Fact About Fiction
| Date :21-Dec-2019 |
By Vijay Phanshikar :
New Delhi :
Fact About Fiction n The fact about this political fiction is that the Opposition seems to have no option but to push itself into national consciousness through violence, and also to build a parallel story of unease in the Indian society when actually things had been going smoothly. The fact about this political fiction is that the Opposition is facing a terrible existential crisis.
New Delhi, December 19 (PTI): Defying unprecedented prohibitory orders across regions, simultaneous protests broke out on Thursday against the newly-amended Citizenship Law, prompting authorities to detain a large number of activists ...
... Left leaders Sitaram Yechuri, D. Raja, Nilotpal Basu and Brinda Karat, activist Yogendra Yadav and historian Ramchandra Guha were among those arrested ...
Defying unprecedented prohibitory orders across regions, simultaneous protests broke out on Thursday against the newly-amended Citizenship Law, prompting authorities to detain a large number of activists ... ... Left leaders Sitaram Yechuri, D. Raja, Nilotpal Basu and Brinda Karat, activist Yogendra Yadav and historian Ramchandra Guha were among those arrested ... THESE protests are part of a massive political fiction built at the cost of constitutional facts, offering common people reasons to suspect a foul-play with an eye on creating trouble across the country, as if giving fillip to a suspected theory that some Left-oriented elements are interested in pushing the nation into a civil-war-like situation.
There are substantial reasons to believe that all this is being done only to prove wrong the claim of Modi Government that the nation is sensible enough to understand logic and conduct itself peacefully, as it did when the law to ban Instant Triple Talaq was introduced, or when Article 370 of the Constitution was abrogated in Kashmir, or when the honourable Supreme Court delivered its historic verdict on Shri Ramjanmabhoomi in Ayodhya. That peaceful acceptance of change was hurting the Opposition. They were confused as well as disturbed that the people were unwilling to give in to political provocation, which they used to do earlier for decades.
They also felt a sense of not just defeat but a fear of decimation if such an atmosphere were to continue. The new Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019 gave these disturbed elements an opportunity to whip up public sentiment on totally false, made-up grounds. They wove an absolute falsehood, total fiction around the non-existent parts of the new law to instigate some unsuspecting people. Of course, this has been their approach all along. For seven decades since Independence, these politically-driven elements were all the time trying to lock some sections of the society -- mainly the minorities -- in sort of a fear-psychosis that they were being persecuted. They always tried to terrorise the minorities with the thought that a Hindu dominance was being built in the country only to eliminate them.
The new Citizenship Act gave them a chance to build a web of falsehood around the provisions that they misinterpreted and misrepresented totally to create a picture of fearsome prospects for the Muslim community if the new law were to be implemented -- the Khauf narrative, so to say, in the current political comprehension in the country. In fact, there is not one single provision or mention in the new law that is aimed against the interests of the minorities in general and Muslims in particular. There is not one single point that can push the Muslims to thinking that they would be discriminated against -- either in the new Citizenship Act, or in the proposed National Register of Citizens (which the Government is proposing to implement on a nationwide basis).
In fact, the Government has offered absolutely unassailable evidence that the NRC idea was first introduced in the Assam Accord which the then Prime Minister Mr. Rajiv Gandhi had signed. The Government also has given concrete, date-wise evidence of how various Congress leaders including Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, Mrs. Indira Gandhi -- and of late Mr. Ashok Gehlot -- insisted upon proper constitutional framework to care for persecuted minorities from neighbouring countries.
The Government also explained why the law referred only to three countries at this stage and how the past Governments had addressed similar issues that arose in case of other countries from time to time. Despite this, the Left-oriented intellectuals and Opposition parties are weaving total falsehood about the new Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019 in an attempt to kick up not just a counter-narrative (which is not unwelcome) but also introduce violence in the otherwise peaceful country only to bring a bad name to the Government. They are also trying to spread this falsehood to other countries where their cousins are waiting to whip up the Kahuf narrative in the Indian society.
This is the fact about this political fiction that the nation must know. This is the reality that the common people must be aware of in totality. This is the right of the citizens to know how the new Citizenship Act is being used as an article of distrust and disturbance in the larger society. The fact about this political fiction is that the Opposition seems to have no option but to push itself into national consciousness through violence, and also to build a parallel story of unease in the Indian society when actually things had been going on smoothly. The fact about this political fiction is that the Opposition is facing a terrible existential crisis.
There also is another, and more dangerous, fact about this political fiction -- that many international vested interests are engaged in creating disturbance in India. Most unfortunately for decades, the rulers of the country were falling prey to their machinations and manipulations. However, things changed with the ascendence of the Modi metaphor to the political apex. Most fortunately, it started changing the colour of internal and international politics and policy, and thereby polity. In the past five years, the Modi metaphor put in motion a slow, patient social re-engineering and started changing the national perspective. And that was why the vested interests started feeling terribly disturbed. This is the fact about this political fiction, this Khauf narrative.