India, the land of Rajas and Maharajas, has seen many ups and downs throughout history. After gaining the status of an independent nation, on 26 January 1950 India became the Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic of India. India was finally free of the British Raj; Now it was the duty of the Indians to build a nation that thousands of freedom fighters dreamed of and it was expected of it to continue the legacy of these legends. The foundation of this was laid by brilliant minds like Dr. Bhim Rao Ambedkar and others who were able to bring about a secular constitution. The word ‘Secular’ was added to the preamble of the constitution in 1975, but it was secular in nature from the very beginning.
India is a free country; its constitution promises that. Surely the people in government have many times tried and manipulated the power that the Indian law grants them and have used it to suppress the people who speak against them. One good example of such use of power is the emergency of 1975. Despite such attempts, India has remained a free nation due to the strength of its constitution.
The current government of India came second time into power after it was elected with a vast majority. It was clear from the poll results what the majority of India wanted. And due to this enormous majority, they enjoy power which no government has done before. It is considerably easy for the current government to pass any bill in the parliament. One such bill was ‘Citizenship Amendment Bill’ which later on became ‘Citizenship Amendment Act’.
Introduction of this amendment lead to a series of protests throughout the country; these protests grew so big and widespread that they almost took the shape of a movement. The demands of the protesters were simple and clear: “Do not interfere with the secular nature of our constitution”. But the government didn’t pay any heed to these protests, accept using police force to try and crush them. Although this force was not able to remove the protesters, something else shook the foundations of these protests. It was the North East Delhi violence where some alleged pro-government violent elements clashed with the protesters. And what followed was a massacre. According to a report published by ‘Firstpost.’ on April 1st 2020, 49 people died in the violence, and the majority of whom were Muslims and anti-CAA protesters. (Link to the report is given below.)
Videos of a health care worker who helped riot victims, Report: Kashif Khan
Delhi police arrested around 1300 people in this case in terms of the proportion of the arrested accused, the numbers from two communities were almost identical to each other reported The Hindu. Still, these arrests showed an evident bias of the police in the beginning and no individual from the ruling party was arrested despite having video footage of leaders like Kapil Mishra where he can be seen threatening the protesters. Meeran Haider, Saffora Zargar and Shifa-ur-Rehman are some famous names who have been arrested in the case. Interestingly these are the names that were involved in the anit-CAA protests from the very beginning. With almost no evidence of these people being involved in the riots they are kept in jail for almost six months now, however, Saffora Zargar got bail on humanitarian grounds due her being pregnant (which was also refused for several months). The charges against these people are serious, almost making them enemy of the state.
This clearly shows when a government is selected with such huge majority it is almost impossible to stand against it and if you try, you suffer a fate similar to these individuals. That brings us to a question which was used as a statement earlier in the article ‘India is a free country.’ This is not to say that we do not enjoy the freedom of expression, we do untill and unless we cross the wrong people.
Firstpost Report: https://www.firstpost.com/india/high-cost-of-riots-in-northeast-delhi-list-of-49-people-who-died-during-three-days-of-violence-8108751.html
Write a comment ...