A bloodied Act

 There is absolutely no doubt in the minds of patriotic Indian citizens and those who truly believe that India stands for the democratic rights of every citizen as enshrined in the constitution irrespective of class or race or religion; that the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) is not only divisive, unethical but also an act that will invite misery and tragedy upon the people as confirmed by the violence and deaths throughout the nation.So far, till date nearly 80 people have died and several hundreds injured due to violence arising out of protests against the CAA throughout India in several states. If an Act is used as a beating stick against religious minorities where communal leaders continue to blatantly incite hatred in support of the Act through dangerously inflammable speeches; then the sinews of the multi-cultural and multi-religious Indian society are being torn apart. The CAA has nothing to do with India although the BJP actually wanted it for creating its own Hindu vote bank in Assam, Tripura and West Bengal. Recently, anti-CAA protests were met with a counter protest called pro-CAA in Delhi. To cut the story short, the Delhi Police under the home ministry did nothing for three days during which goons from outside Delhi and armed with country-made pistols, Molotov cocktails, catapults, bricks and stones went rampaging while the Delhi Police was either passive or even active participant in targeting some community. Delhi Police displayed the same bias as it showed during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. Incidentally, in 2002 when the Gujarat riots broke out the police also did nothing for five days as it did not in Delhi. The then home minister in Gujarat in 2002 was Amit Shah, the present union home minister whose ministry controls the Delhi Police. This is mere coincidence but certainly one that would require urgent attention to seek remedies to such police ineptitude. There were massive anti-CAA protests in all north eastern states as people felt let down by a party which claimed to be different from the Congress. In Tripura it led to the death of an indigenous Tripuri tribal at the hands of migrants when the Tripuri tribals were going to participate in an anti-CAA rally.In Assam, inept handling by the police under the BJP government against anti-CAA protests led to the deaths of six protestors.There were massive protests in Manipur where the issue raised was “No CAA in North East or No North East in India”. Similar anti-CAA protests were held in Nagaland, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh.In Meghalaya, the pro-ILP programme at Ichamati (near Indo-Bangladesh border) to counter CAA by the Khasi Students Union (KSU) re-opened an old festering wound with non-Khasi non-tribal communities. Three were killed in subsequent the clashes that erupted into a polarised local(Khasi) versus non-local(plains) clash. The fears and hatred of the past between communities in Meghalaya have been revived by the divisive CAA. However, for whatever reasons the Modi-Shah duo have made the CAA as their party government’s main agenda for India; there is no doubt it will be pursued to the hilt in West Bengal for the assembly elections. The irony is that while not a single non-Muslim illegal immigrant has been granted Indian citizenship as many as more than 80 Indian citizens have been died due to it.