Not just here at home, churning is on across the globe

A churning is on, wherever you look at global politics today. (The solar eclipse this week must have told a few things to the orthodox, the Vastu worshippers and the Ganga dippers. But we Indians have modernised now and under Mr Modi, we could teach a thing or two to the heavenly phenomena when it comes to fighting, skirmishing and delivering fire-and-brimstone speeches.)

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The main lungs of the planet are under threat in the Amazon with an eccentric PM in Brazil; the presidential impeachment process is starting in Washington and a bitter war of words will follow, something deadlier than Richard Nixon had to face before his ouster. The brilliant Boris Johnson seems to have won initially but he has to see the withdrawal from Brexit through. It will be a long haul.

And in India, as if the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC) were not enough, the National Population Register (NPR) has been unloaded on our resilient shoulders, and uploaded on our over-stuffed laptops. The trouble with human beings is they keep revising their goals. What can North Block or South Block do about it — in any case the BJP government intends turning them into museums! You need a NASA telescope to look at the goalposts now.

Those gentle souls of the French Revolution, Danton, Robespierre et al, who coined the slogan ‘Liberty, equality, fraternity’ are out of date a bit, even though it is still the national motto of France. We have added identity to it, even as we navigate global skies and pray to Ganesha to facilitate our US visas. And the Kohinoor at the heart of identity happens to be citizenship. You tinker with a man’s citizenship and you finish him. Tariq Ali, an intellectual, hence the BJP may not have heard of him, has said that if every Jew anywhere in the world has the right to become a citizen of Israel, then every Palestinian chucked out by Israel has the right to become an Israeli citizen. Could anything be simpler? Could anything be more earth shattering to Tel Aviv or Jerusalem? Could anything be more complex? Why did the BJP put its foot into this citizenship swamp?

Perceptions matter. We are keeping the doors ajar for others, except for one community, the largest minority in India. We are saddling a community with a palpable grouse when there was no need for such a legislation. What was the desperate hurry? But we could say the same for the eradication of Article 370. This was bound to raise a storm. The Constituent Assembly rejected the idea of religion-based reservations. And while Mandal has nibbled away at the spirit of the Constitution, there was never any overt bias against a community. The fate of the Rohingya in Myanmar or the Ahmadiyya in Pakistan is as bad as any other. And whether it is Article 370 or the NRC or CAA, the Muslim will feel that he is being targeted. Why are we putting our foot into something which cannot be resolved? The world is fast turning into a railway platform, people catching trains to wherever they want. Look at the Syrian diaspora (which was never Syrian, and many others got on the bandwagon). How many Islamic countries have given passports to Palestinians? Has Saudi Arabia been very forthcoming?

The easiest way out was a change in our policy on asylum. Be compassionate there. You won’t need CAA. And who will volunteer to swallow the poison that emerges from the churning?

No one ever talks about the Nepalese influx into Darjeeling and surrounding areas in West Bengal.

Gen Bipin Rawat: People have been startled by his overt statements against students. Why are we Indians so predictable, especially when they are on the brink of reaching for something higher? Are we poor at disguising our feelings or ambitions? Can’t we learn to attitudinise a bit? Wear a masque dash it, even for a week, let’s say. The moment I heard Gen Bipin Rawat’s comments on the so-called ‘rioters’, I said to myself he is in line for the CDS job, and is not leaving anything to chance. He is retiring as the Army chief and goes a rung higher, which I am sure he deserves. But why has he made it so evident?

Most Army Chiefs have been exemplary in their behaviour. Seeing Ayub Khan and other Pakistani chiefs, including the drunk Yahya Khan, politicians were sometimes suspicious of them. There was a scare when Gen VK Singh was in the saddle and the Defence Secretary had to be called back from a foreign tour to tackle the crisis. The noticeable thing was that Gen Rawat parroted the line of the party in power. Not a word of sympathy for the students who are agitating and getting beaten all over. They were beaten up even in the Jamia library. The UP Police showed their sectarian bias by being extra brutal in Aligarh Muslim University. The figures of arrests and people killed in police firing in UP is horrendous when one considers that the agitations were peaceful, by and large, except in a few places, perhaps.

I would like to end with a quote by EA Bucchianeri: “It is not unpatriotic to denounce an injustice committed on our behalf; perhaps it is the most patriotic thing to do.” And wishing all the students and the unbridled UP Police a peaceful 2020.