Bharat Bhushan: Only a non-violent and secular citizenship protest will succeed
By their sheer spread, the ongoing protests against the Citizenship Amendment
Act (CAA) and the proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC) have become
difficult to ignore. But they are instinctive and without a strategic core.
This is their weakness.
The current protests will fail if they lose momentum or turn violent in the face of an unresponsive government. That would be disastrous. A protest that fails and dissipates, emboldens its opponents. And violence will weaken the cohesion of the protestors and erode their moral position. There are already attempts to undermine the protests through coercive action and by projecting them as violent. Is it entirely coincidence that violence has occurred only in states ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and in those states where it has to contest elections shortly?
None of this should
detract from the tectonic shift that has taken place in the public mood since
2014 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi assumed office. For the first time, the
veil of fear that had engulfed the country has lifted. Ordinary citizens, are
willing to be counted among those standing against attempts to define Indian
citizenship by religious affiliation. The party in power clearly has gone too
far in imposing it communal agenda on the nation.
The protests underline
a growing anger against the way that an electoral mandate for five years, has
been taken for a licence to overturn the nation’s constitutionally crafted
secularism. However, if the movement has to achieve its objectives
substantially, it must remain consciously non-violent.
India already has the
sterling example of its freedom movement before it. Erica Chenoweth, a Harvard
University social scientist, who studied more than three hundred social
movements between 1900 and 2006, also found that nonviolent campaigns are twice
as likely to achieve their goals as violent ones. Among the advantages of
non-violent protests Chenoweth notes is that they encourage participation by a
larger demography as people of all ages and abilities can join them. In her
book “Why Civil Resistance Works – The strategic logic of nonviolent conflict”
Erica Chenoweth along with co-author Maria J Stephan, have calculated that if
3.5 per cent of the population actively participates in the protest then it is
sufficient to bring about serious political change. In the case of India, with
a population estimated at 137 crore in 2019, about 4.8 crore Indians would need
to protest peacefully to be effective according to the Chenoweth formula.
The anti-CAA/NRC protests
cannot allow numbers to flag or violence to occur. Non-violence will allow them
to retain their moral high ground, maintain transparency about their objectives
and allow them to plan protests openly and innovatively. Nor can they then be
easily broken by agent provocateurs. A possible way of
sustaining numbers is to broad base the protests by adopting other connected
demands. The demand for secular citizenship is heady enough. However, it is
vulnerable to being twisted for communal polarisation. From the PM’s remark
that the protestors can be recognised “by their clothes” to assuring “Indian
Muslims” that they have nothing to fear, the government’s is trying its best to
give a communal colour to the nationwide agitation.
Therefore, while it
may be necessary to have citizenship laws topping the agenda, other overlapping
demands could be added. University students protesting against the citizenship
laws have also been agitating against privatisation of education, for increased
public funding of higher education, against fee hikes and the increasing
privatisation of essential services in universities. They are also directly
affected by lack of job opportunities. These issues could be part of a broader
charter of demands on the State which has failed not only on the constitutional
front but also in the areas of economy, public education and employment
generation. Such a coalition could further expand beyond urban areas to include
others affected by the Modi government’s failure or mal-intent.
But most importantly,
the protestors must not allow mainstream opposition political parties to take
charge. The political parties which support these protests must remain just
supportive. They could instruct their front organisations of volunteers,
lawyers, doctors and other professionals to provide help to the protestors as
and when required, without attempting to take over their leadership. There is also a need
for the citizens’ movement to develop a thoughtful and strategic core to
coordinate the nature and shape of protests. This would help prevent the
nascent movement from splitting into factions and from loss of cohesion. The
important lesson of Arab Spring is that the most organised groups end up
benefitting from a mass movement (e.g. the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt).
The strategic core of
the movement could also help in developing a calendar of protests, innovative
ways of protesting without always disrupting normal life e.g. a black shirt
day, flash mobs, dressing up as a member of some other community and religion
than one’s own, singing songs that celebrate the diversity of India, singing
Gandhi’s favourite bhajans, a tricolour day, observing limited blackouts at
night as a mark of protest, etc. In short, re-appropriating the symbols of India’s
diversity and nationalism is necessary while protesting. Some of the innovative
protests and slogans already have the nation in thrall. But coordination across
geographies is not yet evident.
As evidenced on the
front pages of international newspapers, the Modi government has already lost
the moral high ground globally. Domestically as well the Modi government has
come out as small-minded and communal. It has lost legitimacy with urban
educated youth, the middle classes and the largest minority community, Muslims. This
public withdrawal of consent will have to be driven home by sustained
non-violent protests.
This is necessary
because there are suggestions, completely erroneous, that the government is
backtracking on the NRC. They
cite the deletion of a tweet by Home Minister Amit Shah’s about a
nationwide NRC and suggest that the extended list of documents
for proving citizenship shows that the process is being made easier. The regime
is biding time. As long as the NRC is definitely not off the table and the CAA
is not withdrawn, the idea of India remains endangered.
