The most eventful and uproarious day since the ‘unleashing’ of Citizenship Amendment Act- that’s how the entire nation, as it was on Thursday can be described. It’s now endless and enlarging, making the task of the visual media to keep track and allot screen spaces for protest news really onerous. After NE and national capital, there has been erection of new stages of conveying anti-CAA feelings and chillingly, it has been the capital city of supposedly the most impregnable fortress of the ruling dispensation-Lucknow. The constant high-octane claim of a sound law and order situation there has been proved wrong and it has been violence all throughout, with scores of vehicles and even OB vans set on fire and a police outpost also being ransacked. List of places coming under anti-CAA protest map is increasing fast, foretelling a grim picture that lie ahead. And the ‘national question’ that must be rattling all is when will there be an end to this pandemonium?  

Under a situation of this kind, based entirely on common sense sans political affiliations and obligations, it can be said that to restore normalcy the foremost task would be to acknowledge the gravity of the situation. It hasn’t perhaps been either correctly evaluated or been overlooked that public perception of CAA, within a short span of its inception has somehow changed from being ‘anti-secular’ to ‘anti-national’. It’s injurious since it will divide the nation on religious lines and better not to have it, is the one and only mass demand. And it will be of extreme foolhardiness on the part of those who are still in a denial mode. Application of wanton repressive forces through the chosen vehicles of Section 144, internet shutdowns or arrests during last three days have only backfired, leading to a more volatile environment and increased people’s participation. But that which can presumably be counted as most unsettling is the unyielding attitude of the top brass of the apostles of CAA who continue to push ahead with their explanatory theories in the act’s support. Repeated and emphatic declarations that next is NRC, which in all probability might well turn out to be a monstrous task of digging out a certain set of documents to prove one’s Indian-ness has extended the fear factor. Despite efforts to establish that CAA and NRC are mutually exclusive, the belief that they are actually each other’s ‘soul mates’ has already been firmly deep rooted in mass psyche.

Best-selling author and historian William Dalrymple’s tweet on the detention of  prominent historian Ramachandra Guha by police at Bengaluru- “Feels like the beginning of a new Emergency” is perhaps the mirror of the India of today. It’s undeniable- CAA is the elephant in the room.    

---

Kenter Joya Riba

(Managing Editor)
      She is a graduate in Science with post graduation in Sociology from University of Pune. She has been in the media industry for nearly a decade. Before turning to print business, she has been associated with radio and television.
Email: kenterjoyaz@easternsentinel.in / editoreasternsentinel@gmail.com
Phone: 0360-2212313

<< Back to News List