Salman Khurshid named in Delhi Police chargesheet on riots but there are no specifics on provocative speeches
This is more than a witch-hunt, it is a theatre of the absurd, this partisan investigation into the Delhi riots. One cannot even blame the police anymore, trotting out as it does the script that is handed down to it by the Home Ministry, having long lost the spine to stand up to its constitutional mandated functions and bending instead to the political masters of the day. The message, howsoever unpalatable to our Indian ethos and civilisational DNA, is clear — there can be only one ideology that works, anybody else choosing the other end of the divide just won’t be tolerated. And that the democratic right to dissent, even one in defence of the Constitution, is as good as treason. In this case, challenging the new law that makes grant of citizenship conditional on religion and tears asunder the secular rights of all Indians. What else can explain the names in the outrageous chargesheet of the Delhi Police on the February riots? Congressmen, Leftists, scientists, filmmakers, civil society activists, students, basically everybody who agreed to disagree with the Government. Take the case of Salman Khurshid. Forget that he has been a Congress veteran, a Union Minister handling key portfolios, an educationist, a legal eagle, a liberal Muslim who refused to be cardboarded into stereotypes or become an apologist of his faith. Forget his pedigree and lineage as the grandson of our third President Zakir Husain. Has there been any precedent of his anti-India intentions or has there been any visual footage of him delivering divisive and hate speeches? Or having an aggressive tenor of words? Yet he has been listed for instigating the riots in the city this February through provocative speeches and a studied design. No specifics have been mentioned. He has been named with his party colleague Udit Raj and CPI(M) leader Brinda Karat for fanning sentiments during the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act. The police claims to have “protected” witnesses, who were conspirators themselves and perhaps needed intense “security” to spill the beans on the complicity of senior leaders. And to indicate the weightage and seriousness of the statements, the police said they had been recorded before a Magistrate under Section 164 of Code of Criminal Procedure. Other big names in the disclosure statements include those of Left leader Kavita Krishnan, student activist Kawalpreet Kaur, scientist Gauhar Raza and advocate Prashant Bhushan. The bigger question is then what does one do with the stronger visual evidence of incendiary speeches by ruling BJP leaders, like “goli maaro, saalo ko,” that were repeatedly played out on news television. The likes of Anurag Thakur and Kapil Mishra have been spared, the latter spewing vitriol and issuing barely veiled threats under police watch. There were videos of a group of people cheering and chanting “Jai Shri Ram” as bricks and stones were unloaded. It was clear that violence was being planned and frantic appeals were made to Delhi Police to act. Later shops were set on fire in Muslim localities in Maujpur. So why was no action taken against the BJP motormouth for his hate speech and disruption of peace and communal harmony? Simply because he held rallies in favour of the new citizenship law and was the Government’s mouthpiece? If hate begets hate, then there ought to have been two guilty parties, not one.
The brutality of targetting is even more evident as names uncomfortable to the establishment are circled out while provocateurs friendly to it are let off. Earlier, too, there was a motivated leaking of information about noted civil society activists figuring in a supplementary chargesheet based on disclosures of the accused. While the police had then claimed that the disclosure was not the sole basis of further action, and needed to be backed up by corroborative evidence, cross-checking and information, why were their names listed? CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury was labelled as an instigator for representing an ideological polarity. Riots probes by their very nature are sensitive and it is all the more necessary for the police to sift fact from fiction, identify the perpetrator and the victim, regardless of fear or pressure. For a society needs healing and by the Government’s own figures, the minority communities have been affected more in the arson and violence that followed. What makes the Delhi riot probe a dangerous precedent is that there is nothing that separates the protester from the rioter, the dissenter from the conspirator and the citizen from an arsonist. If this is going to be the template going forward, then there would be no need for a trial by court. By deriding and selectively targetting some of the best educated and informed minds in the country, the new India is about using knowledge and wisdom to be a qualified conformist than a disgruntled critic. Disproportionately and sadly, the Government narrative of stereotyping the riots as another volatile expression of communal angst has swamped every logical argument on why citizenship should not be selective. Most disturbingly, such actions prove that the Government can well do without civil society which might either become a voiceless and rare species or be coopted. But dangerously, we are also losing the Muslim intelligentsia to hate politics. One dreads to imagine its fallout.
