Homeland Security

Are CAA protests a sinister new dimension of proxy war?
Star Rating Loader Please wait...
Issue Net Edition | Date : 27 Dec , 2019

India, which has never had a moment of peace, ever since Kashmiri Pandits were hounded and driven out of their homeland at gunpoint decades ago, finds itself under redoubled attack over the Citizens’ Amendment Act (CAA). Premeditated protests, full of virulence and hate mongering, besides cyclic acts of stone pelting, arson, vandalism and violence, have engulfed the entire nation, sending out an ominous and unmistakable message about its very survivability. These developments are the emerging new offshoots of the proxy war’s more sinister dimensions, cleverly masked by lofty words like peace, inclusiveness and ‘secularism’.

These developments are the emerging new offshoots of the proxy war’s more sinister dimensions, cleverly masked by lofty words like peace, inclusiveness and ‘secularism’.

The surreptitious insertion of the word ‘secularism’ into the Preamble of the Constitution by none other Mrs Indira Gandhi, during the darkest days of the Emergency, lies at the root of the current divide; one which has condemned the vast majority of the country’s population to be guilt-ridden and defensive about its very existence. A damaging construct which the founding fathers did not even find worthy of consideration, much less inclusion, grounded in the unshakable conviction that there could not have been a more tolerant and peace loving civilization than India, which had warmly welcomed the persecuted Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, even Muslims, unlike any other existing culture.

The consequences of such sham secularism are visible in the kind of highly toxic protests being instigated all over Assam and the North-East, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Delhi, UP, Bihar, Karnataka, among others. The scale of demonstrations, unprecedented since the anti-Mandal agitation of the nineties, with millions of youth vehemently opposing reservation for the backwards, is virtually setting other peaceful cities and areas ablaze. Compared to the vast numbers of jobless graduates affected by the 1990 backward quota, the figures involved in granting citizenships to persecuted Indic minorities are rather miniscule. But the resistance to the Act is far more disproportionate, motivated and malafide, demonizing the real victims and depriving them of their rights.

Obviously, such a vast orchestration of men, material, means and money, across the length and breadth of the nation, would have been inconceivable without the involvement of some Hate-India agency, funded by petro dollars and loot from Balochistan. It operates covertly through its intermediaries and moles, hidden in every nook and cranny of the state and embedded in its political system and media houses. An intelligence note reportedly submitted to the Home Ministry identified political parties and radical Islamic bodies like the Popular Front of India (PFI) and Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), being behind widespread vandalism, rampaging mobs and destruction of property.

Stung horribly by the surgical strike on Uri and air raids on Balakot, Pak Army have been on the lookout since for opportunities to deliver the death blow and devastate India, beginning with an abortive air raid on military bases in J&K.

Where does the Pakistani Army and the ISI figure in all these developments. Stung horribly by the surgical strike on Uri and air raids on Balakot, they have been on the lookout since for opportunities to deliver the death blow and devastate India, beginning with an abortive air raid on military bases in J&K. Post Balakot, the atmosphere had been rife with murmurs of something big that Islamabad was planning against the country. But then the cascading effect of  Triple Talaq abolition, the proposed construction of Ram Temple, abrogation of Article 370 and the passage of CAA, not only checkmated its nefarious designs but also left the western neighbour badly shaken, fuming and deeply outraged. The ISI, being what it is, resolved to do something more drastic than previously attempted, unleashing anarchy, for instance, and bringing India down on its knees.

 ‘Peaceful protests,’ as the Break India gang would have the public believe, are morphing into a vicious, full-fledged civil war, with an overwhelmingly communal and seditious slant, holding the entire country to ransom. A pernicious campaign of this magnitude, marked by unrelenting strife and violence, should be put down firmly or will go out of control. Already more than a dozen and a half defiant agitators, not to mention innocent bystanders, including children, have fallen to bullets allegedly fired by the police in UP, an accusation vehemently denied by the latter. However, a photograph going viral about a constable brandishing a revolver in Kanpur contradicts this version. The functionaries still maintain the force fired in the air in self-defence. But who will answer how several policemen sustained bullet injuries, indicating a strong possibility of mobs using firearms.

Reports quoting ADG zone, Prem Prakash, said three policemen suffered bullet injuries in Kanpur violence. A constable at Agra had a providential escape from a certain death when the coins, held in his chest pocket wallet, halted a round fired by one of the rioters, after already penetrating his ‘bulletproof’ jacket! A fellow constable was hospitalized with a bullet wound in his leg. If stray bullets injured four policemen and killed a number of other agitators in UP cities, then the possibility of more unreported cases could not be ruled out.  But who provided the rioters with arms and ammunition, is an angle that should be rigorously probed and its perpetrators dealt exemplary punishment. Other bullet wounds suffered by several bystanders and those not involved in protests have been reported from Meerut.

Four PFI activists in Meerut and three in Lucknow are among the 25 from the organization reportedly arrested in UP.

MK Faizy, founder-president of PFI’s political wing, Socialist Democratic Party of India (SDPI), peremptorily warned Home Minister Amit Shah that Muslims alone  “will have to tell you if you need to be afraid (of us) or not,” over the Citizens Act.   He declared that peace is inconceivable without their “cooperation and approval.” The swarajyamag.com report also quoted him as saying: “If you try to send us out, then we will take you down with us.”  Faizy’s fear mongering and seditious threats to destabilize the nation has surprisingly not invited any action by the government, which appears to be too paralysed to respond to a literal siege of India. Urban Naxals, the PFI and political outfits also instigated attacks on the Assam Secretariat, according to senior Assam minister Himanta Biswas. Four PFI activists in Meerut and three in Lucknow are among the 25 from the organization reportedly arrested in UP.

Yet the entire panoply of foreign funded NGOs and media houses, Jihadi elements, left liberals, political parties and Bollywood, synonymous with sleaze and sanctimoniousness, has once again launched a fierce broadside against the very idea of Bharat, with half truths, innuendos and every other trick in the book. Both singly and collectively, they are passionately upholding the very anti-thesis of tolerance and compassion, junking these values nurtured by Indic civilization, which views the whole world as one big family. Even PM Modi warned of ‘vested interests’ working overtime to stoke countrywide clashes and violence.

Lately, some high profile Apex Court lawyers, who charge many millions for a single brief and political leaders, including those with highly questionable antecedents, jumped into the fray, defending fanatical Jamia mobs while decrying ‘police excesses.’ Visuals of eyewitnesses, who reported watching goons and outside elements incite students to vandalize public property and private vehicles, directly contradict their versions. The frenzied mobs used wet blankets to minimize the impact of tear gas shells, turning their ire on hospitals and ambulances, not even sparing school buses, besides hurling petrol bombs and broken bottles at the police.

All but forgotten is how the then PM, Mrs Gandhi imposed the Emergency, suspending human rights and jailing thousands on mere suspicion, following similar agitations in 1975; or when dozens of sannyasis, protesting peacefully against cow slaughter outside Parliament, were felled in the police firing ordered by her.

Will the left-liberals explain why Muslims hounded in those countries, avoid becoming nationals of 56 other Islamic states and still gravitate towards a ‘Hindu’ India?  

A suspended Gorakhpur Medical College paediatrician, adding fuel to fire, told AMU students that “CAA makes Muslims second category citizens” and that “they will be harassed with the implementation of the NRC.” He has already been booked for hate speeches. Would he and those of his ilk in the Lutyens Zone care to spell out how would it marginalize the minorities, or infringe on their rights, when the Act is intended to provide citizenship to persecuted minorities from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan? Will the left-liberals explain why Muslims hounded in those countries, avoid becoming nationals of 56 other Islamic states and still gravitate towards a ‘Hindu’ India ?

Will the doctor and his fellow travellers care to justify why they kept quiet when half a million Hindus, India’s original sons of the soil, were terrorized into leaving the Valley, for no fault of their own? Were the mullahs standing in solidarity with the Jihadi groups, tacitly approving of demographic changes to convert J&K into an Islamic enclave? Did they not look the other way when bigoted mobs targeted tens of thousands of innocents from the North-East in Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad, besides desecrating the Martyrs Memorial, the immediate provocation being the assault on rowdy Rohingyas in Myanmar?

Surprisingly, leading lights of the UPA government, which did nothing to halt the mobs, letting them run riot all over Mumbai, always come forward to deliver spurious homilies, in the name of tolerance and inclusiveness, two of the most misused words in the political lexicon. The Mumbai police, too, reputed to be the best once upon a time, watched the mayhem unfold as passive spectators, never held accountable for its abject failure to uphold law and order. These political luminaries who defended the rights of the persecuted Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist minorities to seek asylum in India, are now employing incendiary speeches to provoke mobs against them.

A defiant West Bengal minister and Jamiat-Ulema e–Hind president Siddiqullah Chowdhury, even threatened to prevent Amit Shah from stepping out of Kolkata airport whenever he lands there, making a mockery  of one’s democratic rights. What is more, a quartet of Trinamool leaders, who landed in Lucknow, ostensibly to commiserate with families of those killed or detained, but allegedly to fish in troubled waters, were detained following intelligence inputs and packed off to Kolkata. Speaking of Bengal, Sankhadeep Shome, who shared his ‘blood curdling’ experiences on facebook, graphically exposes the manner in which fanatical Muslim mobs, speaking a vernacular version of Bangla common across the physical divide, terrorized passengers in the initial days of the anti-CAA protests.

Were the mullahs standing in solidarity with the Jihadi groups, tacitly approving of demographic changes to convert J&K into an Islamic enclave?

Shome, on board the Coromandel Express, recalled that just as the train trundled into Uluberia station on the Howrah-Kharagpur section around 3:20 pm on December 13, a 500 strong mob, armed with rods and stones and wearing skull caps, emerged from a nearby mosque after the Friday namaz. They blocked the tracks outside the station and resorted to extreme violence. . . .“Then they got to our train and started to pelt it with stones. The elderly were traumatized, the children crying. . . . My heart pounded as I heard them screaming,” said Shome.  “I saw them laughing sadistically as they poked the rods through the broken window panes to terrify the passengers. I ducked and stayed dead still. One stray stone, one swing of the rod is all it would take.” Until the RPF personnel chased the mobsters away, very belatedly though.

When Shome finally stepped out four hours after being cooped up in the coach, he found the station ravaged, resembling a war zone, with the local police conspicuous by its absence. A severely damaged and disabled locomotive stood as a mute ‘spectator’ to the violence. The loco driver had also sustained injuries, said Shome. “You read about mob violence. You watch it on TV. You even romanticise it. Till the day it happens to you. It is then you realise that every single day is a gift,” signed off Shome.

Rate this Article
Star Rating Loader Please wait...
The views expressed are of the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions or policies of the Indian Defence Review.

About the Author

Sudip Talukdar

is an author and strategic affairs columnist.

More by the same author

Post your Comment

2000characters left

4 thoughts on “Are CAA protests a sinister new dimension of proxy war?

  1. Religious seminaries and places of worship being used by the minority community to unleash violence and vandalism wherever they are in majority is a proven tactic. In West Bengal it has been repeatedly observed (because the state government is a passive collaborator) which now has spread to other states also.

    Gathering a mob of 500-3000 people in a short notice is no easy task and requires some planning. Also, students who have very little idea of CAA took to the streets to protest vehemently indicates political patronage and planning from left leaning parties. A case in point is the Jadavpur University Gold medalist who tore the CAA during the convocation without even knowing what CAA is but used the forum for sloganeering “Inquilab Zindabad”.

    We are passing through interesting times where people and ideology professed are mere masks for a more sinister purpose.

  2. Turkey had a coup in 2016, Erdogan seized it as an opportunity to destroy all opposition that was trying to overturn a democratically elected Turkish government (under Erdogan). Remember that parts of Turkish armed forces, air force, helicopters and fighters were with the coup plotters against the government, still Turkey prevailed. So, BJP has an opportunity to use this coup (CAA so called protests is a coup against the Indian state) to destroy these enemies of the Indian state or to sit back and see India and Hindus getting annihilated. So what will it be?

More Comments Loader Loading Comments