JANUARY 12 is the birth anniversary of Swami Vivekananda. Since 1984, the day is also observed as the National Youth Day in India. This year the day was sought to be hijacked by a desperate Narendra Modi, who went to the Ramakrishna Math and Mission headquarters at Belur near Kolkata to deliver a speech in defence of the thoroughly unconstitutional and divisive amendment to India’s Citizenship Act. His address had all the customary theatrics and demagogy of a Modi election rally, if on a slightly subdued scale. The historic Belur Math, set up by Swami Vivekananda himself more than a hundred and twenty years ago, has perhaps never witnessed a more brazen irony.
Modi spent the previous night at the Belur Math campus itself and spent some time ‘meditating’ in Vivekananda’s own room before addressing his audience, comprised mostly of students of Ramakrishna Mission. The solemn proclamation made by Vivekananda in his historic Chicago address still resonates in India: ‘I am proud to belong to a country which has in all ages given refuge to the persecuted from all religions and nations in the world’. And here was Modi invoking Vivekananda only to stubbornly defend a law that explicitly excludes Muslims while talking of granting citizenship to the persecuted from neighbouring countries! No wonder the RKM authorities have now been forced to distance themselves from the speech delivered by their esteemed ‘guest’.
The CAA has attracted criticism from the international community as a clear injection of religious discrimination into India’s secular constitution. There is also growing international concern about the systematic targeting of Muslims in India by lynch mobs blessed by the ruling political establishment as well as by the state. And right now in the name of ‘convincing’ the people of the need for CAA, BJP leaders are threatening to teach them a lesson - that India is no longer the land of Gandhi and Nehru, it is now the land of Modi and Shah, where Muslims can be quickly exterminated once the right signal is given by the leadership. West Bengal BJP President, Dilip Ghosh, calls for protestors to be ‘shot like dogs’, as he proudly says is being done in BJP-ruled Uttar Pradesh. And here was Modi defending the CAA as a legislative initiative which has made Pakistan answerable for the ill-treatment of its minorities!
Before visiting West Bengal, Modi was supposed to visit Assam to inaugurate the ‘Khelo India’ youth games. In the face of continuing anti-CAA mass protests, he cancelled his trip. This was the second major cancellation of a scheduled Modi visit to this state ruled by his own party, the earlier occasion being a summit with Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in mid December. In West Bengal too Modi was greeted with roaring ‘Go Back Modi’ protests across the state for the entire duration of his stay, even as the Chief Minister curiously chose to meet him personally at the Governor’s office at ‘Raj Bhavan’ in the name of ‘political courtesy’. And Modi thought his Belur Math speech would send out the right message to the ‘misguided youth’ of West Bengal and the North East!
Beyond the CAA, Modi hardly touched upon any other subject. At a time when joblessness has broken the records of the last fifty years in India, Modi’s speech had absolutely no mention of the J word. At a time when students in every well-known institution of higher education and research are defending the Constitution in the face of brutal attacks on Jamia, Aligarh and JNU, Modi had not a word of condemnation against the attacks on universities, not a word of assurance for the beleaguered students and the academic community about their right to pursue their dreams. And he chose to ‘congratulate’ the youth for achieving the goal of ‘digital India’ when the whole world is talking about India as the global capital of internet shutdowns!
It has now been more than a month of ceaseless and expanding protests in India in the face of brutal state repression, armed thuggery of stormtroopers of the ruling dispensation and a largely hostile media. While the Modi-Shah regime and the Sangh brigade appear bent upon reopening the wounds of the wanton communal violence and mass displacement of the Partition days, the CAA seems to have ignited a real fire for democracy and freedom in the hearts of diverse sections of society. It is this fire which transformed the 8 January general strike called by trade unions into a veritable Bharat Bandh; which is keeping the women of Shaheen Bagh warm in this cruel winter and giving rise to more Shaheen Baghs across India; which has turned the neglected words of the Preamble to the Constitution into a new manifesto of our times and the chants of ‘aazaadi’ into a new battle-cry for a truly democratic freedom for ‘We, the people of India’. 2020 clearly promises to be the most momentous year for India since 1947. If India won a fractured freedom in 1947, let 2020 be the year when India decisively upholds democracy to defeat the fascist onslaught on the Constitution and the people.
