NEW DELHI — Through December and January, this year, young students and activists organised marches and sit-ins against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), a law that critics say discriminates against Muslims and makes religion the basis of granting Indian citizenship. Reading the CAA with the BJP’s promise to implement a nationwide register of citizens has made those who may not have the documents to prove their citizenship, particularly Muslims, feel extremely vulnerable.
After the Delhi riots in February, the Delhi Police, which answers to the Narendra Modi government, said the peaceful protests against the CAA and NRC were a front to plan communal violence and overthrow the government. The leaders of these protests have been jailed and charged with a slew of crimes including terrorism.
In this interview, Neera Chandhoke, a political science professor who taught at Delhi University, and author of State and Civil Society: Explorations in Political Theory and Rethinking Pluralism, Secularism and Tolerance: Anxieties of Coexistence, said this is the first time that civil disobedience has been called terrorism in India, and spoke of the impact it will have on Mohandas Gandhi’s legacy, and what the anti-CAA movement has achieved.
“The Constitution is higher than any notion of a nation envisioned by a political party,” said Chandhoke.
Has civil disobedience ever been called terrorism.
This is the first time because I don’t even remember this in the Emergency. A lot of people were jailed in the Emergency but it was not called treason. It is completely illegitimate. It does not have legal value, moral value, or constitutional sanction. The government is a representative of people. People have the right to say that this is not a law that you can pass in our name. You are responsible to us. A democracy is about the responsibility of the government to the people of India. The government is not the country. The political party is not the country. Why would you call it treason? The entire language of delegitimising dissent.
“Why would you call it treason? The entire language of delegitimising dissent.”
Dissent has always been criminalised in India.
The Indian government has used treason often, but they have not criminalised dissent to the extent this government has done. Not the Vajpayee government. All of us have been writing against the government, we wrote books in the nineties on minority rights and secularism, but nobody ever trolled us, or insulted us, or threatened us with violence. Everything has been dramatised to such an extent that we have lost our balance.
The government wants to link the anti-CAA movement with the riots.
You have a completely different phenomenon, a communal riot in the northeast of Delhi. What do the two have to do with each other? They don’t. This is a connection which is a completely illegitimate one made by the police. Don’t buy into this dominant kind of representation of the movement that sparked off on 15 December and compute a causal connection between that movement and the riots. There is none. This is what the police are trying to do. This is what the central government is trying to do.
Civil society is an urban phenomenon. People are getting up and saying no. Occupation of public land is a perfectly valid way to protest. There was Occupy Wall Street. The protesters in India were not asking for a new right. They were asking for what the Constitution promises. The Constitution promises non-discrimination or equality under Article 14. What they were uncovering in India for the first time was solidarity. They were holding the flag and reciting what is written in the Constitution. This is performative citizenship or citizenship as a performance. They were rejecting paper citizenship. Citizenship doesn’t depend on my holding the right papers. Citizenship depends on whether I live on this land, whether I have allegiance towards the Constitution, and I follow the laws. The right to protest is part of Article 19, the freedom of expression. This government has been cutting down on the right to dissent since its first year, trying to delegitimise dissent. In order to portray the illegitimacy of dissent, they are connecting it with provocation for a riot.
“This is a connection which is a completely illegitimate one made by the police. Don’t buy into this...”
The RSS has been working to grow Hindu nationalism for a long time, but how has the BJP managed to so palpably — some fear irreparably — change things so quickly.
Nationalism is the easiest political concept to rally people. It is the success of this party that they have managed to make people believe that the nation is more important than individual lives. But our Constitution does not say that. This is the ideology of the RSS, one political group, which has been systematically disseminated. The interest of an individual is not subordination to the larger whole. Subordination is built into the RSS.
Frankly, I’ve grown up in post-Independence India and I’ve never heard this kind of language in the public domain. Everyone is far too scared. You never know when the Enforcement Directorate will descend on you, when you will be trolled, when you will be arrested. This is what we call ethnic nationalism. On the other hand, there is a civic nationalism. That notion which was held up with Pandit Nehru has been completely side-lined, and you have this rabid notion that you are for the nation. Who does that serve? The majority. The Constitution is higher than any notion of a nation envisioned by a political party.
The failure of politics in a different vein, particularly UPA 2. I think people were fed up with the corruption, the non-performance. There is also a broader issue. Look at the reaction against globalisation. When the Prime Minister says aatmanirbhar, it is completely opposite to globalisation. You are wanting to assert your national supremacy. How will you have a multi-religious society if you don’t have equality? You have to distinguish between religion as faith, and religion as politics and power.
“The Constitution is higher than any notion of a nation envisioned by a political party.”
Religion has always been part of electoral politics.
It was never so overt. Caste was overt. Yes, the Congress has practiced soft Hindutva. But the BJP is doing it at the expense of minorities and they want to strip them off rights. They have legitimised violence against minorities. In political theory, we say nobody should prove life on issues that are not within your control. For example, birth into a community. Why should anyone be disadvantaged because they are not born into the majority. You are members of a democracy and democracy guarantees you equality. It is the scale that is truly frightening. It is the project of the RSS. They want a Hindu rashtra. I don’t want to live in a Hindu rashtra. I may be born a Hindu but I don’t want any special privileges.
Will the treatment of the anti-CAA movement change how we use and perceive civil disobedience?
This is not only a phenomenon of India, it is a phenomenon of right wing populism. I don’t think it will have a lasting effect. Indians are not very obedient people. We are an archaic lot. We are too divided by caste, subcaste, religion, and all kinds of stupid hierarchies. I think civil disobedience has been so firmly integrated into a theory of democracy. Democracy is not for only politicians, it is for people. The message that people don’t have the right to raise their voice or heads is not going to work. Seventy years of democracy has had an effect.
Civil disobedience has two features. First, you think through what you are doing and you have a sense for natural justice. The second issue is that you are willing to take punishment. When Gandhi used to launch his civil disobedience movement, a satyagrahi had to practise abstinence. They had to prove that they are serious about breaking a law. They are not denying it is a law. Higher than a law is a sense of natural justice.
When Gandhi wielded civil disobedience, he wielded it against a colonial government which did not give any protection. There were no fundamental rights. But we are under a Constitution that gives fundamental rights to freedom of expression and association, to assemble peacefully and without arms. Why is it terrorism? Rights are given, but rights have to be asserted. But to assert a right, you need a democratic state.
Will dissenters be more vulnerable to state reprisals?
Between the individual and the state, there has to be layers of protection because the individual is very vulnerable. Liberal democrats gave you the rule of law, fundamental rights, and civil society. An individual cannot confront the state on their own. You should have an independent judiciary, a media that speaks for the people, a Constitution, and most importantly, you must have an associational life. What the government has done is systemically demolished institutions and the layers of protection. The police are compromised. Now, you can’t even trust the judiciary. They are using state power to terrorise people. Everyone will become very vulnerable if these mediatory layers between the state and individual — the media, the judiciary — are demolished as they are being demolished. That is why liberal democracy is always about containing state power. Liberal democracy warns you that you have to be scared of demagogues, of concentration of power in a majority. Power should be exercised according to procedures. It should be limited. Judiciary is there to limit power. That is what is being systematically demolished. That is a project of authoritarian right wing populism.
We have to relate the reaction of the CAA protestors to the demolition of any institution that can protect the individuals. The political parties are quiet, the media houses are complicit, the judiciary is not saying anything, and civil society is being pulverised. Where will we go tomorrow in a crisis? That kind of demolition of mediatory layers is what we should be scared of.
“Everyone will become very vulnerable if these mediatory layers between the state and individual — the media, the judiciary — are demolished as they are being demolished.”
What did the anti-CAA movement achieve?
You don’t always measure a social movement by its consequences. Did they present an alternative view of CAA to India. The fact of having a social movement in a country which has been cowed into submission is a miracle in itself. I think the government was very lucky that the pandemic happened because the social movement went away, but they went ahead with their project of arrest. But it is the nature of human beings, you always speak back to power. See a social movement in terms of processes and not accomplishments. Every social movement leaves an impact on subsequent social movements to take up.
(Editor’s note: This interview is part of The Idea of India, HuffPost India’s monthly newsletter. You can subscribe to the newsletter here).
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