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Backstory: News Reporting as Another Form of Resistance

A fortnightly column from The Wire’s public editor.

We are living through an extraordinary moment, when the spring of resistance finds expression in the deep winter of repression. How do we respond to it as journalists, how do we make our facts, our understanding and observations speak out? How do we capture the incalculable loss of a young body felled by a police bullet or the immeasurable courage of a hijab-clad woman venturing into the public space for the first time in her life to sit on a night-long protest?

How too do we recognise an assassin draped in the robes of spirituality or decode a faux spirituality that breathes bloodlust? How do we capture the new awareness discernible in the campus and mohalla, the street and the square, about the importance of unity and equality, secularism and fraternity/sorority?

How do we sharpen our truths to penetrate the veils of falsehoods plied from the highest forums of the land? How may we, as journalists, help forge “a new map of belonging” (‘By Protesting a Law that Divides and Discriminates, We Are Forging New Maps of Belonging’, December 20).

The bigger question is that in this age of media capture and suborning, can we even speak of such journalism? The simple response to this is that if journalism does not rise to this moment, it will be overtaken by this moment and found to be wholly incapable of reflecting the times we live in. None of the elaborate exercises conducted by Big Media in defending the government on its moves to re-arrange permanently the norms governing citizenship or in masking Uttar Pradesh government’s acts of brutal repression, have succeeded in tamping down the anger against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC) on the streets.

The posters have only proliferated, the slogans have only grown sharper (I have documented some of them below), and the dissenters have only grown in number and voice.

What does this really signify? Will there come a time then when the state-commandeered directed blather of the Big Media is totally disregarded by readers and viewers for the stories put out by the poorly funded “minnows” of the media world, endowed not with deep pockets but a deep sense of the values and ethics of journalism.

Today, there is growing evidence that those who are searching for authentic news consciously seek out those media channels, newspapers and portals that have tried to remain independent in extremely difficult times. The days ahead will witness a concerted strengthening of the overarching minatory state. India may run out of onions, but is not likely to run out of drones, which are now urgently needed not just to guard the borders but to guard against dissidence, whether in Srinagar or in Delhi.

It is no coincidence that exactly a year ago, Adani Defence and Israel’s Elbit Systems Ltd inaugurated their joint venture to manufacture the Hermes 900, the “multi-use medium altitude long endurance unmanned aerial system”. These menacing human-crafted dragon flies will now reverberate over our heads, even as khaki-clad foot soldiers slice their way on the ground, aided by spyware and face recognition technologies.

How do we counter this major enterprise to silence dissent and force a homogenous, state-centric presentation of contemporary realities? Our only strength lies in our dogged fact-finding; our capacity and courage to go where our better paid, more feted, counterparts dare not go and to use our language like a needle to stitch together the various parts of a story.

Two recent ground reports among several others that The Wire carried bore the hallmarks of such an approach. One captured what happened in Mangaluru; the other senseless killings in Bijnore – both cities located in states ruled by the BJP (Ground Report: In Mangaluru, a Police Which ‘Fires, Storms Hospitals, Shouts Anti-Muslim Slurs‘, December 26;  Ground Report: Families of Two Young Men Felled by Bullets in Bijnor Contest Police Claims’, December 27).

If evidence is needed that the moves this government has made on CAA-NRC are not driven by altruistic concern for the persecuted minorities in other countries but a cold, calculated plan to terrorise and inferiorise the Muslims of India, it is all here.

In Mangaluru, the police not only shot down two Muslim men during anti-CAA protests, they entered the hospital where the wounded had been taken and kicked at the door of the ICU, all the while shouting out communal expletives.

In Bijnore, a mother cries, “They killed my son. He was a good boy. They killed him. Mera Mera.” 

Strikingly, despite the geographical distance between Mangalore and Bijnore, the pattern of  police violence bordering on murderous vengeance is similar.

How will all this unravel? After all, if journalism is the first draft of history, it is also required to be the first draft of political science. Is the BJP really struggling to bring India’s diverse cultures under one umbrella of “Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan”, as The Wire commentary, ‘Modi-Shah Politics May Be Facing the Law of Diminishing Returns’ (December 24), seems to suggest. Has the BJP government gone too far, as another analysis (‘An Indian Kristallnacht in the Making’, December 24) argues.

Or is it the case that we going to see more state violence which is about “effectively communicating to Muslims that they will pay the price for even demanding the most basic democratic rights to assemble and ask for their rights” (‘Why Modi ‘Retreated’ From the NRC and Why it Will Remain on the BJP’s Agenda’, December 26).

At this cusp of an old year and a new, the questions only multiply.

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A time to make ourselves heard

The piece, ‘We Need to Create a Vocabulary of Protest Which Resonates with Students, Citizens’ (December 25), makes a valuable observation:

“As students, this is our moment and we must own it. We have something that this regime lacks: the power of imagination and the ability to think and ask questions.”

Also, I could add, the ability to come up with some of the most creative slogans on posters that India has ever seen…

PM 2:0 IS WORSE THAN PM 2.5… if you are acting like the British Government then we will act like Bhagat Singh… IT’S SO BAD EVEN CYNICS ARE HERE… Jab nahi goron se dare/to kyun dare choron se?… BJP IS GREAT AT MATHS/THEY CAN DIVIDE 1.3 BILLION IN NO TIME… This time Santa won’t come to India, documents nahin… WE RESIST/THEREFORE WE EXIST… Don’t forget Kashmir… SABHI KA KHOON HAI SHAMIL/YAHAN KI MITTI MEIN/KISSI KE BAAP KA HINDUSTAN THODI HAIN… No to divide and rule, yes to unite and progress… UTTERLY BUTTERLY BARBARIC – BURE DIN WAPAS DE DO… Expected dhokla, got dhoka… CAA ‘CRUEL ARROGANT ACT’… I can’t believe you still have to protest this sh**!… SHUT DOWN FASCISM, NOT INTERNET… We are for rights, not riots… LOVE ME LIKE DELHI POLICE LOVES SECTION 144… Jab Hindu Muslim raazi, toh kya karega Nazi?… ERROR 404 HINDU RASHTRA NOT FOUND… Digital India = no internet… MODI = MODE OF DESTROYING INDIA… TUM THODEGA, HUM JODEGA… This CAB will never take us home!… I HAVE SEEN SMARTER CABINETS AT IKEA!… Pyar banto, desh nahi… WE THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, BORN HERE, LIVE HERE, DIE HERE… Shabdo pe lathi kyun?… Bhagat Singh tu zinda hai, Inquilab ke naaro mein… CAA-N’T MUZZLE DISSENT, ‘Mr Modi, I am Indulekha, identify me by my dress (held up by a hijaab clad woman), SAY NO TO 9 (SECTION 144…1+1=4)… Hindu-muslim ek hain, hamari sarkar fake hain… JMI-AMU-JNU ARE NOT WAR ZONES… Mazhab ki siyasat bandh karo…CAB HATAO, DESH BACHAOSharab ne toh bohut ghar barbad kiye, Ghalib, par chai ne toh pura desh barbad kar diya!… LOVE AGAINST HATE, IDEAS ARE BULLET-PROOF… Merry crisis, and a unhappy new year!… I WILL SHOW YOU MY DOCUMENTS IF YOU SHOW ME YOUR DEGREE… I hate big bakhts and I cannot lie… NAME: NAMELESS, RELIGION: LOVE, COUNTRY: INDIA, PURPOSE: HUMAN… When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty… IF THEY DIVIDE, WE WILL MULTIPLY… Angrez gaye, but they left Modi-Shah behind… SHUT YOUR MOUTH, NOT OUR INTERNET…my dad thinks I am studying history; he doesn’t know that I am making it…I DON’T WANT A FUTURE WHERE MY KID WILL QUESTION ME ON WHY I DIDN’T PROTEST THIS SH-T’…Modi make the GDP rise, not my BP… MERA* BHARAT MAHAAN (*TERMS AND CONDITIONS APPLY)… Ek verasat, ek shadat, ek sahriyat, Hindustan mein har nagarik ki ek…MODI-SHAH = TANASAHI.. fascism quit India… NRC (NOT REQUIRED CITIZENS), REJECT MODI-SHAH FORMULATION…Don’t divide Indians.

Demonstrators carry posters during a protest against a new citizenship law, outside Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi, India, December 21, 2019. Photo: Reuters/Anushree Fadnavis

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After a break of six weeks, I came back to an inbox overflowing with mail. This time I focus on a vast range of statements condemning CAA-NRC as well as police brutality on students that found their way in, some of which have been carried in these columns (‘CAA, NRC an ‘Ill-Advised Attempt at Social Engineering’, Say 14 South Asian Citizens’, December 26). Each one pointed to the many facets and strengths of citizen and student solidarity, both at a pan-national and pan-international level…

Excerpts from statement of students from the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru:

“We vehemently and unequivocally condemn the violence perpetrated against the peaceful protests organised by students of Aligarh Muslim University, Jamia Millia Islamia, and in other universities across the nation. The brutality of the state is evident in its response to these protests…These moves, apart from being a clear violation of universally accepted human rights, are also an assault on the rule of law, morality and the democratic ethos and tradition that is fundamental to dignified living. We believe that this move is intended to bring about a chilling effect on freedom of speech and to curb dissent. As students of law, we wholly and unequivocally condemn these lawless actions and the disproportionate use of force by the state on vulnerable students across the country. Therefore, we beseech the judiciary to take due cognizance of the same and ensure that the necessary accountability is fixed.

Additionally, we also believe that the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 is completely against the foundational values that the Constitution of India is built upon, and which we so cherish. The act is discriminatory, devoid of any reasonable classification, and at its base uses religion as the basis for granting citizenship. In its form and design, it is clear that the law is intended to directly target inter alia the Muslim minority community and is a classic example of a brute majoritarian preference aggregation impinging on the secular fabric that is woven into our founding document. We…call upon influential members of the legal fraternity, both on the bar and on the bench, to join us in rejecting this morally bankrupt law…

Excerpts from a statement sent in by convenors of the Democratic Research Scholars’ Organisation (DSRO), Kolkata:

“Probably we are going through the darkest age in Indian academia. Words are insufficient to express the fear, anguish and terror created by the way armed state machinery brutalized the democratically protesting students and vandalised the campuses…The events are well known and don’t need to be reiterated here. The situation that is being created by instigating divisions among people for diverting the deep-down and unassailable economic crisis and administrative failures is unprecedented. The all-out state sponsored assault in the economic, social and cultural day-to-day life of common people are beyond our farthest nightmares, so to speak. And now when all diversionary tactics are exhausted, the deadliest measures of accentuating to the farthest extent all possible divisions among commons including in religious and ethnic divisions had been taken up. It won’t be an overstatement to fear that if things continue unabated this way, our country may eventually experience extermination…

We hereby take a clear stand denouncing these measures, express solidarity against the nation-wide protests against this barbarity, and demand the criminal police personnel responsible for the firing and assaults be taken to justice.

Excerpts from a statement from Indian law students studying in the Netherlands:

“India cannot cease to be one nation, because people belonging to different religions live in it. … In no part of the world are one nationality and one religion synonymous terms; nor has it ever been so in India.” Mahatma Gandhi quoted in S.R. Bommai v. Union of India

We are a group of Indians, mostly university students, in the Netherlands who are deeply disturbed at the passing of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (‘CAA’). Article 14 of the Constitution of India, 1950 enshrines “equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws within the territory of India”. Admittedly, Article 14 empowers the State to classify persons for the purposes of legislation provided it is based on intelligible differentia (which distinguishes those that are grouped together from others) and bears a rational nexus with the purpose of the Act.

Unfortunately, the CAA fails on both grounds. Firstly, it selects illegal migrants who are entitled to citizenship benefits on the basis of religion, which is in itself impermissible. Secondly, the Act claims to protect minorities belonging to the listed countries from persecution on grounds of religion. However, this justification does not fully address why the Act excludes groups such as Ahmadiyyas and Shias who are at the receiving end of majoritarian violence in Pakistan or atheists who are persecuted in Bangladesh, as also many other categories….

As Indians, we have continually taken pride in the diversity of our motherland. Every day, we discover new things from fellow Indians ranging from culinary history, music, language to even stereotypes. We marvel at how our coexistence has allowed us to better appreciate our similarities and differences. For us, the CAA represents a horrifying prospect. It represents a country that allows differences to erase commonalities. A country that identifies people based on the religion they subscribe to. A country that is vastly different from the country we take pride in. Therefore, we denounce the CAA and all the divisive narratives that accompany it…

We stand in solidarity with the peaceful protesters and lend them our voice against the CAA. We urge everyone to uphold the spirit of the Indian Constitution — equality, secularism, and democracy.

Excerpts from a statement was issued and supported by students, faculty and alumni of Syracuse University, Hamilton College, Colgate University, SUNY College of Environmental Science & Forestry and Ithaca College, and the broader CNY community:

“As members of the Central New York community concerned about the brutal police violence against students at Jamia Milia Islamia and Aligarh Muslim University, two public universities with a predominantly Muslim minority student body, we join millions of students in at least 15 cities across India to express our solidarity with students protesting the Bharatiya Janata party’s anti-Muslim Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) 2019…

“As we express solidarity with the protesting students in India, we also condemn the Indian state’s colonial military occupation of Kashmir and stand in solidarity with the Kashmiri struggle for self-determination. At the same time, we recognize that educators, students and activists invested in decolonial work must refrain from conflating the repression of resistance to state-oppression with military occupation as such attempts can erase the significance of historically situated struggle for Kashmiri self-determination. However, we also see interlocking systems of oppression that threaten Kashmiris, Assamese, and college student protesters across the country waged by Hindu fascism, structural violence, settler-colonialist capitalism, anti-Muslim hatred and Brahminical patriarchy as connected…

From these recent experiences, we recognize campus politics, organizing and leadership of youth from historically oppressed communities as crucial to the achievement of social justice in a substantive manner. In this spirit of resistance, we, students, educators and concerned residents of CNY, express solidarity with students resisting state oppression, strongly condemn the Indian state’s fascist assaults on persecuted communities across India.

Excerpts from a statement was issued and supported by members of the Montreal academic community:

We condemn the brutality unleashed by the police against students of Jamia Millia Islamia, Aligarh Muslim University and many other academic institutions in the Northeastern states, and across the country….

For the Indian Government to mobilise police and paramilitary forces against its own non-violent and peacefully protesting students is emblematic of a troubling trend that attacks the very foundations of a democratic society. Under no circumstances should it be acceptable for the police to barge into University campuses, libraries, hostels or prayer spaces, to physically and verbally abuse and intimidate students and arbitrarily detain them. It is particularly concerning that this state-led repression is targeting students at majority-Muslim institutions, indicating the impunity with which the state can enact violence against minority populations in India. An atmosphere of fear, insecurity and anxiety is being deliberately created to brow-beat students into silence against what is a clear violation of the Indian Constitution and its secular ethic. To mischaracterize student protests as “riots,” and the police’s use of excessive force as justified “peacekeeping,” is an unlawful denial of students’ rights as citizens. We demand an immediate end to all forms of violence against the protesting students and call for accountability of those responsible.

Over the past several days, we have witnessed many peaceful protests and demonstrations against the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), 2019…We lend our unconditional support to all those across India fighting this unconstitutional law and join their call for its immediate withdrawal.

Excerpts from an open letter of solidarity from the tech industry workers (Google, Amazon, MSFT etc.)… 

We — engineers, researchers, analysts, and designers — of the technology industry, unflinchingly condemn the fascist Indian government and the brutality it enacts on citizens. The teargassing, sexual and physical abuse, and unlawful arrests by the police all over the country are a gross violation of universal human rights. The right to protest is fundamental to India’s constitution and history. Ahimsa was India’s weapon of resistance against the British and showed the path to independence — by demonizing and attempting to suppress nonviolent action that questions its actions, the Indian state is forgetting the values and tactics that India so deeply cherishes. Ahimsa further inspired many world leaders, like Martin Luther King, who said, “we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension […] We bring it out in the open where it can be seen and dealt with.” The state-sponsored brutality against protestors must stop immediately…

The Internet — the open ecosystem that we, tech workers, worked so hard to build, and our entire humanity benefits from — is banned in many parts of India elsewhere, as well as in Kashmir for the fifth month in a row (the world’s longest Internet ban). While portraying India as marching towards ‘Digital India’ and courting tech company business investment, the regressive government views the Internet as a political tool for suppression of citizen dissent, while utilizing the same networks to organize and spread fake content.

We refuse to silently witness the violence unleashed on Indians. We oppose We also call upon technology leaders like Sundar Pichai (Alphabet), Satya Nadella (Microsoft), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Jack Dorsey (Twitter), Dara Khosrowshahi (Uber), Mukesh Ambani (Jio), Gopal Vittal (Bharti Airtel), Kalyan Krishnamurthy (Flipkart), and Shantanu Narayen (Adobe) to take a stance and publicly denounce the fascist acts by the Indian government…

Disclaimer: Our opinions are our OWN and do not reflect those of our employers.

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An MSc student of IIT Kanpur wrote in to say that on December 17, the students of IIT Kanpur organised a silent march in solidarity with the Jamia and AMU students. In that protest, before that march, one of the students was reciting Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s famous poem ‘Hum Dekhenge’ .

“Now a professor has filed a complaint against us to the director, that we were spreading religious hatred through that march. The complainant distorted the English translation of that poem and mentioned that in the complaint. It has been told that IIT students were raising anti-India slogans.  The director without even checking the poem or the actual translation, formed a ‘high powered committee’ to probe and take disciplinary action. Reputed newspapers, like the Indian Express, mentioned  only one point of view in their article. They published their article with that misleading translation of that poem and without representing the point of view of the students. We are requesting you to highlight this issue. We are just students standing against a powerful administration. If media does not become our voice, this system will ride roughshod over all opposition it faces,” he writes

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A group of students today gathered at Dushera Ground, Gandhi Nagar, Jammu, to protest against the CAA and NRC. Two school-going students, had given a call for this protest. The protest began with the reading of ‘The Preamble.’

Other classmates supported them and gathered for the protest, appreciating their courage in giving the call. They compared this duo to the freedom fighters like Ram Prasad Bismil and Ashfaqullah Khan, symbolising the Hindu-Muslim unity of the country.

Students from Classes 9 to 12 in different schools were present in the protest, supporting their call and also expressing their dissent over the CAA-NRC. The protest ended peacefully with the reciting ‘Saare jahaan se acha, Hindustan hamara’. The police were handed a red rose.

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Poojan Sahil sent in a video on a poem written by Kaushik Raj, a young poet protesting against the CAA. It talks about the power of our constitution and how we need to reject any attacks on it.

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