CAA Protests Indicate Khilafat 2.0 Is Here - A Lost Cause Backed By The Elite

The violent protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in Muslim-dominated areas and minority institutions like Jamia Milia Islamia, and Aligarh Muslim University can be interpreted in two ways: one is that they have misunderstood the intent of CAA, and the other is that they do not care much for persecuted minorities in Islamic countries.

For decades, we have been told by the country’s intelligentsia and opinion makers that India’s Muslims stayed back during partition because they opted for secularism, but if that were so, they should be at the forefront of condemnation of our three Islamic neighbours for persecuting their minorities.

They should be demanding that these countries should abandon Islamism and adopt the Indian way.

But that is not what we are seeing in the violent Muslims protests - sometimes joined by other “secularists” - against CAA.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself was forced to point out this fact in the light of the mainstream media trying to cover up these anti-national acts under the garb of democratic protest and student activism.

The usual suspects, the champions of Nehruvian secularism, tried hard to paint these as secular protests but the cameras told us something else. Many of the protesters mouthed openly Islamist slogans, as if to indicate that they are Jinnah’s children now risen from slumber.

Tens of millions of Hindus are wondering what wrong the government did to pave a faster path to citizenship for those persecuted minorities in the Islamic states of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. They are witnessing the torching of public property because the government is not giving the same rights to those who are part of the system of persecution in these states.

Of course, the protestors would have us believe that they are outraging for the sake of equality. But no one is fooled and the silent majority is witnessing, on their TV screens, some of the communal horrors witnessed during partition days by Muslim separatists.

Many secularists and even some Hindus may still deny this reality, but this would mean we haven’t learnt any lessons from partition, and the Islamist sentiment that drove it.

While the Muslim community got its separate nation by dividing the country, a big chunk of them stayed back. There was no exchange of populations sought by Dr BR Ambedkar in order to end this divisiveness once and for all. Nor has any lesson been learnt on how best to secure the future of the country by honestly analysing the roots and reasons for Muslim separatism.

Writing in 1940, Ambedkar rightly diagnosed the weakness of the Congress in its dealings with the Muslim community. The Congress has failed to realise, he wrote, that “the policy of concession has increased Muslim aggressiveness, and what is worse, Muslims interpret these concessions as a sign of defeatism on the part of the Hindus and the absence of the will to resist.”

“This policy of appeasement will involve the Hindus in the same fearful situation in which the Allies found themselves as a result of the policy of appeasement which they adopted towards Hitler,” he added.

But the Congress continued with the same policy of appeasement and concessions post partition. The Indian state offered doles and special deals, from the Haj subsidy to a separate minority commission to an exclusive minority affairs ministry with a separate budget that awards scholarships, gives loans and devises schemes for the benefit of only minorities.

The Indian state retained the autonomous regulatory regime for minority schools and colleges while imposing punishing rules on those run by Hindus. It took over religious institutions of Hindus with impunity and used their money for its secular schemes.

On the other hand, it provided for building infrastructure on waqf properties from taxpayer funds. It opened its purses to finance madrassas and minority institutions which are dens of communal education and are today leading the protest against the government’s humanitarian gesture of giving refuge to the minorities persecuted by Islamic states.

The separatist chickens bred, fed, promoted and celebrated by the Indian state are coming home to roost. The violent CAA protests in demographically sensitive areas are testament to India’s failed minority policies. Where broadly inclusive social security schemes and uniform civil code would have benefited all communities equally, including the underprivileged, by targeting the minorities for special benefits minds have been partitioned once again.

It’s time to course correct. There is no nirvana in continuing with separatist policies which favour the same mentality and ideology of Jinnah which divided the nation. It will lead to nothing but another partition. Most of the anger today that is bursting forth from the expected quarters is precisely because the present government has stopped appeasing them.

The next step is to cease all the concessions given in the name of minority rights. The normalisation of language in terms of minority-majority is precisely why we are finding it hard to forge a unified nation.

The Ministry of Minority Affairs has to be disbanded and merged back into a Social Justice Ministry as was the case before 2006.

The whole Sachar Committee project and its report has to be junked and consigned to the dustbin.

There is absolutely no need for separate minority commissions at the centre or state level. Let non-sectarian Human Rights Commission look after violations against every community.

All schools and colleges must be regulated equally and not on the basis of whether they are run by a minority or majority group. Article 30 privileges to establish and administer educational institutions of one’s choice must be extended to all communities and not just limited to minorities alone.

At the very least, we can be spared farcical lessons on secularism by students of sectarian institutions like Jamia and AMU which have reservations for Muslims while still being funded by secular taxpayers from all religions.

The Indian state must stop any aid to madrassas in the name of modernisation. There is no other way to modernise these institutions without regulating what is to be taught and what not.

And if that is not possible, then the state should simply stop throwing money after a lost cause.

The Indian State has pampered and mollycoddled the so-called minorities who are actually global majorities. It’s time to treat them on par with everyone else.

The CAA protestors who are demanding equality before the law should be taken up on their claims and given laws that offer no special concessions to the minorities.

If we don’t do this, we will see a re-enactment of Khilafat 2.0 in action, where Gandhi offered a one-way deal to back Indian Muslims in their figth to restore the caliphate.

It was a lost cause even then. One wonders why the Khilafat mentality is still to die even now in the Indian state.