Holding Democracy to Ransom

What happens when any disturbance takes place in any country? If it is a Democracy, all four pillars of the country, namely the Legislative (Parliament), the Executive (Cabinet & Government machinery), the Judiciary and the Press get activated to prevent further escalation of the disturbance. But Bharat is unique. We have a system which works very differently from the rest of the world. Don’t believe me? Read on …

When the Citizenship Amendment Bill was moved in Parliament, rumblings of dissent started among some ‘esteemed’ members of the Press. It did not surprise anyone, because these so-called journalists always looked for a way to foment trouble at the first instance. If a Hindu could be blamed for a Muslim sneezing, they would do it. So showing their ‘concern’ for the Muslims affected by CAB was to be expected.

The Executive should have gone on overdrive here, making sure that the Newspapers of the country bring out articles describing the CAB in full. But that did not happen and the result was that a whole section of the population got deluded into believing that CAA was about the Muslim citizens of India, instead of the fact that CAA was about non-Muslim citizens of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh, who were undergoing tremendous persecution for following their own religious beliefs in these Islamic countries.

Very skilfully, a section of Bollywood, the Hindi film industry got on the bandwagon, to garner some publicity and addressed the misguided Muslims into further believing that the CAA would be clubbed with the currently non-existent NRC and NPR exercise, and this would be used to drive away the legitimate Muslim citizens of this country. Once this happened, sleeper cells were activated to foment violent protests.

All this while, the Press which is supposed to be one of the main pillars of any democracy, did what they do best in India – they shook the Nation with unfiltered rumour mongering coupled with headlines which misled the people even more. Social Media which usually comes to the rescue in times such as this, was used instead to spread venom among the Muslims even more.

The messages sent out by the Home Minister himself to assure people that legitimate citizens of this country would not be affected either by the CAA, NRC or NPR, fell on deaf ears. This was also because there was another section of citizens which was making sure that these messages were publicised as untrue – this section was the religious leaders and activists of the Muslim community.

When it seemed that the Hindus were about to push back through their massive peaceful support rallies for the Government, these Islamists changed their stance – they decided to hold ‘peaceful’ protests too. By peaceful here, it meant that the men would take refuge in their house while they would send their children, students and womenfolk to protest. By peaceful it also meant that they would not do stone-pelting, but would have someone like Sharjeel Imam screaming on top of his voice about how the North East has to be separated from the rest of India. Basically, it would be violent in thought and plans, but apparently non-violent in action.

These non-violent agitation supporters forgot that the country belongs to all and not just to them. They blocked a whole area for their ‘peaceful’ protest, which meant that those who lived in this area had no option of exercising their right to life – they could not use ambulances, they could not open their shops and do business, students would miss their very important CBSE exams and infants would die after being in the biting cold. This went on for two full months.

The Judicial system could have taken suo-moto cognizance of the happenings and could have evoked the basic “Right to Live” principle as enshrined in the Constitution and could have asked the Legislative and Executive to take action, but it did nothing of that sort. What they did do after two months is that they accepted that life was becoming difficult to the people of that place and they sent moderators to clear one section of the road!

Now when it seems that the protests have turned conveniently violent once again just in time for the visit of the American President, Donald Trump, our good old “journalists” like Rana Ayyub and gang have started sharing fake videos of Hindu Terror, showing old videos of some flag hoisting on a Masjid and showing Muslim stone pelters with orange coloured bags in an attempt to show that they are Saffron terrorists. They have also started a chain stating that the Home Minister should wrongly state that there will be no NPR or NRC exercise in the near future and that would stop the riots instantly. Their only aim is to see to it that our Bharat only cares for the rights of the Muslims and not anyone else. Why else would they give out such subtle threats? It seems that Media today is used to mislead and not to disperse factual information.

When this is the situation of the four pillars of Democracy, we are heading towards “Democrazy” where Anarchists call the shots in running the country and hold all law abiding citizens to ransom. This has to be stopped and it can only be done by the Executive of the country. It is time the Government exercised their executive power to protect the Rights of those who believe in Democracy and not Anarchy.

(The writer is a Mumbai-based columnist)