The Modi government’s insecurity is evident in its attempt to decode decades of protest as potential subversion. Those who used to accuse public protestors of using a ‘tool-kit’ now clearly want to develop a tool-kit of their own — an alternative official playbook, to deal with all future protests. Meanwhile Niti Aayog declines to furnish information about RSS’s NGO status. Was the RSS and its fronts ever engaged in public protests?
It is a curious directive that Union Home Minister Amit Shah has given to the Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPRD): to investigate all public agitations since 1974. Although it was discussed at a National Security Strategies Conference in July, it surfaced in the media only two months later, in September.
It appears that Shah is interested in creating a standard operating procedure (SOP) for dealing with public agitations and movements, reflecting perhaps the State’s insecurity where it believes conspiracies are brewing against it. Shah has asked the BPRD to seek the help of police departments, including their Crime Investigation Departments (CID), and also rope in the Enforcement Directorate (ED), the Financial Intelligence Unit-India (FIU-IND), and the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) to examine the ‘financial aspects’ of such agitations.
But there is a clear difference between ‘understanding’ protests and movements, a job best done by social scientists and historians, and ‘dealing’ with them as a security problem.
Sociologists, for example, can explore the structural inequalities, identity politics, and group dynamics of public protests. Political scientists can shed light on institutional failures, democratic deficits, and mobilisation strategies, while economists can analyse material grievances, corruption, youth unemployment, inflation, and fiscal crises that can spark unrest. Historians can contextualise the movements within long-term struggles — land rights, farm prices, caste discrimination, gender bias, regional autonomy, etc.
Such methodologies of investigation see the protests as a reflection of the democratic will of the people. Police investigations, on the other hand, only focus on on the protests as a threat to public order, national security, and the governing dispensation. The home minister’s is clearly a policing approach that does not respect the public protests as reasonable actions. Understanding them is aimed at controlling them rather than for redressing grievances. In his framework, Mahatma Gandhi’s satyagraha, the farmers’ protests against the Narendra Modi government’s ill-fated farm laws and the anti-CAA protests could all be termed criminal conspiracies against the State….
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A LEGACY THAT IS BEST FORGOTTEN
Misusing a judicial observation to unearth temples under mosques will lead to disaster
Four years and counting, Umar Khalid languishes in jail without bail or trial
Gauri Lankesh, Dr Umar Khalid… For the state, Umar Khalid & others are worse than heinous criminals
Apoorva Mandhani: Judge Loya’s Confidants Died Mysterious Deaths
After the truth-shower 