Gyan Prakash on CAA as the new Khilafat

Muslims in India are a minority. What happens when the spearhead a national agitation- more particularly on a spurious issue or in furtherance of a cretinous demand? They suffer. The non-Muslim majority, rightly or wrongly, become fearful of Islamic militancy and there is a counter-mobilization. This was the outcome of the Khilafat movement. Ataturk abolished the Caliphate. It turned out the Turks didn't want it. Meanwhile, Hindus had got angry about atrocities carried out by the Moplahs and the 'Khilafat tax' levied in places like Barabanki and Malegoan. The militancy of the Muslim League led to Hindu votes getting consolidated under Congress even though it steadfastly refused to deliver 'Swaraj'. India was headed for a type of Congress Rule which would reduce Muslims to second class status. Many would end up as refugees in Pakistan.

Gyan Prakash has a bizarre article in the Times of India which compares the CAA agitation to the Khilafat movement. What is he trying to say? Indian Muslims are cretins? They are slitting their own throat merely to gratify the RSS?

India is astir with ground-level protests. With the Congress in deep slumber and the opposition political parties in disarray, what is remarkable about these protests is their organic nature. Muslim students took the lead. Having watched the government and Hindutva organisations push their divisive agenda since 2014, the CAA broke the dam of fear and intimidation. 

First at Aligarh Muslim University, then at Jamia Millia Islamia, they came out forcefully on the streets. They were not fooled by the explanation that the CAA was aimed only to provide relief to non-Muslim minorities, not to fundamentally change the basis for citizenship.

So, what they are doing is opposing giving citizenship to non Muslims fleeing Islamic persecution. This means Indian Muslims think non Muslim minorities should either convert or be slaves. How will this endear themselves to the non-Muslim majority in India? Just as Khilafat scared the pants off non Muslims who realized Islamic Caliphs fuck over non Muslims, so too will the anti CAA agitation convince non-Muslims in India that Muslim citizens are a fifth column.

They clearly not only recognised the communal meaning of CAA but also that its ominous linking with the NRC would make them second-class citizens. 

How? They don't speak the East Bengali dialect. There is no possibility that they can be mistaken for immigrants. On the other hand, if the aim is ethnic cleansing- voting lists are good enough. There is no need for a National Register.

The BJP government and the Hindutva forces have had a free reign. The anti-cow slaughter vigilantes went on a campaign of lynchings with impunity. Gauri Lankesh was murdered. The communalisation of educational and cultural institutions went unimpeded. The judiciary meekly succumbed to executive authority. The government paid no price for its disastrous demonetisation. The ruling party won election after election, and took no prisoners in its campaign to realise its vision of a Congress-mukt Bharat. After registering a thumping majority in the 2019 elections, it was emboldened to scrap Article 370 in Kashmir and impose a lockdown on the state. But when, in a fit of arrogance, the government introduced the CAA that communalises citizenship, it was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.

So Muslims don't object to being lynched on false charges of cow slaughter. But they get angry if non Muslim refugees get citizenship rather than being deported back to a place where they will be forced to convert. If this breaks the camel's back, the camel has got rabies. It must be put down.

The courageous initiatives at Aligarh and Jamia struck a chord beyond the Muslim community and spread at electric speed. Students and youth, the civil society, and even sections of Bollywood have joined the protest. Some have found the assertion of Muslim identity in the protests problematic. But this objection is misguided; how can the Muslims not assert their identity when it is precisely that identity which is under attack? How could they not miss the meaning of the Supreme Court’s Ayodhya decision?

So, Gyan Prakash is saying all the anti BJP political movements in India are nothing but an expression of Muslim rage that non Muslim refugees are not being repatriated so as to be forcibly converted. Even Modi and Amit Shah haven't gone as far as Gyan Prakash.

Faced with the RSS-inspired assault on their place in India, the Muslims are stoutly asserting that they are Muslims and Indians, not Muslims but Indians.

Who fucking hate non Muslim refugees from places where Muslims are not Indians but are Pakistanis or Bangladeshis and have done lots of ethnic cleansing.

This calls to mind what Mahatma Gandhi attempted in the Khilafat movement, which used a Muslim grievance to launch a nationalist movement against the British.

But Gandhi left the Muslims in the lurch. He said 'Swaraj' means that every 4 anna Congress member gets to elect a new Constituent Assembly which gets to write the Laws of Independent India. Since Congress was Hindu dominated this meant that the Khilafati Muslim, in return for Turkey's freedom, would become vassals in Hindu India. What was the outcome of the Congress-Khilafat combine? Nothing. The Turks freed themselves and got rid of the Caliphate. Hindus and Muslims went back to slaughtering each other. The Brits remained in charge.

That too was a conjoining of the Muslim and Indian.

In the cause of a Caliph whom the Turks did not want. The thing was pure idiocy. No Hindus actually gave up their life to fight for the Caliphate despite Gandhi & Rajaji and so on banging on about how this was a religious duty for Hindus coz...urm...it says so in the Bhagvad Gita?

In this light, the importance of the Muslim initiative sparking the current protest cannot be minimised.

Coz Muslims telling non Muslims to fuck off back where they came from so as to be forcibly converted is sure gonna make everybody else want to jump on the bandwagon.

The Constitution promised equal citizenship to minorities, but that promise was the product of a national struggle against colonial inequality, not due to a civil rights movement.

But so did the Pakistani Constitution. Indeed, Rwanda had several Constitutions. None of them mentioned genocide- but that was the outcome. Constitutions don't mean shit. Every shithole country has one.

In this sense, the current upsurge is an attempt to fulfil the promise.

Coz the Indian Constitution promises Muslims the right to prevent non Muslim refugees getting protection. Dr. Ambedkar insisted on a Directive Principle saying such people should be deported to where they can be expeditiously killed or forcibly converted. 

It has also broken the pall cast by authoritarian governance.

Very true! The Muslims will soon take the law into their own hands and deport those fucking refugees themselves.

People across India have begun speaking up fearlessly, enlivening the dead of winter with the springtime of dissent.

Why is nobody just killing those Refugees already?

Historians and political observers portray the Indian Constitution as a unique document and laud the far-reaching liberal-democratic visions of India’s nationalist leadership.

But 'historians and political observers' are notorious fuckwits. Gyan Prakash is one. All we ask if that they don't masturbate in public.

Anything contrary appears as a deviation from the trajectory of democracy set by the Constitution. This is why Indira Gandhi’s Emergency is regarded as an exception. In fact, Indira’s Emergency was no sudden irruption but a paradoxically lawful suspension of the law with roots in the provisions and practices authorised by the Constitution.

So, Gyan Prakash is aware that the Constitution means shit. It can be amended  any which way or simply ignored altogether.

After her defeat in 1977, some of the Emergency-era constitutional amendments were abolished, and the Emergency provision was modified. But preventive detention returned.
The colonial era Section 124A law against sedition is still on the books. Special laws like AFPSA continue to be used in Assam, Punjab, and Kashmir.

So, if the Muslims go too crazy they can be locked up. But, what Gyan Prakash is not telling us is that the Indian State has found extra judicial killing to be a faster and cheaper solution.

If the Constitution promised equality, yet to be realised, it also provided for a state with extraordinary powers — fully realised and practised before, during, and after the Emergency. The BJP government has not flinched from using the extraordinary powers of the state to intimidate and silence its critics. It has used lawful powers to target centres of dissent, such as JNU. In UP and Jamia, the police have followed well-established practices of repression. The wanton violence unleashed on JNU students by masked goons while the police stood by idly is yet another example of how lawful authorities can act unlawfully. The JNU attacks also highlight the danger posed to democracy by the authoritarian state’s coordination with storm troopers on the street.

What point is Gyan Prakash making? Is it that this Muslim protest against non Muslims gaining refuge from forcible conversion is bound to end in the Muslims being killed or incarcerated? But, it was always obvious that a Muslim minority which tries jihad gets slaughtered.  Why gloat about it?

What we are witnessing is a ground-level upsurge to realise the Constitution’s promise of equal citizenship and democratic governance.

Coz the Constitution says it is wrong to let non Muslims escape forcible conversion in Islamic Republics.

Ranged against it are the authoritarian laws and practices of the state toxically mixed with thugs on the street. How this contest plays out will have lasting meaning for Indian democracy.

Defined in these terms, the contest can only play out in only one way. Muslims get shot by the police or get stomped to death on the streets. Gyan Prakash may be jizzing in his pants at this outcome but ordinary people may take a different view. The anti-CAA protests may not really be about sending back non Muslim refugees. It could be an opportunity for a new generation of Muslim leaders to rise up. Why should there not be a Muslim Party, similar to the existing caste based dynastic parties, which could take a leadership role in cobbling together a coalition at the State level? Why should there not be a Muslim caucus at the Center?

CAA looks like an ideal candidate for Muslim vote consolidation because the Opposition parties have to pretend that Muslims face ethnic cleansing. This shows they are liars. Thus Muslims will feel they need their own party. Of course, the whole thing could fizzle out with the only beneficiary from the hoopla being the BJP which further consolidates the Hindu vote against an imaginary Muslim threat. After all, Khilafat consolidated the Congress hold on the Hindus while making it appear that Gandhi really wanted Independence but couldn't get it yet coz them Muslims be cray cray.

Perhaps Gyan Prakash harbors a Gandhi like fear of Muslims. He hopes they will open a can of jihadi whupass on the BJP's ass. But once they are triumphant what possible use could they have for the Left?