Someone
said this to me yesterday. "If you voted for 56 in 2014, you could be
forgiven for being gullible and succumbing to promises of "sab ka saath,
sab ka vikas", or to express your frustration with a comatose
government. or even the anti-incumbency, "These guys have been around 10
years; why don't we give the other guys a chance and see what they can
do?". But if you voted for 56 in 2019, you did so with the full
knowledge of what went down in his first five years, and the attack on
JNU, the barbarity of Jamia and the carnage in Northeast Delhi is on
you".
I'm now beginning to realise, that those who did, are actually quite pleased with all these manifestations of brute majoritarianism. I now see clearly that demagoguery has succeeded in amplifying existing inferiority complexes and weaponising them against the 'Other'. That this project rests on half-truths, fictions, fables and myths is utterly irrelevant. Demagoguery has successfully painted scepticism, rigour of inquiry and openness into effete obsessions of (another bad word) intellectuals.
They are seeing and reading the same news stories as you and I are. Several of them are all in so deep, that their Muslim hate, (I choose to eschew the term 'Islamophobia' as an unnecessary euphemism; let's call it what it is), is now worn as a badge of pride on their chest. The rest continue to practice false equivalence. "Offfoh, it isn't anti-Muslim, both parties are equally culpable".
People who have never read the CAA will keep telling you, "it isn't meant to take anyone's citizenship away, it is meant to GIVE citizenship to *persecuted minorities* from Muslim-majority neigbouring countries". Here is the act. http://egazette.nic.in/WriteReadData/2019/214646.pdf
No, there is no reference to either persecuted or minorities in the act. All it does it creates a religious test for granting citizenship, and this does not have precedent. However, it will BECOME precedent for "Reasonable Classification" in times to come.
India's Muslims are reading the writing on the wall; their right of citizenship is facing its greatest in independent India. You can parrot the propaganda, because it suits your prejudice; be more honest and accept that you really do want to see disparate citizenship rights; or see it for what it is. Not a traffic inconvenience in Southeast Delhi, or Mumbai Central. Not an ISI conspiracy to spread unrest. Not a paid assignment for pay-per-use intellectuals. But a brazen, frontal attack on our Constitutional paradigm.
Please read the promise that our wise Constitution makers made to our generations to eternity. That the Republic secured, for all its citizens:
JUSTICE, social, economic and political;
LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship;
EQUALITY of status and of opportunity;
and to promote among them all
FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation
If you got all the way here, you are probably furious, one way or another. Either with me for being a gormless liberal. Or with the state of the nation.
Pick your fury.
I'm now beginning to realise, that those who did, are actually quite pleased with all these manifestations of brute majoritarianism. I now see clearly that demagoguery has succeeded in amplifying existing inferiority complexes and weaponising them against the 'Other'. That this project rests on half-truths, fictions, fables and myths is utterly irrelevant. Demagoguery has successfully painted scepticism, rigour of inquiry and openness into effete obsessions of (another bad word) intellectuals.
They are seeing and reading the same news stories as you and I are. Several of them are all in so deep, that their Muslim hate, (I choose to eschew the term 'Islamophobia' as an unnecessary euphemism; let's call it what it is), is now worn as a badge of pride on their chest. The rest continue to practice false equivalence. "Offfoh, it isn't anti-Muslim, both parties are equally culpable".
People who have never read the CAA will keep telling you, "it isn't meant to take anyone's citizenship away, it is meant to GIVE citizenship to *persecuted minorities* from Muslim-majority neigbouring countries". Here is the act. http://egazette.nic.in/WriteReadData/2019/214646.pdf
No, there is no reference to either persecuted or minorities in the act. All it does it creates a religious test for granting citizenship, and this does not have precedent. However, it will BECOME precedent for "Reasonable Classification" in times to come.
India's Muslims are reading the writing on the wall; their right of citizenship is facing its greatest in independent India. You can parrot the propaganda, because it suits your prejudice; be more honest and accept that you really do want to see disparate citizenship rights; or see it for what it is. Not a traffic inconvenience in Southeast Delhi, or Mumbai Central. Not an ISI conspiracy to spread unrest. Not a paid assignment for pay-per-use intellectuals. But a brazen, frontal attack on our Constitutional paradigm.
Please read the promise that our wise Constitution makers made to our generations to eternity. That the Republic secured, for all its citizens:
JUSTICE, social, economic and political;
LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship;
EQUALITY of status and of opportunity;
and to promote among them all
FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation
If you got all the way here, you are probably furious, one way or another. Either with me for being a gormless liberal. Or with the state of the nation.
Pick your fury.
