Pratap Bhanu Mehta : Anti-CAA protests gave us poetry to resist, but alternative politics yet to be worked out
Analytically, we have
to admit that the anti-CAA protests have, for the moment, reached a strategic
dead end. Many protestors, especially in Shaheen Bagh, have
displayed the Gandhian virtues of courage and steadfastness. The protests
politicised new constituencies, including women and students, and provided the
glimmer that the republic would not topple over. But the protests risked
running up against three dominant narratives of our contemporary moment:
Communalism, authoritarianism and elite cohesion. These narratives have, for
now, trapped the movement into being a curiosity at best, a pretext at worst.
The movement revealed more about contemporary India, than it has succeeded at
resistance.
The anti-CAA movement
was poignant in its use of a new constitutional language to resist the
evisceration of citizenship. It held on to that language despite grave
provocation from the state, and a despairing lack of support from independent
institutions. But the ruling dispensation was keen to portray it as a communal
movement. It portrayed it as a velvet glove in which the iron fist of jihad was
cloaked. If one moves out of our echo chambers, it must be admitted that this
narrative succeeded to a shocking degree. The ruling dispensation will accelerate
this narrative in coming days. The second was the violence in Delhi, which,
even more than the violence in UP, allowed the communal shadow to hang over the
movement.
For the ruling
dispensation, the movement, and the riots that accompanied Donald Trump’s visit,
were part of a single plot to defame India. People often wonder why the rioting
took place to coincide with Trump’s visit. Was it an accident? Whose political
purposes did it serve? We can speculate on that question. But, for the ruling
party and its affiliates, the timing of the riots served as exactly the grist
they needed for their propaganda mills. Judging by the tone of publications
like Organiser, and sections of the Hindi media, the riots served the function
of delegitimising the movement as a force that will stop at nothing, including
embarrassing India. The violence allowed them to claim that all constitutional
protest ends in a communal dénouement....
https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/citizenship-amendment-act-caa-protests-delhi-up-6307305/