By C Uday Bhaskar Dec 23, 2019 South Asia Monitor
Even as anti- citizenship act protests have raged across India, in an intriguing political development that has complex implications for policy cohesion in the BJP-led NDA government, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced on Sunday (Dec 22) that there had been no discussion in parliament or the union cabinet regarding the NRC (National Register of Citizens) since his government had assumed office in 2014.
This assertion will assuage the concerns of those constituencies that have been very concerned about how the citizenship act and the NRC could adversely impact their mean their status as citizens or refugees . However this clarification by Modi goes against the many statements made by Home Minister Amit Shah about the determination of the Modi government to implement a nationwide NRC and to round up the illegal residents and place them in detention centres.
Hopefully this intervention by the Prime Minister will lower the intensity of the anti-citizenship protests but the events of the last few weeks have serious implications for the management of India’s internal security.
Student led protests against the implementation of the CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act) and the police crackdown has led to the death of 25 people across India (at the time of writing this comment) including an eight year old boy and hundreds injured including police personnel. Internet services have been suspended in the more disturbed areas and Uttar Pradesh has been the most affected.
The scale and intensity of these anti CAA protests which has invited extreme police violence in some states has pitted the citizen against the state in an unprecedented manner. However, it is important to note that what being contested by ordinary citizens is their basic democratic right – to engage in peaceful protest.
Local police in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka have been caught on video, both by the media and the citizen journalist using disproportionate force and the image of a Bengaluru police official threatening to punch noted Mahatma Gandhi biographer Ram Guha in the face has become the ugly image of the callous state.
The protests against the CAA and its related legislation, the NRC (which as Modi has stated is yet to be discussed formally let alone be promulgated) have acquired a nation-wide character and the political sub-text is complex. Currently eight states including Bihar – deemed to be an important ally of the BJP led NDA government – have expressed their opposition or unease with the CAA and the perceived linkage with the NRC. Some states such as Assam and others in the North East have more complex concerns about the ‘outsider’ that go back to August 1947 and the birth of Bangladesh in 1971.
It may be recalled that the first protests broke out on December 11 in the North East when the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB) was passed in the Rajya Sabha and became the CAA or a new law. At the time the Indian army was called in and three columns were tasked to assist the local administration to maintain law and order – two units in Assam and one in Tripura. However this army deployment was of a short duration and the maintenance of law and order reverted to the local police forces.
The government has hinted at a sinister terrorism linkage with the current protests and a senior cabinet minister cautioned : “We must be wary of jihadists, Maoists, separatists getting into student protests.” This narrative of the government that seeks to paint the protests as ‘anti-national’ and asserts unsubstantiated linkages with jihadi terror can have very serious consequences for India’s internal security challenges.
For the security professional, this challenge is often referred to as the LIC-IS continuum – that is the ‘low intensity conflict-internal security’ domain which India has been grappling with since January 1990 when the radical Islamist forces supported by Pakistan embarked upon jihadi terror against the Indian state.
Hence the consensus that the more serious of India’s IS challenges were manifest in two categories – the Pakistan sponsored terrorism that was evident in the former J&K state, or as in the case of Mumbai in November 2008 ; and the Maoist-Naxal related LWE (left wing extremism) that had affected the Red Corridor now quarantined in small parts of Chattisgarh.
Over the decades, the Indian security establishment has dealt with complex internal security challenges that were often triggered by imprudent or opportunistic domestic political initiatives and the most infamous is the rise of Sikh extremism and related terrorism – or the Khalistan movement. ]Here the identity of the adversary and the anti-national activity warranted the use of state force.
However, the current protests are very different from earlier experience and do not warrant the kind of state reprisal that we are witnessing particularly in UP. The aggrieved citizen is protesting due to deep anxiety that the spirit of the constitution is being trampled upon. Thus a peaceful, law-abiding protest cannot be dubbed anti-national or a security threat.
The deeper question that arises in relation to the anti CAA protests is whether this citizenship related decision by the Modi led government will add to India’s already complex internal security challenges. The second term of PM Modi has seen the government pursuing two big-ticket items on the BJP’s political agenda – the bifurcation of J&K into two units on August 5; and the legislation contained in the CAA on December 11. The ‘othering’ of Muslim identity is too evident to be ignored not just by an almost 200 million large ‘minority’ community but by all Indians who believe in the Constitution.
Kashmir, now a sullen and bitter union territory remains in a clamped down mode and the internet remains suspended for over 140 days. Most security professionals aver that the summer of 2020 can be very turbulent and violence prone absent a concerted political outreach. This seems a low probability in the prevailing circumstances that characterize Indian politics.
If there is no swift empathetic political outreach by the Modi government that will assuage citizen concerns the domestic societal fabric of India will become very unstable and angry. Supporters of the CAA and those ideologically aligned with the Hindutva political agenda have made dangerous statements. While some local leaders have warned that an enraged majority community could lead to anti-Muslim violence on Friday (Dec 20) a BJP leader in Delhi was seen shouting slogans to “shoot the traitors” – the anti-CAA protesters.
The local police in both Delhi and Uttar Pradesh have been accused of using disproportionate force against the protesters and allegations have been made about the deliberate vilification and targeting of Muslim students / citizens in particular. Anguished citizens across the religious divide are asking if the UP state has turned terrorist in its zealotry to comply with a political directive.
Internal security is a delicate and volatile issue and India has gone through tragic experiences that began with partition in 1947 where the Hindu-Muslim religious divide became a colossal human tragedy. More recently the anti-Sikh riots of 1984, the post Babri masjid violence and the 2002 Godhra killings remain a blot on the leadership of the period – both political and the security agencies.
A responsible and ethical polity will ensure that the right lessons are drawn from these domestic politics-internal security linkages and safeguard the democratic rights of the law-abiding citizen, however dissenting they may be.
One hopes that it is this spirit of the Constitution that will be celebrated with fervour on January 26 next.
(The writer is Director, Society for Policy Studies, New Delhi)