that the Jamia students who refuse to offer
reservation to Dalits in Jamia would have a view of Dalits any better than
Liaquat Ali Khan. But it is important to call that out. It is also important to
bring out the words of Ambedkar on so-called legitimate protests against an act
approved through the due constitutional process.
Some
have shared selectively quoted Ambedkar’s Grammar of Anarchy where he warned of
the threats of Bhakti. They forget that the term Bhakt was derisively used for
the supporters of Narendra Modi only after 2014 elections. When Ambedkar wrote
this warning, he wrote it with reference to the hero-worshippers of Nehru
family. It is funny that the same people are now quoting Dr. Ambedkar. This
speech of Ambedkar is particularly interesting and if it were up to me, I would
make it mandatory reading for all college-going kids. In the same speech Ambedkar
writes about the Communists, who have of late took the mantle of defender of
constitution-
“The condemnation of the
Constitution largely comes from two quarters, the Communist Party and the
Socialist Party. Why do they condemn the Constitution? Is it because it is
really a bad Constitution? I venture to say ‘no’. The Communist Party want a
Constitution based upon the principle of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
They condemn the Constitution because it is based upon parliamentary democracy.
The Socialists want two things. The first thing they want is that if they come
in power, the Constitution must give them the freedom to nationalize or socialize
all private property without payment of compensation. The second thing that the
Socialists want is that the Fundamental Rights mentioned in the Constitution
must be absolute and without any limitations so that if their Party fails to
come into power, they would have the unfettered freedom not merely to criticize,
but also to overthrow the State.”
Many claim that forcefully
squatting on the public spaces, inconveniencing the people is a legitimate way
of protest. They quote Gandhi claiming that Gandhi also did so. They forget
that in those days India was ruled by a foreign power, and there was no such
thing as free judiciary which have been kinder to them than it has been to most
common people, opening courts at the midnights. Here is what Ambedkar said on
such protests in the same speech.
“The first thing in my judgement
we must do is to hold fast to constitutional methods of achieving our social
and economic objectives. It means we must abandon the bloody methods of
revolution. It means that we must abandon the method of civil disobedience,
non-cooperation and satyagraha. When there was no way left for constitutional
methods for achieving economic and social objectives, there was a great deal of
justification for unconstitutional methods. But where constitutional methods
are open, there can be no justification for these unconstitutional methods.
These methods are nothing but the Grammar of Anarchy and the sooner they are
abandoned, the better for us.”
So the next time a moustached man
who runs his politics of violence in the name of Ambedkar tells you to pick up
a stone to throw or tells you to go burn a bus, read out this speech of
Ambedkar to him. And join hands with the rest of India to welcome your Dalit
Hindu brothers escaping a theocratic regime which refuses to accept any
religion except one. There is nothing in
the end of this violence, which even Trotsky will find remotely justifiable. Many
things are passed these days in the name of dissent, for instance an elected
state government using state assembly put in place to implement laws passed by
the Parliament denouncing the same laws. The parties in Kerala did not come
together in a public place to oppose CAA, they used the house which is supposed
to implement the laws to oppose an Act already approved by the President of
India. Do not let them fool you. They threatened bloodbath when the lost power
the first time. This whole grammar of Anarchy is as per their plan. If it was
not CAA, it would be something else. We need to watch out for it. This is what
Ambedkar also said.
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