"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies." - Groucho Marx.
The famous comedian was the maestro of the farce while his more famous namesake was laconic about the tragedy of historical atavism. What started as a vote catching comedy over citizenship is now a bloody tragedy of endgame excoriation.
A hasty legislative measure by the NDA government has provided ammunition to its opponents, who were looking for trouble in universities and the streets. The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) provides citizenship to all members of persecuted minorities who cross over into India from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, except Muslims who do not undergo religious tribulations there. The BJP was only keeping its manifesto promise.
But its adversaries saw CAA as a dilution of India’s inclusive culture and an attack on the Constitution. The confrontation between them and the Centre has claimed the lives of over two dozen people and massive loss of property in over two dozen towns. The continuing, over-four-week nationwide protest is the result of wrong diagnosis and faulty remedies endangering India’s biological and demographic identity. Fortunately, the unrest with religious undercurrents didn’t lead to communal riots.
As part of their prescription, state governments imposed Section 144, suspended internet services and closed institutions. Such illogical remedies gave India the tag of an autocracy, which keeps blocking internet facilities at the slightest sign of trouble. The Opposition is determined to stall even a genuine citizen count which every other country does on regular basis. In the conflict to recapture its political space through rallies and counter rallies, it has imperiled the century old national census. All hell broke loose on the streets as soon as the Union cabinet approved an extra budget for the ongoing National Population Register (NPR) drill.
All non-BJP chief ministers halted the exercise because they diagnosed, though too late, that they were helping the Sangh Parivar’s agenda for a National Register of Citizens (NRC). Their prescription is to stop the headcount, which is a prerequisite of policy making since states need to calculate the number of residents to plan infrastructure and add new schools, colleges and hospitals and much more.
The aggressive and violent resistance to CAA and NPR indicates that the entire opposition is unwilling to accept a mechanism, which differentiates between Indian residents and citizens. NPR’s purpose is to record the names of all Indian residents. NRC’s mandate is to compile a list of all legal Indian citizens. The government has only itself to blame for Union ministers shooting their mouth off linking both. Though NRC is the Sangh’s ultimate agenda for the future, its adversaries kept schtum while counting was on. However, the government’s cardinal mistake to introduce CAA gave its critics a handle to link NPR with the yet to be born NRC.
They converted what began as an anti-CAA protest into a battle to reverse the NPR process. Their excuse was the projected fear that Muslims will be kept out of NRC to deny them voting rights. Despite strong clarifications by the government that no documents would be asked for NPR, its antagonists continue to create fear and doubt among the people. The Population Census was a colonial exercise, which was continued after Independence.
All Indians have been giving out personal data voluntarily for the past seventy years. What new transgression is concealed in the NPR to infuriate the liberals and their political supporters? The only difference is that the new form mandates individuals to name their parents along with place and date of birth. In fact, the NPR was initiated by the UPA government in 2010 and the first round finished in 2015. The formal Census was to be finalised in February 2020.
While the opposition to the CAA is justified to an extent, stalling the NPR process is fraught with dangerous implications. Can the dissenters provide an example of any other nation who doesn’t conduct a similar exercise with a similar format at regular intervals? There is hardly a country which doesn’t have its own architecture and ecosystem for granting citizenship to outsiders. Even liberal Europe is ejecting illegal immigrants, who are the source of rampant religious revolt. Ironically, some relatives of anti-CAA protestors got foreign citizenship by providing much more information to foreign governments than the Indian government is seeking for NCR.
But globetrotting liberals don’t mind sharing extremely private information and biometrics with US, UK, EU and other countries to get visas for themselves and their children, who are sent to study abroad. Back home, they had actively participated in Aadhar enrolment which violates privacy. It was introduced by the UPA and the beneficiaries were its own members who were part of MNCs and India Inc. The BJP opposed it then. But when it came to power, it not only gave Aadhar legal legitimacy but also made it mandatory for accessing public services.
Instead of fishing in troubled universities, why don’t the secular shenaniganists suggest which citizenship law of an Arab nation or the most prosperous and democratic America should be incorporated in NPR and NRC? Their elitist DNA makes them abhor the Desi and adore Videshi. It’s a tragedy that even after 72 years, we doesn’t have a robust system to define and identify legit citizens. For a strong and united India, the time has come to segregate its population by citizens and mere residents. Any resistance will endanger India’s cultural, biological and demographic identity. Beware of this vicious vaudeville that is being enacted on the blood-splattered streets in the name of the republic and god, and not in the redemption of faith in democracy.