India — The coming anarchy
The title borrows Robert Kaplan’s
perspicacious 1994 essay on the unraveling then occurring
across Africa. Published in February, by April it stood justified with the
start of the 100 day long genocide in Rwanda. Understandably then, if ‘India’
also figures in the title here there would be incredulity all round.
But then the commentary at
Republic Day from those who know best is on a somber note. A historian compares
the times to three other challenges the Republic faced up to in its life so
far. A noted columnist informs of speculation abroad that ‘India is in worse
shape than ever before’. A noted political scientist ends his Republic Day
reflections that a recoupling between democracy and the state is prerequisite,
‘(A)nd only then, will the Republic survive.’
Here the difference is in
sticking the neck out to claim and defend the claim that there is anarchy both
aboard and ahead. This is going a step further than the prime minister who in a
recent straight-from-the -heart talk referred to the distaste of youth for
anarchy. Speaking presumably in the context of the troubles in universities, he
said, ‘The youth in India likes to follow the system They question the system
when it does not work and don't like anarchy as they question the loopholes in
the system What today's youth dislikes is instability, chaos, nepotism.’
The prime minister was referring to
episodic eclipse of law and order when people who can be easily ‘recognized by
the dress they wear’ take to arson. As if on cue, almost immediately on his
observing the link at a campaign rally in Jharkhand, some miscreants as per the
lapdog media burnt buses 1000 km away in Delhi. Since ‘instability’ and ‘chaos’
this signified needed nipping in the bud, lathis
were rained on students at a nearby university campus’ library by uninvited
forces of law and order.
The home minister also makes
reference on occasion to the proverbial tukde-tukde
gang, ‘proverbial’ because a right to information query of his ministry yielded
the result that the ministry was unacquainted with any such gang. Nevertheless,
the gang got its comeuppance when right wing goons were released on their
campus for some three hours with the police helpfully standing by, no doubt on
orders of an as yet indeterminate superior authority.
According to the Delhi police
investigating officer and the first information report lodged in relation to
the events, the 16 stitches to one left wing woman student leader’s head
bespeak of who initiated the violence in first place. The narrative then
becomes one of right wing - if over-the-top – retaliation. In this reading,
initiators need to listen to the president of the Republic who in his Republic
Day eve address cautioned that those protesting must remain non-violent. This
is cover for the state’s action so far and impending action in places of
affront, such as Shaheen Bagh.
To some the title may not be
going all that far, even under the circumstance, given the outrage over the
sentiment voiced by an agitated Muslim student leader on an ability to cut off
the North East from mainland India. This is just the fear-mongering fashionable
in the strategic community aghast at Muslim numbers residing in the Chicken’s
Neck – the thin slip of land connecting the rest of India with its North East.
In fact the genesis of the
Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) is in their crystal-ball gazing going back over
two decades on the proliferation of Muslims in sensitive areas, as the North
East. The first salvo was fired by a saffron-tainted general from his perch as
governor in Assam, pointing to illegal immigrants in an official missive to the
home ministry. He then went on to stir up the pot in Jammu and Kashmir,
upturning the quietude of the mid 2000s there with his mischievous decision to
hand over Kashmiri land to a Hindu religious pilgrimage organisation. The
decision presaged the turning over of Kashmiri lands to the Union today.
The common thread between the two
strategic spots is Muslim presence. Muslimness is a red flag in the mind’s eye
of some busybodies in the strategic community. One notable, Praveen Swami, stepped
up sprightly in warning against seeing anything more than the lure of pelf in
the curious case of the soon-to-be Superintendent of Police, Devender Singh.
This was to distract attention from the under-investigated role of the officer
in the parliament attack case. Such under-investigated cases litter the
national scene since: the supposed jihadi plot to ‘get Modi’ in Gujarat; the
Inspector General Mushrif revealed chinks in the cut and dried popular
narrative of 26/11, though the SIM cards were apparently planted on the
plotters by a Kashmir Police officer; the terror threat in the Indian
hinterland, despite Hindutva fingerprints all over it.
The subversion of democracy that
resulted from the national security herding of the majority into the waiting
arms of the right wing is the ‘first cause’ in the break down in rule of law.
The argument here is that the coming anarchy is not from a threat to ‘law and
order’ as the Dynamic Duo – the prime minister and home minister – have it, as
much as from a break down in ‘rule of law’.
That rule of law is now in
tatters is stark. The Center-controlled Delhi Police action in Jamia Millia
Islamia and inaction in Jawaharlal Nehru University requires no expansion. The
acts of omission and commission of the Uttar Pradesh police under a chief
minister originally nominated by the Dynamic Duo in repressing the anti CAA
protests are all over social media. It cooption of auxiliaries in plain clothes
to provoke protestors so as to justify a violent crackdown is now well known.
The torture of a woman Muslim activist under a barrage of communal slurs at a Lucknow
police station show up the break down in the rule of law. The willful
demolition of slums housing supposed infiltrators in the South and the high
handedness of the Mangalore police shows the imprint of anarchy has expanded
from Gangetic confines.
The hurry to have the National
Investigative Agency (NIA) take over the Devender Singh case and the Bhima
Koregaon cases is further testimony. Outdoing its sister agency that has earned
the epithet ‘caged parrot’ over long years of prostration, the NIA in its short
time of existence is well on its way to being the ‘caged squawkzilla’, a parrot
discovered in New Zealand as the largest of its species that ever lives some 19
million years ago. More significant is the damage by the higher judiciary to
rule of law in their questionable judgment in the Ayodhya case; their
procrastination in the case of restoring freedoms to Kashmiris; and their
unwillingness to stay the CAA and the constitutional affront over Article 370.
The personalization of power and
authority is now virtually complete. The military – that was the last bastion –
has seen political general Bipin Rawat elevated to overall in-charge, as chief
of defence staff. Rawat is known to be beholden to the national security czar,
Ajit Doval, who in retrospect can be said to have led the intelligence
community rightwards and informally headed the deep state. The Bumbler’s – to
coin an apt description for the general - latest political intervention was in
bad mouthing the (non-existent) anti-CAA protest leadership in order to clinch
his promotion into history.
While the new army chief’s
quoting of the Constitution on taking over was encouraging, his praise of the
Kashmir make over as historic gives pause. It shows that the military has not
quite understood what staying out of politics implies. If the army chief was of
the opinion that Shah’s Kashmir initiative was a blunder, would he have been so
voluble? If not, then apolitical propriety requires him not to publicly backstop
Shah either.
By all accounts, the economy that
enabled the majority turning a blind eye to the right wing’s supremacist agenda
is now on downslide. Some Hindu voters have broken ranks by joining anti-CAA
frontlines. This is troubling, since polarization appears to have lost its
sheen. The Kashmir Police’s timely arrest of Devender Singh’s and preemption of
the ‘game’ he referred to on his arrest is a case to point.
A worsening economy; peeling away
of blinkers off voters; dissonance in potential instruments of repression; the
first instance of collective Muslim backlash in a generation; and inability to manage
the narrative externally, depicted most recently on the cover of the Economist; all portend possible panic at
Lok Kalyan Marg. The trump cards held – a temple at Ayodhya and a sparkling new
façade to the national capital’s town center - are too far to reassure.
So, expect further departures
from rule of law – with both prospective successors, Shah and Yogi, emulating
their leader Modi in his rise from Gujarat to national stature. To Chanakya II,
Ajit Doval, who make up the Terrific Trio - then the breakdowns in law and
order will be used to paper over the breakdown in rule of law. The two
breakdowns forming a closed-loop constitutes the coming anarchy.
