By Brinda Karat
Even as the people of India face terrible hardships, suffering and distress during the lockdown and yet continue to observe instructions given by governments, the central government and the ruling party continue to push a sectarian agenda. The highly irresponsible behavour of the Tablighi Jamaat became the pretext for the Sangh warriors to unleash a vicious campaign against Muslims in general. This led to several direct attacks on Muslims, including some reprehensible attacks on street vendors even in the capital. Even after the warning given by the UN and disapproval expressed even by the US, the sanghi trolls on twitter continue spreading their poison. While the Prime Minister calls for unity, he has not uttered a single word against such a divisive communal campaign. However, apart from this, there is a serious development in the capital of India where abuse of power by the government in targeting certain sections is going on.
The concern is that the restrictions imposed by the lockdown are being used here in Delhi for a violation of constitutional, democratic, civil and legal rights of a certain group of citizens, defined by their religious belief. FIRs, arrests, imprisonment without evidence and delays in court hearings of bail petitions have become the new norm. It is a different kind of emergency and since no public protests are possible, the police have an open ended licence to implement whatever instructions they are receiving, without any public scrutiny or publicity.
There are two parts of what seems to be a politically motivated plan being implemented by the Delhi Police during this period of lockdown. The first is the random arrests of young Muslim men in the north east part of Delhi which was ravaged by communal violence from February 23-28. The second part is the targetting of Muslim activists who were involved in the anti-CAA protests including students of Jamia.
Piecing together the various actions of the police, it seems to be a clear attempt to link the communal violence in north east Delhi to the peaceful anti-CAA protests which were on in the southern part of the city, linking it to a grand conspiracy of anti-government forces. In this narration, many goals are achieved: a demonization of the anti-CAA protests and its suppression; the deepening of a communal divide; the whitewashing of the role of hate mongering leaders of the ruling regime and their open incitement to their followers; protection for the men in uniform who joined the communal attacks. All this apart from inflicting a sense of insecurity and fear among the minority community in general.
Before the lockdown, the Home Minister in Parliament had stated that, “All culprits behind the killings of head constable Ratan Lal and IB officer Ankit Sharma have been arrested while the investigations into the wider conspiracy is ongoing,” adding that over 1,900 people who were “spreading arson and breaking infrastructure” have now been identified using facial recognition software.” As has been pointed out by several commentators, this software has been graded by our own agencies including the Delhi Police as having just 1 to 2 per cent accuracy. But leaving that aside, how many of the 1900 people so “recognized” have been arrested
Hindutva Agenda Continues During War Against Corona 