Anti-CAA Protest: India Against Ghuspethiyas, Real or Fake

No to NRC and CAA! No to all possible divisive, destructive government tactics! Above all, no to the rulers of the day who are hell bent on ruining my country, my land, my roots, my people, my very existence. I would go to the extent of labelling the Hindutva rulers pillagers, for they are marauding my soul and my spirit. And they are doing the same to the country, very systematically, every single day.

These rulers are worse than those British rulers of the Raj era, for at least that lot did not create fraudulent labels of pseudo-nationalism. If they indulged in Jallianwala Bagh massacre, so is this government of today. They are attacking our students, our children, our future, and with all possible brutality, unleashing their police on our unarmed young.

I have before me the media photos of police brutality on the campus of Jamia Millia Islamia and also on the Aligarh Muslim University campus. Every single shot leaves one shaken, as the cops are turning out to be killers. Quite obviously, they would be doing so under orders and directions from the men who man this government and the Union Home Ministry. Is the police force there to kill the young, to thrash those who dare resist, speak out, cry out?

Today, as an Indian Muslim, I feel more than threatened and apprehensive like never before. My identity, my survival, my being is at stake. The current rulers carry the tag of pracharak and maha-pracharaks; they have RSS backgrounds and links, and with that they carry a certain fixed Hindutva agenda, which they are hell-bent on implementing. They would not give a damn if hundreds and thousands are killed or disabled. Their only agenda is to force Hindutva on the hapless citizens of my country.

Mind you, today their target are the students and minorities and ethnic groups but tomorrow they will target even those from the majority community. For killer-rulers don’t stop at one community. And these killers have blood on their hands. They killed hundreds of innocent citizens in the various locales of the country, from Gujarat to Kashmir to Assam to New Delhi. Today I am being targeted. Tomorrow it will be you. This destruction will carry on, and leave a permanent mark that cannot be undone, nor reversed.

Which Indian would be naïve enough to believe a word of what home minister Amit Shah insists harping on: that he is taking all the trouble of implementing the NRC across the country after clearing the Citizenship Amendment Act, so as to bring back those Indian-origin men and women who face persecution in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. The actual CAA does not even mention the word “persecuted”.

The anarchy, distress and disgust spreading out as a result of these two policies are signal enough that people of this country are well aware of the agenda of the rulers. With their propaganda tactics they want to uproot minority communities and ethnic groups and fit in their right-wing lot in those slots. This will be a very destructive exercise in which, undoubtedly, blood will flow. We will also witness hundreds and thousands of genuine citizens of this country being thrown into detention centres. There, imprisoned, they will languish until death.

In fact, when this government can convert the Kashmir Valley into an open prison overnight, so setting up of hundreds of detention centres will be no difficult task for them. After all, they have the entire police force and the military and para military to kill and hound and imprison those who dare to resist. Who will be able to withstand police torture and brutalities?

In fact, academic Dr Javed Jamil focuses on another apt argument: “If despite persecution, Muslims can remain loyal to their homeland, why Pakistani and Bangladeshi Hindus cannot [be loyal] to their homelands? There is a long history of persecution of Muslims in India with thousands of riots. In most of these riots, the police machinery has been partial in favour of the majority community. In the recent past, they have faced mob lynching in the name of cow [protection]. Their representation in all national institutions has been less than their percentage in the population. There are many other discriminatory laws against Muslims and their religion... Still, Muslims who decided to stay in India at the time of Partition have remained loyal to their homeland.”

Tell me, why should any government take the trouble of carting refugees into India, when the genuine citizens of India are getting killed and being hounded for a variety of reasons. Also, who should decide who is a genuine citizen and who, as the home minister says, is a “ghuspethiya” or infiltrator.

The use of this word reminds me of how the present Hindutva government came to occupy centre-stage. By hoodwinking and conning the people with their theories on “development” and by planting RSS men in all possible institutions. In that sense, it is the RSS-BJP who are political ghuspethiyas, manipulating their way into the system.

Today , I can see my country getting destroyed, not by so-called enemy countries but the political rulers of the day. They are using every possible divisive tactic to tear us into bits and pieces, into shreds. If this carries on, demolished we will stand. All they want is to fling us into detention centres and then tell the world that ‘all is normal’ and ‘everything is going good’.

Humra Quraishi is a freelance journalist and commentator. The views are personal.