Over the last few weeks, democracy has languished in the face of the majoritarian will, the withstanding and the defenseless voices were mercilessly subdued, constitutional psychosis was institutionalized in the cognizance of all dissenting minorities.
As George Bernard Shaw had said,
“The minority is sometimes right; the majority is always wrong.”
Today, the student vigor has rattled the tottering status-quo across pan-India. The PM’s rhetoric for peace is fiddling as the nation burns with a distinct cry from the demonized frontiers.
These dissents are visibly painful as a Jamia Millia Islamia University student quotes
“Delhi feels like Kashmir today.”
As inescapably, the way of democracy suffers from the dysfunction of Kashmir, the farce of NRC, and the ongoing wrath of the new CAA.
The government’s megalomaniac inclinations have transcended all conceivable evidence when Finance Minister’s comments say
“Maoists, Jihadists Getting into student activism.”
This leaves no dilemmas but to assume that nonconformities will always be distinguished as radical clusters.
For the last few weeks, such violent protests have flared across India while 125 ‘ayes’ divided the nation into minuscule fragments. This aggravated the sense of insecurities in the ideological culmination of the thriving Hindu Rashtra. But also, it proved that an assertive legislature is not enough to split India’s rainbow heterogeneity. These cries of dissents merely confront the brazenly discriminatory Law that propels India towards an Orwellian State. George Orwell also employs a term called “Reality Control,” where it gradually annihilates the story and replaces it with Government-sanctioned narratives, in the cognizance of ordinary people. Facts are ever fungible in our perception-driven world. This seems unusually flamed in PM’s comments, addressed to the outraged non-conformities after differed voices had surged across the country.
He says, “Those who creating violence can be identified by their clothes. There is no hope that these people will think about the betterment of the people of the country”
The vanity of diplomacies as a blame-game and objectification has unsurprisingly meshed into the New India that we get to experience today. Misleading populist narratives have caused fears and anxieties in the common people from the microcosms. The pluralistic and tolerant, now see the postulates of prejudiced perceptions. Social discourse and scientific anecdotes have been seized, evident from Amit Shah’s comments, “western standards of human rights should not be applied to matters on India.” Everything contradictory and renegade seems to endure saffronizing realizations.
As Northeast clamors for their very existence, their voices are slowly being annihilated by innumerable internet blackouts and indefinite curfews.
“I can’t be a Hindu or a Muslim if I am no longer an Assamese.”
Anwesha’s statement left me at a loss for a while. She continued, “As our PM proposes to integrate more Indians into our country, we are still fighting to be one of them.”
The new Law drives India in majoritarian terms, far from anything that the founders of the democracy could have imagined. The Act diversifies the remnants of Sangh Parivar’s imaginations disguised under the “neighborhood watch.” CAA and NRC combined open doors to aggressive electoral and vote-bank politics, cornering an entire community for hostile treatment. The world’s third-largest Muslim population now faces a terrifying labyrinth, from the “Assam Model of Coercion” being replicated pan-India on a broader scale.
“My Tribal forefathers from Northeast, who fought alongside the state surrendered their lives in emancipation, but their cemeteries still lie in between the forest and the rice field, unknown and unappreciated. This isn’t the India that our ancestors had strived for. What do you know of succumbing to your own identity in your own land?”
Leeza’s voice fumed with a latent aversion.
It’s not just the religious radicalization across the nation but an enormous ethnic dilution that Northeast endures today. Assam Agitation went on for 6 long years between 1979 and 1985, resulting in the Assam Accord to prevent illegal migrants from coming into the state.
In the plethora of its violation, the Citizen Amendment Act will potentially lead to the inclusion of these illegal immigrants, including those left out in NRC. This dilutes the smaller ethnic fault lines in Assam with a majority of outsiders. The Sixth Schedule in parts of Assam shelters a large number of illegal immigrants. These areas have been exempted from CAA. To seek protection from the new Law, there could be an exodus of people from these territories, making the episodes even challenging for the Northeast.
In a way, Modi and Trump share a common dream that roots from “xenophobia and ethno-supremacy.” Modi’s vision entrusted with normalcy from internet shutdowns, army deployment, and tear gas is not only disturbing but also is an overt “state of unity” established on the “marginalized differences.” Some call it Hindu Rashtra.
In India, freedom from obvious hostility often leads to shackles of constitutional colonialism and inherent imperialism. Nevertheless, as Modi perpetually says, “Everything is alright,” India will someday recognize pluralism in the post-colonial era.
