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Second Partition: Breakdown of Secular India

“…At the stroke of midnight, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of nation a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance…” an excerpt from ‘Tryst with Destiny’, the maiden speech of independent India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru on the eve of India’s first independence day. A day earlier, Pakistan also celebrated its first independence day. The partition of the two dominions (dominion of India and dominion of Pakistan) was necessitated following the Lahore resolution and the two nation theory of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the ‘father of the nation’ of Pakistan.

India went ahead to declare itself as the ‘Republic of India’ on 26th January, 1950 while Pakistan declared itself as the ‘Islamic Republic of Pakistan’. A good number of the BJP MPs with Mr. Amit Shah leading the charge have put the onus on the Congress for the partition of India and Pakistan echoing the voice of its predecessors who have all tread on the same path for electoral gains. But history bears witness to these fallacious claims of the BJP who fail to comprehend that while pointing one finger to the Congress, they are pointing the other three fingers to themselves. It was VD Savarkar who was bestowed with the title ‘Veer’ by the BJP for writing mercy petitions to the British while still in the goals in the Andamans who first propounded the ‘two-nation’ theory in 1935 in Ahmedabad in a Hindu Mahasabha session.

The BJP in all fairness has lost all moral right to claim that its party does not discriminate the Muslims of India especially after recklessly splitting Jammu & Kashmir into two UTs, hounding its political leaders as prisoners and literally shutting down the entire state for over 3 months. To add salt to the injury, the Citizenship Amendment Bill, 2016 was once again introduced in the Lok Sabha after it was previously thwarted in the Rajya Sabha. Like before, it saw an easy passage of the bill in the Lower House with 311 voting for it and 80 against it. Enough has been discussed about the bill and we need not delve into the nitty-gritty of the CAB. What we need to understand is this bill is against the very nature of the Indian Constitution.

72 years after we got independence we have gone back from new to the old. On the 9th of December, at midnight, the BJP Government passed the contentious Citizenship Amendment Bill amid huge protests across the country. Already, violent protests have erupted, there is complete breakdown of law and order in many areas in the Northeast but the BJP does not seem to have any regard for the sentiments of the people. The very soul of this nation- the constitution has been gagged by the BJP.

The National Register for Citizens which is in the pipeline is designed to further denigrate the Muslims of India. Without CAB, there can be no NRC and this is exactly the reason why the BJP is hell-bent on passing CAB in the Upper House. The NRC exercise in the state of Assam which was supposed to target the Muslim populace proved to be disastrous. With a spending of over 1300 crore not only it did it cause a huge drain on the exchequer but it also involved the state machinery with over 55,000 state government officials working round the clock which proved to be a futile exercise. Surprisingly, out of the 41 lakh people who were left out, most of them are Bengali Hindus who are now kept in six detention Centres across Assam. The BJP is adamant on carrying out the Pan-India NRC exercise which has been widely criticised by eminent people from all over India. With an already frail economy, such an exercise will only lead to economic disaster.

The BJP should realize that they are treading on a very dangerous path. The 1971 Bangladesh liberation war which put a dent on the West Pakistan’s hegemony over East Pakistan is an epitome of a failed state established on religious lines. Any attempt to divide India on religious lines is against the tenets and the ethos of this country. What the BJP is doing today will only weaken a strong secular and resilient India which took years and years to built. Instead of indulging in appeasement politics, it should focus on taking this country to much greater heights with the huge mandate which the people of India have bestowed upon them.

With only six hours time allotted for the debate in the Rajya Sabha, we can only hope that the honorable MPs show maturity and sanity while voting.

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