Kenan Malik on why India must deport Muslims

At one time, Britain considered all Commonwealth citizens, regardless of color, as having a right to reside in the UK.  Then there were race riots after which strict immigration curbs were placed on Black and Asians- many of whom were British subjects- and there began a process of Detention and Deportation which continues to this day such that, as with the 'Windrush scandal', many legally settled Black and Asian people have been unlawfully deported.

Kenan Malik with typical stupidity thinks the position of Muslims in Delhi is like that of Black and Asian people in the UK in the Fifties. They are 'outsiders'. They should be subject to immigration controls and draconian legal action involving detention and deportation.

Malik writes in the Guardian-

In August 1958, gangs of white youths began systematically attacking West Indians in London’s Notting Hill, assaulting them with iron bars and meat cleavers and milk bottles. One policeman reported a 300-strong mob shouting: “We will kill all black bastards. Why don’t you send them home?” The attacks continued for a week before order was restored.
The incident is still referred to as the “Notting Hill riots”. It was nothing of the sort. It was a vicious week-long racist attack. Mr Justice Salmon, sentencing nine white youths at the Old Bailey, called it “nigger hunting”. There is, though, a long history of describing racist violence as a “riot”, to portray it as a general violent mayhem rather than as targeted attacks.

And so it is with the violence that over the past week has engulfed parts of the Indian capital, Delhi. Journalists and politicians have talked of “rioting” and “communal violence”. That’s no more accurate than describing the attack on Notting Hill’s black residents as a “riot”.

Did Notting Hill's blacks start the violence? Were they protesting possible immigration controls? No. Malik has chosen a bad analogy. The Blacks and Asians in Notting Hill were recent immigrants to a deeply and openly racist country which could easily have chosen forcible repatriation of its entire coloured population. Malik is pretending that Indian Muslims are in the same position. They are not perceived as Indian by their non Muslim neighbors. India may deport them or kill them. Such is the nature of public sentiment among the majority of the Indian population.

Malik was born in India. He is a Muslim. His family emigrated to Britain many years ago. Perhaps he feels his people were driven out of Telengana by reason of their Religion. The local people felt that Muslims were as alien as, sixty years ago, some Whites felt Black immigrants were alien to the British way of life.

Is this a reasonable view?

What Delhi witnessed over the past week is the Indian equivalent of “nigger hunting”, targeted violence against Muslims, led by mobs of Hindu nationalists, mainly supporters of the BJP, India’s governing party, many chanting “Jai Shri Ram” (“glory to Lord Rama”) and “Hinduon ka Hindustan” (India for Hindus).

This is nonsense. Some Muslims have been attacking Hindu families and vice versa in certain parts of the Capital. Why? It is because illegal housing colonies are being regularized. Thus 'land sharks' and 'slum lords' are seeking control over plural neighborhoods mostly inhabited by poorer people with tenuous rights to their homes.
Under cover of the anti-C.A.A agitation- which had got out of hand because of a pusillanimous Police Chief and his demoralized police force- a vicious turf war emerged in North East Delhi.
But the result of any such conflict is a foregone conclusion. The majority will batter the minority. That is why it is in the interest of the minority to support effective policing- as is happening under the new Police Chief.

The violence began after a local BJP politician, Kapil Mishra, told a rally last Sunday that unless police cleared the streets of protesters against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), he and his supporters would do it themselves.

This is nonsense. There had been sporadic violence before and, once the poorer region of North East Delhi had been targeted by the Leftist 'Pinjara thod' Feminist group, it was bound to become systematic and come under the direction of professional gangsters- i.e. local politicians. The 'Common Man party' which rules Delhi had arisen out of a coalition of insurgents and activists. One such was Kapil Mishra- who has a Masters in Social Work and worked with Greenpeace and Amnesty International. He is a master of mayhem. Kejriwal squeezed him out as he squeezes out all potential rivals. Mishra switched to the BJP. Unlike a Muslim counterpart of his, he is not accused of killing anyone- let alone a policeman.  He had the right to stage a pro CAA protest. Muslims tried to stop him but failed. Why? They were too weak. If the violence continues they will be slaughtered and their property will be lost. That is why they are cooperating with the new Police Commissioner. No doubt, the Law will be applied asymmetrically. A lot more Muslims- some wholly innocent- will be sent to jail while their Hindu counterparts are merely charged and released so as to profit by their evil reputation as extortionists or local 'Dons'. Still, there can be no other outcome. Violence disproportionately harms the weaker party.

The CAA is a new law that allows undocumented migrants from neighbouring countries to seek citizenship in India – except if they are Muslim.

No. It allows REFUGEES fleeing Religious Persecution who arrived before 2014 to get fast track citizenship. Muslims are not persecuted for being Muslim in Islamic Republics. However, if they are persecuted for some other reason they can continue to apply for citizenship. Nevertheless, like Dr. Taslima Nasrin, they may find they have to flee India. Why? Indian Muslims will try to kill them for the same reason that Pakistani or Bangladeshi Muslims tried to kill them.

It’s the first law since India gained independence that explicitly excludes Muslims, and has generated widespread protests.

After Independence, Muslims and Muslims alone could lose their homes to the Custodian of Enemy Property. A Muslim whose house or other property was occupied by non-Muslim refugees could not get it back till the Government resettled the Refugees- i.e. never. Muslims and Muslims alone were forced out of India in the Fifties and Sixties.

The anti CAA agitation, it must be said, has been a gift to the BJP. That is why people think that Amit Shah let an incompetent Police Commissioner preside over a shambles in Delhi. However, it was also advantageous to Kejriwal because it led to the collapse of the Congress-Left vote share. Still, both Modi and Kejriwal don't want Delhi's Muslims to be ethnically cleansed. Why? They are hardworking Indian citizens. What's more they are not alien in any sense. They can't be compared to coloured immigrants who came to Britain in the Fifties. Kenan Malik is very foolish, and unconsciously biased against Indian Muslims, when he makes this analogy.

Within hours of Mishra’s ultimatum, BJP gangs started attacking anti-CAA protesters.

After they were attacked.

Within days, they were burning down Muslim houses, shops and mosques. And Muslims themselves. At least 39 people have been killed, including a policeman.

Muslims suffered disproportionately not because they were non-violent but because they were the minority.

Hindus, too, have been attacked and their houses burnt. This has led some to portray the events in Delhi as general lawlessness, even primarily as Muslim violence. In 1958, many West Indians armed themselves with bricks and bats, some ganged up looking for whites to attack. That did not detract from it being a racist assault on local blacks.

Malik is equating violence by immigrants with violence by an indigenous community. He knows full well that the UK chose to introduce draconian legislation to detain and deport people of his and my colour. He can remember that we were viewed as exotic aliens who, quite legally by act of parliament, could be subject to wholescale repatriation. Thus, what he is really saying is 'Indian Muslims are an alien community. They can be ethnically cleansed. Indeed, because they 'retaliated', it is likely that the law will be changed, as Britain's laws were changed, so that many of them are deported.'

Nor does the fact that Muslims in Delhi have also responded with violence diminish the Hindu chauvinism and anti-Muslim hostility that lies at the heart of the “riots”.

Muslims created a nuisance with their foolish protest against a law which merely confirmed what had always happened. This meant that some non-Muslims wanted to clear away the nuisance. This led to clashes. The Muslims lost more. Going forward, the nuisance will cease. Poor Muslims will be disproportionately incarcerated. But that has been the story of every part of the subcontinent for the last eighty years. Minorities get it in the neck. India is less horrible than Pakistan but then Indian Muslims are poor and hardworking. To exploit them, you have to let them live.

The BJP is driven by the ideology of “Hindutva”, or “Hinduness”, seeing the Hindu way of life as the only authentic model for India. All of India’s Muslims should have been packed off to Pakistan at partition, a government minister, Giriraj Singh, said last month.

So, Malik- writing for a British audience- says that Indian Muslims are viewed by other Indians in the same way that people like him or me were viewed by White people when we first came here Sixty or more years ago. Is this a sensible view? Is it helpful? No. This person of Indian Muslim origin is basically saying 'Muslims are a separate nation. That's why my parents got out. Sadly, my fellow Muslims in India weren't smart enough or lucky enough to do so. Thus they are doomed. We can condemn Hindu racism all we like but the outcome is inevitable. Like the Muslims of Pakistan and Bangladesh, the Hindus of India are going to ethnically cleanse or forcibly convert their religious minorities.'

In August 2019, the government stripped Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir of its autonomous status.

And suddenly people stopped getting killed. Pakistan stopped sabre rattling. Indian Muslims were delighted.

Like many European reactionary groups,

like the Tory and Labour and Liberal Party all of whom, at one time or another, have enacted restrictive immigration legislation

the BJP has won popular support largely because of disaffection with the failure and corruption of mainstream parties, especially Congress, which has governed India for most of its post-independence history.

But the BJP is a mainstream party. If Sonia and Rahul are with Congress, Menaka and Varun (Indira's younger son's widow and son) have been with the BJP.

When the BJP came to power in 2014, its Hindu chauvinism was kept on a short leash.

Nonsense! It did 'ghar wapsi' and gassed on about cleaning the Ganges and so forth.

A resounding second victory in elections last year has, however, given the prime minister, Narendra Modi, licence to pursue exclusionary policies without restraint.

He already had that license.

In August 2019, the government stripped Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir of its autonomous status – a demand of Hindu nationalists since the 1950s – and dealt brutally with local protests.

Why? Because a coalition in which the BJP was a part, broke up in that State. This is completely routine. If the ruling party at the Center isn't part of the administration in J&K, it pulls the plug and puts it under President's Rule.

Then came the CAA, part of a two-pronged attack on Muslim citizenship.

But CAA was only needed because the Supreme Court had taken over the NRC exercise in Assam and had finally published its findings. In other words, Modi was reacting to a crisis created by the Bench.

There is no 'attack on Muslim citizenship'. Either a person has Bangladeshi citizenship or he has Indian citizenship. Since 2009, the Courts have set up Detention Centers and about a thousand people are currently residing in them while their citizenship status is ascertained. But, unlike Britain, no one will actually be deported.

The second prong is the creation of a national register of citizens, compelling all Indians to provide documentation of their citizenship.

Only in 'doubtful' cases- i.e. where the person has the wrong mother tongue or a complaint against her has been made.

Millions of poorer Indians have no such paperwork.

It is a good thing that will be provided with such paperwork- vital to access entitlements- as part of some exercise of this sort. However, nothing has been finalized.

For non-Muslims, this is unlikely to be too great a burden – the amended citizenship law provides a path to citizenship.

This is crazy shit. The Indian Government isn't going to waste resources verifying what is obvious- viz. a guy who speaks the local dialect is local. Assam and the North East is a different kettle of fish. But the BJP strategy there is to buy off the indigenous people and redraw parliamentary constituencies in such a fashion that they are the majority.

Muslims, however, excluded by the CAA, fear that they will be deemed “foreigners” even if they have lived in India for generations; that they may end up as India’s Rohingya.

This stupid cretin does not get that Rohingyas don't speak the same language as the Burman. He is doubling down on his assertion that Indian Muslims are completely alien to their non Muslim neighbors.

While the attempt to exclude Muslims reveals the chauvinist ideology of the BJP, mass opposition to the CAA, from Hindus and Muslims alike, shows the depth of hostility to bigotry.

Nonsense! It shows the depth of hostility to a rival political party occupying offices of profit.

In Delhi, too, amid the violence there have been many stories of Hindus protecting Muslim neighbours, and of Muslims aiding Hindus.

But the outcome will be increased ghettoization and separation of the two communities.

What is playing out in India is not a simple religious conflict between Hindus and Muslims but a political struggle between two visions of India: between those who see it as an open, secular nation and those who wish to create a chauvinist Hindu state. Who prevails in this struggle matters not just to Muslims, or to Indians, but to all of us.

If Malik is right, then he is on the wrong side of the struggle. Why? He is saying Indian Muslims are as alien to India as West Indian or East Indian immigrants were alien to the Britain of the Nineteen Fifties. Like it or not, India will have to do something about its burgeoning Muslim population. We should condemn it because it is racist, but then we ourselves have racist immigration laws because we don't want our country overrun by people with a wholly alien way of life.

The truth is, Malik is wrong. The struggle in India is purely political- but it has backfired against its virtue signalling votaries.

Consider the original game-plan for Shaheen Bagh. The idea was that the burqa clad grannies would occupy the street, closing it to traffic, so that you could have a media circus. Each day there would be a variety program featuring distressed farmers, angry Dalits, striking workers, dancing tribals, etc, etc, as well as a whole lot of speeches and poems and songs and so forth. The idea was to create a 'rainbow coalition' opposed to the mainstream parties. After all, Kejriwal had emerged out of an anti-corruption campaign a few years previously, and he had created a new party which took control of Delhi. Why should the anti-CAA campaign not have a similar outcome?

The answer was that corruption genuinely existed. So everybody supported the campaign against it. By contrast, the CAA bill doesn't take away anybody's citizenship. Pretending otherwise does not make it true. Thus no one backs this agitation save for gestural purposes. Kejriwal understood this and kept away from it. Thus the BJP was only able to improve its tally in the last election by a small amount. By contrast, those parties which were believed to support the anti-CAA agitation were wiped out and lost their deposits.


 The BJP benefits when it is wrongfully attacked for being anti-Muslim. Similarly, Trump benefits when he is wrongfully attacked for being a Nazi or being anti-Semitic. The problem with Fake News is that stupid liars come to believe their own stupid lies and become yet more stupid as a result. Thus they are shunned and lose salience. Crying wolf is all very well till people decide that perhaps wolves aren't a bad thing. They may eat up, and thus dispose of, a noisy type of nuisance.