GOOD SCORE
| Date :30-Jan-2020 |
THE arrest of Sharjeel Imam as a mastermind of multiple anti-national activities actually marks a very major development whose metaphor needs to be understood in totality. The arrest will prove to be a major boost to the comprehensive investigations into the current phase of senseless but well-organised and violent protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act -- CAA, National Register of Citizens (NRC), and the National Population Register (NPR) and help unravel the larger plot of creating widespread disturbances in the country by forcing non-existent issues to become major national irritants. There are substantial and logical reasons to believe that this arrest may signal the beginning of a very effective official response to the utter nonsense anti-national forces have unleashed on the country.
This is, thus, a welcome development, possibly first in a series that may alter the course of contemporary history of India. Sharjeel Imam is not just an individual mastermind of many a trouble in the country but also a cog in a big wheel of malevolence, believably a part of an international strategy to bring disrepute not just to the Government of Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi but also to India. Of course, official agencies have taken a series of measures as their response to the current trouble and have succeeded in pin-pointing a lot of trouble-spots in the political jigsaw puzzle now in action in the country. One single detail will endorse the suspicion about involvement of a much larger transnational network operating now – that Sharjeel Imam was about to escape to Nepal and was captured at the border in a rather unrecognisable exterior. This is a significant detail that may lead to many a point of the bigger mystery.
Let alone the jaundiced propaganda of a few, the whole nation now believes that the current protests against the CAA, the NRC, and the NPR are a hollow hype whose swell would dissipate sooner than expected. Time and again, the governmental leaders have harped that the CAA and the other two provisions are not to take away anybody’s citizenship but are actually intended to protect the citizenship of those who are living in the country with proper documentation to support them. There is not a single word in the CAA to suggest that it is aimed at throwing people out, but on the contrary are designed to grant Indian citizenship to members of persecuted minorities from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan. The Government has also made it clear to the people – on the basis of historical evidence, as well as a sovereign commitment – that the provisions in the CAA would be extended and expanded to cover other ethnic groups whenever the need would arise.
Now whatever is happening by way of protests is nothing but an overstretched idea that makes little sense on the ground. In a way, quite predictably this is going to be a helpful factor in the ensuing domestic electoral politics for the forces led by Mr. Narendra Modi. To that extent, as can be said with certain responsibility that the protests may further add to the general decline of Opposition parties in the country. This would be for obvious reasons that no one can fool all the people for all the time, something the Opposition parties were trying to achieve all along.
The common people in the street now realise the falsehood in the Opposition propaganda and will start resisting the nonsense, as the evidence of popular resistance is now available everywhere. Sharjeel Imam’s arrest would weaken the Opposition case still further. The Government now knows that he had been involved in many an anti-national activity, fanning trouble wherever and whenever possible. With his arrest, many more links would now be bared, weakening further the sting in the current protests.