The term ‘tyranny of distance’ has come to define what is peddled as news, what is regarded as important and what is relegated to a footnote. In simple terms, it means that happenings in the metros—and more specifically, Delhi—is accorded exceptional treatment while those in the hinterland gets pushed to the margins.
There is also a regional bias: North India and the Hindi belt gets more attention than the rest of the country. For example, the quantum of coverage of elections in Uttar Pradesh and, maybe, Bihar is disproportionate.
This particular feature of what is disseminated as news and what determines the hierarchy of news has a large bearing on how the recent wave of protests against the changes in the Citizenship Act and a yet-to-be-defined National Register of Citizens is being perceived.
Chronology may serve as an important guide. The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill cleared its final parliamentary hurdle on the evening of December 11, 2019. Even while the debate was underway in Parliament, there were protests against the CAB in different parts of Assam and the North-east.
Although the protests were by and large peaceful, they were also anticipated. Even during the sittings of the Joint Parliamentary Committee on the CAB in 2018, the most vocal opposition to the measure had come from civil society groups in Assam, Meghalaya, and even Arunachal Pradesh.
Their concerns centred broadly on two themes: the reality of demographic change triggered by the influx from East Pakistan/Bangladesh and concerns over the cultural and linguistic identities of the region.
Many of these concerns were addressed by the exemptions to the CAB in the modified legislation passed by Parliament. However, some misgivings persisted although the attempts by some radical leaders to exploit these to created civil unrest were firmly nipped in the bud.
Today, Assam and the North-east are gradually returning to normal. Last week there was even a large pro-CAB rally in Assam organised by Assam’s Finance Minister Himanta Biswa Sharma.
However, the protests took a very different turn on December 13 when the epicentre shifted to West Bengal. There are suggestions that this wave of protests were either instigated or organised by the Trinamool Congress.
However, even if it is conceded that the role of the TMC was tangential and the protests were either spontaneous or stemmed from community organisations, some features were clear.
Beginning from December 13 when crowds blocked the streets in and around Kolkata after the Friday prayers, the protests became largely Muslim in character. This was also the pattern on the next two days when mobs in the districts vandalised railway property and burnt more than a dozen buses plying on the highways.
The police response to the attacks was either feeble or non-existent and it was soon clear that the TMC had little control over the crowds. Anecdotal evidence suggests that a large part of the crowds that engaged in vandalism was made up of Muslims, who many described as the ‘infiltrators’ from Bangladesh who had settled in the areas over the past two decades.
Whether the protests in West Bengal was the trigger for the next round of protests in Delhi’s Jamia Milia Islamia and the Aligarh Muslim University is still uncertain. My guess is that the same networks that operated in West Bengal got to work in these two institutions, that are predominantly Muslim in character.
However, while the administration in West Bengal chose to not confront the protestors, the Delhi Police went overboard and probably overdid things, quite impervious to the fact that everything gets filmed these days and is disproportionately covered by the media.
That being the case, the police action in Jamia became the focus for a larger mobilisation that now included liberals, Left radicals and sundry others looking for a stick to beat the government with.
This shift is important to note. What began as a Muslim protest, and still remains essentially a Muslim protest against its growing political irrelevance under the Narendra Modi dispensation, was embellished by the inclusion of all those who were smarting from the devastating defeat in the general elections of 2019.
It is interesting to note that the notables and media activists who have taken the lead in fanning the flames and conferring respectability to a sectarian uprising, are exactly those who were in the forefront of the anti-Modi campaign during the general election. There is no difference and no new social groups have been added to the protestors.
Where the liberals and Left activists are in short supply, as in Kanpur, Gorakhpur and Mangalore — note, all the areas located in states where the BJP controls state governments — the protests have been concentrated in Muslim areas.
This is not to suggest that the government’s response should only be dictated by political calculations. However, it is best to also acknowledge the real nature of the protests. It is principally one community taking out its anger on a state that it is detached from emotionally and politically.
It is also prudent to recognise that the Citizenship Act changes or even the fear of a future NRC constitute the only grievance. There is a bottled up feeling inside the Muslim community over its helplessness to thwart the changes in the Muslim Personal Law after the Triple Talaq legislation, the abrogation of Kashmir’s special status and the Supreme Court’s sanction for the construction of the Ram temple. All these issues have come together in the past week to trigger this explosion.
How the government proposes to tackle this volatile situation is worth a serious consideration. There are also issues centred on any future NRC that warrants rigorous exploration.
However, any approach cannot ignore the grim and awkward reality of India’s largest minority group having taken to the streets, expressing anger at loss of their strategic importance in national life.
This is a matter between the government and the Muslim community; the liberals are incidental extras, those Lenin once dubbed the ‘useful idiots.’
The writer is a senior journalist and Member of Parliament, being a presidential nominee to the Rajya Sabha.
