The Plot Behind Republic Day Riot

In January 2020, Sharjeel Imam, Shaheen Bagh blockade mastermind, had said in a speech that five lakh people in an organised manner can cut off Northeast from rest of India permanently for a month. He was exhorting people from his community to do the same. His stated objective was to block the Siliguri Corridor. What India’s adversaries could not do through conventional or sub-conventional wars, Sharjeel Imam was talking of doing by using mob as a weapon knowing well that in Indian democracy, it is extremely challenging for any government to give the go-ahead to Armed Forces to shoot thousands of people en masse.

Sharjeel Imam might be in jail now but a year later, something similar happened in Red Fort on January 26, a vindication that what he had said last year, was now being put to test by a powerful syndicate of which Sharjeel Imam might just have been a dispensable pawn.

On January 26, a violent mob on rampage spree took advantage of self-imposed restraint of India’s law enforcement agencies and stormed the iconic Red Fort to remove the flag of India and replace it with a religious flag of a community. It was nothing less than assault on symbol of India’s sovereignty.

In hindsight, one is compelled to wonder the following. What exactly was the objective behind the Khalistani elements replacing the Indian Tricolour with a religious flag of the Sikh community? Was there a hidden agenda of creating animosity between the Sikhs and Hindus of India? Who benefits the most in case deep revulsion is created between the two communities of India?

In the realm of hybrid warfare, making a country implode from within by making its own people fight amongst each other is an evolving tactic, and often an effective one. To understand the deeper plot, one has to remember two essential elements of Indian society, namely the role of Sikhs in Indian Armed Forces and the symbiotic relationship of respect and harmony that exists between Hindus and Sikhs of India.

In the first place, as a community, the Sikhs have made an incredible contribution to India’s Armed Forces. The Sikh Regiment and Sikh Light Infantry, two of the most decorated infantry regiments of Indian Army, have around 39 infantry battalions in Indian Army, while the Punjab Regiment has another 20 battalions. This apart, both Hindus and Sikhs from Punjab have considerable representation in all kinds of security forces of India, be it Air Force, Army, Navy or the Central armed police forces.

Secondly, for centuries, Sikhs and Hindus have been in a symbiotic relationship embedded with shared value systems and cultural commonalities. It is rather a common sight to find Sikhs visiting Vaishno Devi shrine or temples of other Hindu deities. Likewise, it is equally a common sight to find Hindus visiting Gurudwaras with deep reverence, and having immense respect for the Sikh Gurus.

For the deep state of Pakistan, making India ‘bleed with a thousand cuts’ is not possible unless Pakistan can make Sikhs and Hindus fight each other and develop deep revulsion, in place of reverence, in the heart of each for the other. Islamabad knows that it is impossible to make Punjab burn again through the Khalistani movement alone. Mere call for a separate Khalistan gets little traction. That era is gone. They were looking for a trigger which can make Punjab erupt again. Perhaps, they were hoping for a repeat of 1984 carnage.

One is therefore compelled to wonder if the sinister agenda of the masterminds behind the Republic Day riot, and especially the storming of the Red Fort, the replacing of Indian flag with a Sikh religious flag by Khalistani elements, was aimed at provoking violent retribution by security forces alone, or also to cultivate deep anti-Sikh sentiments among Hindus for the Khalistani elements as well as the Sikh community as a whole.

Even though the act of rioters in Red Fort was condemned by people of Punjab en masse, the objective or the sinister plan of riot masterminds was perhaps to make sure that the disdain that this act would create, would leave a permanent negative impression against the Sikh community and would also lead to violent reactions on the streets of entire North India, especially Delhi. Thankfully, India remained calm and Government of India strictly prevented the chain of violence from taking place.

A more sinister objective behind putting the Sikh elements among rioters in the forefront,was perhaps on the anticipation that as and when security forces would shoot at the rioters, who were using tractors to mow down police personnel, the casualties would become more of the Sikhs. As per their sinister plan, perhaps, the dead bodies would then be projected by Khalistani elements, and their Pakistani masterminds, through scripted narratives that would read somewhat like ‘Hindu India kill Minority Sikhs in a Genocidal Shooting’.

This would then be used as justification to bolster the demand for a separate Khalistani state for Sikhs, as per the agenda of the Khalistanis. By then the Greta Thunbergs of the world would have been ready with their tweets and hashtags to tell the world how India is violating human rights and killing minorities, and then those amplified tweets, would become the basis for vitriolic anti-India and anti-Modi columns in some of the well-known American and European publications.

The sinister objective perhaps was also to create a frenzy of social media campaigns to instigate not just the people of Punjab but also the gameplan was to create some ripple effects within the Sikh members in the Indian Armed Forces. The best possible ‘dream’ scenario for the riot masterminds would have been a sort of Mutiny, and return of the 1984 kind of horror in the heart of Delhi, at a time when India is confronting China and Pakistan in borders, and combating COVID-19 pandemic simultaneously. Imagine the outcome! It is only then one realises why the Modi Government asked Security Forces to show extreme restraint when the mob was using their tractors as weapons to target security personnel.

In a country where almost 86 per cent of farmers are either marginal or small, and where due to lack of agriculture market reforms and exploitation by middlemen hundreds of thousands of farmers have committed suicide in the last few decades, would ordinary farmers have resources to buy brand new tractors, spend millions to drive to Delhi and then use tractors as weapons to mow down policemen? The key questions then are who are those who were ready to risk losing their tractors and yet were willing to use them as weapons against security forces? Who funded their fuel? Who asked them to target policemen with tractors? It is here that the role of Khalistani organisations based abroad come under suspicion.

However, if security forces had shot those violent rioters driving those tractors, the narrative would not have been that Delhi Police fired in self-defence against a violent mob attempting to crush policemen with tractors. Instead, the prepared narrative had perhaps already been kept ready wherein it would have been projected as to how, ‘Fascist Police Forces of Capitalist India Kill Innocent Poor Farmers’. Words such as ‘massacre’, ‘holocaust’, ‘slaughter’, ‘bloodbath’, ‘genocide’ would have been used generously by foreign celebrity twitter handles, perhaps available for a price, to tweet and retweet through a set template to project India as ‘brutal’ and ‘worse than Nazis’.

Perhaps based on the anticipation that security forces would violently retaliate against rioters on Republic Day, the next stage as was revealed from the toolkit expose was to create protest at Indian embassies in every country followed by a bigger plot at a later stage.

The agenda was not just to create a Twitter storm based on a fake narrative on farmers’ protest but to project India as a ‘brutal’ and ‘fascist state’. The toolkit content reads the following, “India has a long history of human rights violation, violence, and a cruel indifference for its most vulnerable citizens. On January 26 th the government will be celebrating the adoption of its Constitution with a military parade, while continuing to perpetuate harmful policies that violate their own constitution.” Can a fake narrative be more blatant than this?

Here is the irony of what India really is compared to what the ignorant, brainwashed ‘Bully Pulpits’ like Greta Thunberg or Disha Ravi, choreographed perhaps by powerful syndicates, tend to project about India. During the pandemic, Government of India made sure that around 80 crore people of India, without any discrimination, were provided with free ration for more than eight months. No other country in the world could even fathom to do something similar.

Not just that, the Ayushman Bharat initiative of the Modi Government made sure that more than 10 crore Indian families, or at least 50 crore Indians, with extremely modest means and who are economically vulnerable, are given Rs 5 lakh of medical insurance annually, without any discrimination on the basis of caste, creed or religion. From providing free LPG connection to 8 crore poor households to making sure that every Indian family now has a bank account through Jan Dhan Yojana, to assisting micro enterprises and self employed from poorer sections become self-sufficient through availing Mudra Loans, which has already been given to 13 crore Indians, to building 10 crore toilets in homes of marginalised sections, in every sphere PM Modi-led NDA Government has strived to take care of vulnerable sections of society. And yet, fake activists funded by global syndicates would project something very opposite of the same to the world because of their inherent disdain for India.

The anti-India agenda would not have stopped merely at Twitter campaign or protest against Indian embassies. There were high possibilities of them even pushing their fake agendas at UN Security Council, seeking global intervention to oust the incumbent Modi Government. In between, as was the template of the Arab Spring in Syria as well, call for armed uprising against India and demand for blockade of every Indian city would have been raised. This is exactly what was done to regime after regime in the Arab Spring. Some fought back while many succumbed. One should not be surprised if India’s ‘generous’ neighbours such as Pakistan would have done the needful in terms of catering to the requirement of all kinds of arms and ammunition for the choreographed ‘uprising’ for which Pakistan’s deep state had waited so eagerly for so long. Refer to recent activities of Pakistan using drones to drop weapons in Punjab. But alas for them! It did not happen that way.

Even as these works would have continued, calls for trade embargo, investment blockade and blacklisting of top Indian companies would surely have been the next step. In fact, targeting many of India’s top industrial houses who are now among the top conglomerates of Asia was definitely an agenda. Without putting them in bad light, tarnishing India’s future would be impossible. India’s aspirations for becoming a $10 trillion economy by 2030-32 depends much on the ability of Indian companies to sustain their performance, and reach global benchmarks of scalability and proficiency. Ironically, even as some of the top Indian Industrial houses are being vilified by so-called Protestors as was evident in toolkit agenda, no one is naming or denigrating any foreign MNC operating in India. Does that not sound suspicious? One is therefore forced to wonder why were specific Industrial houses of India targeted? Is it true that many of India’s industrial giants are now becoming global contenders and headache for the established entities of the West? Is it that some major Indian companies are now becoming serious competition to global ecommerce giants, telecom behemoths or infrastructure players? Is it because in the next one decade, many of India’s industrial majors would outpace their global competitors in several sectors across the Asian and global markets? Is it because of all these that certain syndicates are using ‘professional activists on hire’ to create a vicious fake narrative against Indian industrial houses even while remaining silent on foreign companies or malpractices in China?

What India is facing is not just another protest. This is a new dimension of seeding conflicts within countries through a sinister plot by ingeniously camouflaging those agenda with more palatable words like ‘environmental activism’ to create space for the sinister plots to germinate.

Therefore, many of those so-called teenage activists propped up by Western media are perhaps nothing but fronts of these very powerful cabals who push their own narratives and agendas through the cover fire of these media managed activists, with rudimentary or non- existent subject matter expertise. They try to overwhelm masses with rehearsed and scripted emotional rants, albeit for a fee or fame. Logic takes a back seat. And the social media populace simply gulps those up just coz it was said by a ‘celebrity activist’. If it does not work, they just move to another cause ‘on hire’. Genuine activists do not delete toolkit files when exposed.

Therefore, the overall agenda of triggering mayhem on January 26 had five major phases. The first phase was about mobilising people through a dangerous cocktail of falsehood and lies to instill insecurity among farming community against the three Farm Laws. The Khalistanis, the Leftist groups and some foreign hands played a key role in it. The second phase was choreographing a dangerous riot on the 26 th January that had the potential of creating communal rift, rural-urban hostility and violent retribution.

The third phase was anticipation that the violence and desecration to be done by rioters would be so profound that it would provoke violent retribution by security forces that would result in severe fatalities.

The fourth phase, based on outcome of third phase, was about using the visuals of fatalities and deaths to provoke further riots in Punjab and elsewhere, as also to trigger a global Twitter campaign against India to project India as a ‘fascist state’.

This was to be followed by global call for sanctions, UN intervention, boycott of Indian companies and call for nationwide ‘civil uprising’ in India against Modi Government. How Modi Government broke the chain by asking security forces to show restraint sadly, for the riot masterminds, the Modi Government did not take the bait, neither in 2020 nor in 2021. Therefore, the third phase of retaliation by security forces against rioters did not happen. This broke the chain and did not allow phase four and phase five from becoming a reality.

The ‘Civil War Agenda’ might have been put on hold by anti-India syndicates for now but their search for the next issue would continue. For them, the farm protest was just a medium. Since this product did not deliver, the syndicate would move on and seek a better product for triggering the next unrest perhaps.

During a 2017 interview given to an American channel, Yuri Benzmenov, a former KGB defector, mentioned about Soviet Union’s agenda to create a ‘Gang of Useful Indian Idiots’ to propagate and spread Communist agenda. Sadly, many of those still exist, and have germinated in multiples, to take forward the ‘Break India’ plan of foreign cabals. India would have to be cautious and alert. The concluding line of Ahimsa Paramo Dharma is Dharma Himsa Tathaiva Cha. For the sake of preserving the righteous, sometimes it is important to deal violence with demonstrable punitive action to instil a fear of consequence among those attempting to ‘Break India’ through other means. That’s the only thing needed to counter the anarchists for saving the nation. India’s restraint and resilience cannot be taken for granted.