Amit Shah Must Resign
EVIDENCE is pouring in about the complicity of the Delhi Police in the mob violence targeting Muslim minorities in North East Delhi.
Call logs show that the police stations in NE Delhi received thousands of calls for help from the victims of the violence – and did not respond. The strategic disappearance of the police force is squarely responsible not only for the targeted anti-Muslim terror, but also for the instances where Hindus were attacked by Muslims.
There is evidence that the police raised slogans with the violent mobs. In one notorious instance, the police beat and kicked injured Muslims, forced them to sing the national anthem, and delayed their access to medical care. One of those thus beaten and publicly humiliated died subsequently.
It took a midnight order from the Delhi High Court for the police to provide protection to ambulances trying to reach the wounded. And of course, the police refused to arrest BJP leaders making open hate speeches calling for violence.
Quite recently, mobs were seen in central Delhi and the Delhi Metro, raising slogans to “shoot the traitors” - the Delhi Police did not arrest and charge any of these men. For the BJP, anyone who protests the NPR-NRC-CAA law, or questions the Modi Government in any way, is a ‘traitor’; further, the BJP and RSS view all Muslims as ‘traitors’ to their idea of India as a Hindu Nation.
The Delhi Police has a long track record of keeping hands off violent armed mobs and individuals with an affiliation to the BJP and RSS ideology. They have refused to arrest any of the armed ABVP members to terrorise JNU students and teachers, and they stood by as members of a pro-CAA rally sexually assaulted women students of Gargi College. They watched casually as an armed individual fired at Jamia Millia Islamia students, injuring one student. A senior personnel of the Delhi Police watched as BJP leader Kapil Mishra announced his intention to stoke anti-Muslim violence in Delhi. Delhi Police vandalised CCTV cameras to protect the identity of the perpetrators of the anti-Muslim violence.
This conduct is in stark contrast to the Delhi Police’s conduct towards peaceful, constitutional protests. The Delhi Police has arrested and charged students of JNU with sedition on unproved allegations of slogan shouting, and for mere speeches which did not call for any violence. It has repeatedly unleashed brutal violence on students – inside the Jamia Millia Islamia campus and library, as well as on unarmed, peaceful protests by JNU students. More recently, it has unleashed brutal beatings on anti-CAA activists and protesters at Khureji in East Delhi, jailing one of them on charges of “attempt to murder.” And when students and youth from all over India gathered in thousands to march as ‘Young India’ for peace, justice, and democracy on 3 March, the Delhi Police detained hundreds of them, and even detained bus drivers to prevent them ferrying protestors to the March.
The Delhi Police is directly answerable to the Home Ministry. It is clear from recent events that the Delhi Police is now virtually a partisan, political force serving the Home Minister Amit Shah, that feels no obligation towards the Constitution of India. The organised pogrom in Delhi is a warning of the pogrom that Shah and Modi wish to unleash in the rest of India. It is ominous and significant that during Amit Shah’s visit to Kolkata, participants in his rally raised the slogan of “Shoot the traitors”.
Shah’s Kolkata rally was not a large one, and it is also significant that in contrast to his earlier speeches in West Bengal, he remained conspicuously silent on the NRC. Instead he sought to assure that the CAA was nothing to fear. Seen together with the resolution adopted unanimously by the Bihar Assembly against NRC and the 2020 NPR, this is a sign that the all-India protest movements have forced the BJP on the back-foot on NPR-NRC-CAA. Now the BJP is desperate to save the CAA, even at the cost of beating a temporary and strategic retreat on NRC and perhaps even a partial retreat on NPR. By doing so, the BJP hopes to gain enough time to establish its narrative of anti-Muslim hatred and violence, and thereby create a conducive climate for the all-India NPR and NRC.
We, the people of India, must not relax our drive to expose the anti-poor, anti-democratic agenda of the NPR-NRC-CAA, and to achieve a complete roll back of these fascist citizenship laws. In addition, we must take a lesson from the Delhi experience, and be alert to rebuff any attempt to stoke communal violence anywhere in India. We must continue to struggle to bring the perpetrators of the Delhi pogrom to justice.
