Eye on 2021 Assembly Polls, Mamata to Launch Mass Outreach Program on March 2

Conceived by Prashant Kishor and I-PAC, the ‘Amader Gorbo Mamata’ programme will see all Trinamool MLAs and candidates knocking on their constituents’ doors, visiting religious spots and holding corner meetings.

Kolkata: Eyeing not just the civic body poll slated for April this year but also the upcoming 2021 assembly election, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) is all set to launch an extensive outreach program called ‘Amader Gorbo Mamata’ (Our Pride, Mamata) a senior party official told The Wire.

West Bengal chief minister and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee will launch the campaign on Monday at the Nazrul Mancha indoor-stadium, Kolkata.

This will be the TMC’s second campaign after ‘Didi ke bolo’ (Tell Didi) which was launched on September 30, 2019, ideated by poll strategist Prashant Kishor’s firm, Indian Political Action Committee (I-PAC).  However, the presence of Kishor at Monday’s launch ceremony is doubtful.

A TMC MLA who asked not to be named said, “PK’s (Prashant Kishor) team has been working on a project since November last year. Now, we got to know that a big event is scheduled for Monday, we still don’t know the details.”

‘Amader Gorbo Mamata’ envisages all party MLAs and probable candidates in the assembly segment where TMC is not in power embarking on a 15-day outreach program to establish a direct connection with voters across Bengal.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior executive of I-PAC told The Wire, “We have been working on this campaign since the start of this year. Every MLA or likely candidate will spend 15 days in their respective constituencies and cover a minimum of 45 gram-panchayats during the period.”

The executive further explained that party leaders are being asked to conduct a door-to-door campaign while visiting villages or wards (for urban constituencies), to visit famous religious spots in their respective assembly segments and conduct corner-side meetings in villages.

“The basic plan for the campaign has been chalked out after rigorous ground-research; however the micro details will vary depending on the area and the need of the ground realities,” the executive said.

The executive went on to explain that the ‘Amader Gorbo Mamata’ campaign will be launched simultaneously in all 294 assembly segments in Bengal. “We planned to launch the campaign on March 2, and kick-start it from March 8. But there has been a delay in our preparation which might defer the execution process by a week,” he said.

After the BJP secured 18 seats in the 2019 parliamentary election, the highest ever tally for the saffron party in the state, the Trinamool engaged the professional services of Kishor through I-PAC.

The first brainchild of team I-PAC was ‘Didi Ke Bolo’, a public outreach drive by Trinamool in which common people can lodge their complaints and share suggestions over the phone or through a dedicated website.

Through the campaign, the party received over 10 lakh calls in the first 30 days. Calling it a huge success, the chief minister then said, “I am humbled by the overwhelming response of the people on the Didi Ke Bolo platform… We take note of their valuable suggestions and are committed to working overtime to resolve their grievances to an extent possible in an expeditious manner.”

After its Lok Sabha setback, the TMC sprang back to life in November last year with victories in all three Bengal assembly constituencies that went for by-polls. The victory was significant as TMC also won Kharagpur (Urban). BJP Bengal chief Dilip Ghosh was the MLA from there and had vacated the seat after winning the Kharagpur Lok Sabha seat. Political analysts believe the TMC’s 3-0 win in the by-elections was primarily because of effective strategies I-PAC put in place for the party.

Assam: Sharjeel Imam Sent to Judicial Custody, Lodged in Guwahati Central Jail

Unless police from other states seek his custody, the JNU student will remain in judicial custody in Assam.

Guwahati: Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) research scholar Sharjeel Imam, who was arrested on charges of sedition for his statements on blocking Assam from the rest of the country, was sent to judicial custody on February 28 after the completion of his eight-day police custody. The Guwahati City Police (Crime Branch) has already registered a case against Imam under sections of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

After the chief judicial magistrate’s (CJM) court sent him to judicial custody for 14 days, he has been lodged at the Guwahati Central Jail. While he was being taken to jail, members suspected to be affiliated to Hindu right-wing groups who had gathered at the court shouted slogans like ‘Sharjeel mordabad’. This sloganeering was also witnessed at the Guwahati Railway Station on February 20, when Imam was brought to the city.

Imam was arrested on January 28 from Bihar’s Jehanabad, after sedition cases were registered against him in five states for a speech in which he asked Muslims to block Assam from rest of India to make the Centre to hold a dialogue on the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA). Imam has extended support to the protests against the Act and made his remarks at the Jamia Milia Islamia campus on January 16. On January 25, the BJP-led state government in Assam filed a sedition case against Imam.

Also Read: Charged by the Police in Five States, But Who, Indeed, Is Sharjeel Imam?

Munna Prasad Guta, Guwahati City police commissioner, told The Wire that Imam will be produced before the magistrate every 14 days and the magistrate will remand him, which is the normal legal procedure unless police from other states want his custody. “We are investigating him and have questioned him. That is all I can say. We will file a report in court in due course of time,” he said.

The Telegraph on February 29 reported that police in Arunachal Pradesh, where a case has also been filed against Imam, may also seek his remand. The crime branch claimed to have unearthed ‘vital information’ from Imam during the investigation. “It was found that he (Imam) was in touch with several people in the state since 2016. His bank accounts, call records were also examined,” the newspaper reported

Ever since his arrival in Guwahati, local media – particularly TV news channels – have been reporting that Imam had met AIUDF leader Badruddin Ajmal in Delhi when the anti-CAA and anti-NRC protests were at its peak.

A local TV news channel reported that Imam met Ajmal for about one hour in Delhi and that he (Imam) considered his viewpoints on NRC and CAA ‘one-dimensional’. An ‘exclusive’ report aired in the primetime slot on February 24 said that during his interrogation, Imam said his speech was ‘deliberately misinterpreted’ and that he is a law-abiding citizen of India.

The ‘exclusive’ report also claimed that Imam had no special contacts in Assam but was in limited contact with a reporter from Assam. The report also claimed during interrogation, Imam denied being in contact with CPI (ML) and PFI, saying he detests communists because ‘they can’t help society’.

On February 23, the Times of India quoted Debraj Upadhaya, the joint commissioner of Guwahati police, as saying, “He is very intelligent and might not tell us a lot. We had asked for fourteen days of remand and judiciary has given us four days. So, we will again seek custody for him.” The report also said that Imam had visited many places in Jorhat, Dhubri and Goalpara districts, when he met ‘many intellectuals and student leaders’.

Majoritarianism Has Turned the Populace Into an Ever-Ready Mob

The Delhi riots was forged in the politics of perpetually aggressive and unethical electioneering.

Something which was bound to happen has happened. At the time of writing this piece, 42 people have lost their lives. The fear and hatred, long circulated as jokes and memes in the ‘private’ space of group messages, has transformed into acts of public violence. The barrage of believable fake information has led to a breach in trust along religious lines. The shrills of newsroom anchors have resulted in the cries of victims and their families. What ‘we’ relished as ‘debates’ on TV screens in our living rooms has manifested itself in slogans of frenzy, hatred, and intimidation on the streets. What we often believed to be the work of ‘outsiders’ – wielding stick and guns – is identifiably committed by someone from within the networks of friends, families, and acquaintances.

New norms of new India

The politics as understood as a remote arena of power-play among higher echelons and actors has folded and collapsed into the everyday social life of shared workplace, neighbourhoods, and zones of erstwhile resoluble differences. In comparison to 20-30 years ago, when ‘aspirational India’ gave rise to a sizeable section of ‘apolitical’ youth, the new India of masked voters has inscribed politics over its soul and body. The hyper-voluble nation has found an image-loving leader who prefers to selectively speak but not to listen. The image-loving leader in turn has created millions of invisible faces wearing his mask. To appear similar, to sound akin, to think alike – this is the new norm of new India.

Two things are pretty clear in terms of how messages and their users have changed. One particular chant – Jai Shri Ram – has undergone a tectonic transformation. From being a simple phrase of greeting that it used to be – Jai Siya Ram – it has become a deadly weapon of fear to scare off the ‘other’. The change in message and its meaning characterizes the change in social relationships.

Also Read: Narendra Modi’s Reckless Politics Brings Mob Rule to New Delhi

The second change is in the notion of the collective. The territory – the space of the nation state – has become the article of faith. This is nothing new – nationalism has always required allegiance to territory. What appears to be new is the wilful branding of political opponents as territorial enemies. One ideology – Hindutva – has engulfed the space of both emotion and territory, through religion and politics, to monopolise the claims over nationalism. Invoking Pakistan, another state-territory, for branding political dissidents and opponents in India is a prime example of how this equation of a political critic with a territorial enemy has been achieved in contemporary political speeches and debates. Sambit Patra is a gold medallist of this one-player match. The BJP is the umpire who has written the rules of this game. And the godi media is the referee which plays this illusionary game of giving space to every view every night in their studios.

A salesman watches Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressing to the nation, on TV screens inside a showroom in Mumbai, March 27, 2019. Credit: Reuters/Francis Mascarenhas

Riots and mob

Riots symbolise the active and sinister use of past divisions. They consolidate differences in the collective memory of communities for the future. And they also open up spaces for reconciliation in the present. Some reports have pointed out how the bhaichara of communities forged across religions came to rescue individuals and groups in a neighbourhood.

However, the language of ‘riot’ creates a specific kind of a collective out of the people. It is called ‘mob’. Various insightful opinions on the recent Delhi riot have used this word. Some have used the word ‘thugs’. The victims and survivors have also used this word to both identify and distance themselves from those who came into their neighbourhoods – which was a mob. The mob perpetrates the violence; the riot leaves us with dead bodies and grieving survivors.

The mob becomes a pre-given collective which works either at instigation or at provocation. It does its work and then disappears. What remains behind is the material presence of mob violence – burnt houses and cars, injured bodies and destroyed shops and places of worship.

In new India, as long as we keep referring to this collective as mob, we will keep deceiving ourselves of acknowledging the change. The word mob is an illusion. It is a fiction of our ways to find some rationale in the madness of violence; it reflects our empathy to normalise the abnormal. It is the logic of the ‘riot’ that creates this illusion. Mob has not created the Delhi riots; riots in hindsight have fictitiously created the mob.

In the build-up to the recent events, two main categories were at play – the protesters against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) and the supporters of the CAA. It is another matter that the supporters were the protesters of the protesters. Otherwise their support to the Act, from the passing of which the government made it clear it won’t budge an inch, practically meant nothing. But the recent act of violence – riots – opened up a new semantic space in which protesters and supporters have disappeared. We are now left with the mob and its instigators.

Also Read: Delhi Riots: Stolen in the Looting, Baby Shoes, Never Worn

Riots, in a post-facto way, then allow to individualise the blame for violence and its origin because the mob, being ephemeral, has dissipated. The law by necessity is required to identify individuals. Violence and suffering happen collectively, its retribution individually. But under the current government, the impartiality of law itself is under compromise. While Sharjeel Islam was promptly arrested, Komal Sharma has receded into the horizon of selective national amnesia.

This smokescreen of competitive mob – people from both sides killed and got killed – and individually identifiable culprit – because mob worked on the instigation of an individual – puts a thin layer of sinister normalcy on what is evidently a structural imbalance.

In the last six years, politics has been reduced to a perpetual machinery of aggressive and unethical electioneering. Governance has been replaced by catchy abbreviated sloganeering. Supporters have been turned into troll-believers and dissenters into anti-nationals. The result of this is that there is no mob left to be carved out of the people. Majoritarianism has already turned the populace into an ever-ready mob – to collect and lynch. The middle-class are the fence-sitters of this mob, the young subalterns are its ground warriors.

The mob which burnt these vehicles has a misplaced sense of patriotism because the national flag was never meant to be used to celebrate a crime. Photo: Shome Basu

Social faultlines and their limitations

Howsoever society looks divided and fractious between ‘us’ and ‘they’, between Hindus and Muslims, and howsoever gloatingly the leaders profess to teach ‘lessons’ based on hatred and violence to each other, it is evident that both the perpetrator and the victim share the common space of ‘us’ and ‘we’. Mob is an intrinsic part of us. ‘They’ don’t come from nowhere; the politics of populism and majoritarianism has produced it and kept it ready. It is the deformity of the ‘we’ that we need to be scared of; in its erosion, the nation needs moral and political healing, which the current dispensation is unable and unwilling to provide.

For, the irony of the recent political messaging of hatred and divisiveness, stretching out from the streets to that of the Parliament, which calls for the fracturing of the ‘we’, often sneaks up through the cracks of civilizational codes of ‘assimilative differences’ through which communities have lived: the intellectual dud of a young BJP MP who raised the fear of the return of Mughal India if the majority community fails to remain vigilant simply needs to be posited against the gaiety with which the Indian state brought the head of the US to a monument built in Mughal times.

The romance of modern democracy unfurled, as it does quite often, in the manicured lawns of Mughal India. Hugs and handshakes are ritualised in the collonaded corridors of British Raj. History and historical periods are often tried to be crushed under the weight of implied uniformity – Hindu ‘golden’ age; Muslim ‘barbaric’ phase. Hindutva politics is the main medium of imposing such a uniformity. Alternative politics might then also be the only medium to resist it.

For what it seems, the year 2020 has earned a new signpost in the future history of India. Vikas and vishwaas might colour the pages of the newspapers and the tweets of official handles. They might also appear as the most prominent slogan-features of our lives, but the manufactured uniformity of these phrases might not erase the traces and smell of fumes and flames that gutted the lives and property in Delhi. The year – 2020 – might just have earned itself the honour of standing next to 1984 and 2002, though the scale of riot was comparatively smaller (in hindsight) but the potential of pogrom was dangerously similar (the lived experience of three days). And worst of all, this year might still unleash a new beginning of unbridgeable social and religious faultlines in the coming one. But that, only the future will tell.

Also Read: Backstory: No Words, No Images Can Capture the Savagery of the Moment

Search for origins

As all histories normally ask, so will the future ask about 2020: what was the cause behind this, what led to this? The industry of whataboutery, particularly on social media, is trying hard to pin down the events of three days, which Delhi witnessed, to the moment of origin. Who was the instigator of all this? Where would the collective hunt of blame find its cul-de-sac? What was the original act of instigation? And where would the buck stop? These are valid questions also for a genuine search for verified information, for understanding what happened, and for emotional closure for those who lost friends and families. They will be more relevant to those who got injured in the event of three days only to live with scars for the rest of their lives.

Was it the law itself – the CAA – or its counter-mobilisation at the site of Shaheen Bagh, which has attained a metaphorical status of peaceful dissent? Was it the surprising result of the NRC in Assam, in which more Hindus were discovered as ‘illegal’ than Muslims – which surprised those who semantically have reduced a community to ‘termites’ and ‘infiltrators’? Was it the polarising campaign of Delhi elections built upon the realisation that protest and protesters can be identified through their dress and food? The indirect allegories of appearance and habits were meant to invoke direct hatred. The instigation provided by a minister to his listeners and followers to shoot the ‘traitors’ actually convinced a young man to pick up the gun.

However, now, when the dust on the active violence seems to have settled down (may be only for a moment) the logic of riot will acquire its full capacity to identify individuals. The inciting speeches of Anurag Thakur and Kapil Mishra will be pitched against the controversial calls of Waris Pathan and Sharjeel Islam.

It should be clear to everyone that this is hogwash aimed to shift the attention from the structural weight of political power to individual acts. This is why a statement made by an Anurag Thakur or a Kapil Mishra is qualitatively different than, howsoever problematic it may appear, of certain individuals from the ‘other’ side. The Thakurs and Mishras speak with a confidence of impunity. They threaten the police in front of the police. They abuse their power because the same power protects them. Any equalisation of statements made by the wielders of power with those of its critical dissenters is a ploy to shield the powerful.

Kapil Mishra, Anurag Thakur and Parvesh Verma.

The current government has perfected this art: it will raise the pitch of divisive religious mobilisation to such an extent that some individuals will end up saying provocative things in retaliation and then the trained shrill makers of the government would use such statements to claim victimhood on the part of the whole majority community (now equated with the territory of the nation state). The victimhood will be conveyed in different ways – from a direct appeal to shoot the ‘traitors’ to that of identifying them from their clothes. A section of us, which has turned into a mob through this process of escalation, would unleash the violence. The counter-violence will provide the fodder to play the game of equalisation on TV channels: who said what first.

The views and counterviews of people seeing those channels are already as polarised as the politics itself is. The choices of villainy follow the article of faith – the faith that is at once deeply political and divisive, which claims to practice nationalism through exclusion and suspicion. We are living in times when Hindus in India are by default nationalists and Muslims have to prove themselves to become nationalistic.

This distinction is premised upon a fundamental structural shift in which politics and political discourse has moved. There is a global resonance of this shift. We are witnessing the globalisation of populism. The nation state has made a return in this global phase, which ideally was meant to lead to the shrinkage of the world by breaking down barriers. This is the nation state of populism and majoritarianism. The boundary of the nation state within which homogenisation has to be attained has itself become the rallying point of global populism. Borders are being defined everywhere. At one place, such as in the US, it is happening through pushing the idea of a wall, at another as in India, by tying the idea of citizenship to the identity based on religion. In 1989, when the Berlin Wall had come down, the boundaries of European nation states were redrawn. The ‘refugee crisis’ and Brexit has brought back the idea of borders. There is a return to the same point in the circle. People had rejoiced at the fall of the wall. Today, people cherish the idea of making a wall. The current Modi government is making a divisive wall in Indian society.

Nitin Sinha is a senior research fellow at ZMO (Centre for Modern Oriental Studies), Berlin.

Curfew Lifted, Mobile Internet Services Suspended in Six Meghalaya Districts

Officials said SMSes will be limited to five per day.

Shillong: The curfew imposed in Shillong after one person was killed in clashes between KSU members and non-tribals during a meeting on CAA and inner line permit (ILP) was lifted Saturday morning but a ban on mobile internet services was continuing in six districts.

Most shops and businesses in the city were closed even after the curfew ended, officials said.

The clashes between the Khasi Students Union members and non-tribals broke out during the anti-CAA and pro-ILP meetings held in the Ichamati area of East Khasi Hills district close to the Indo-Bangladesh border on Friday, officials said.

After the clashes, a curfew was imposed in Shillong and adjoining areas and mobile internet services suspended in six districts East Jaintia Hills, West Jaintia Hills, East Khasi Hills, Ri Bhoi, West Khasi Hills an South West Khasi hills from Friday night for 48-hours, they said.

Also read: Tathagata Roy Suggests Tiananmen Square Example to Quell ‘Engineered’ Delhi Riots

Officials said SMSes will be limited to five per day. Meghalaya Governor Tathagata Roy has appealed to people to stay calm and not pay attention to rumours.

“I appeal to all citizens in Meghalaya, tribal or non-tribal, keep calm. Don’t spread rumours and don’t listen to rumours. The chief minister has spoken to me. He assured me he is taking all the necessary steps. The prime requirement now is to maintain law and order,” the governor said in a statement.

Meghalaya Home Minister Lahkmen Rymbui has condemned the incident in Ichamati. Rymbui said a magisterial inquiry has been initiated into the incident to find out the truth.

He said the curfew was clamped and mobile internet services suspended as a precautionary measure.

In India’s 10 Pointers for Pakistan at UN Meet, One is For PM Imran Khan

Financial Action Task Force (FATF) decided to retain Pakistan in its ‘Grey List’ and warned the country of stern action if it fails to prosecute and penalise those involved in terror funding emanating from its jurisdiction.

New Delhi: India on Friday advised Pakistan’s top leadership to stop terror funding and dismantle terrorist camps operating from its soil and territories under its control while decrying Islamabad’s efforts to derail the positive developments in Jammu and Kashmir.

India’s statement came a week after the global terror financing watchdog Financial Action Task Force (FATF) in Paris decided to retain Pakistan in its ‘Grey List’ and warned the country of stern action if it fails to prosecute and penalise those involved in terror funding emanating from its jurisdiction.

Exercising the right of reply after Pakistan raised concerns over human rights in Jammu and Kashmir at the 43rd Session of the Human Rights Council here, First Secretary in India’s Permanent Mission Vimarsh Aryan said that the international community cannot be misled by Pakistani hysterical reactions at all global forums to malign India.

“The situation in Jammu and Kashmir is fast returning to normalcy despite serious attempts by Pakistan to derail the positive developments through its active support to terrorist groups and related entities,” Aryan said.

Giving Pakistan a 10-point advise list, the Indian diplomat asked it to stop terror funding and dismantle terrorist camps operating in the country and territories under its control.

“Stop public advocacy and support for terrorists by Pakistani leadership at the highest level (PM Imran Khan), end the illegal and forcible occupation and reverse the demographic changes in Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir and take structural reforms to develop a semblance of democracy in Pakistan,” he said.

Also read: India Revokes Visa of German Exchange Student Who Participated in CAA Protest

Highlighting the plight of minorities in Muslim-majority Pakistan, Aryan asked the Pakistani leadership to end harassment and execution of minorities through misuse of the blasphemy law, end forced conversions and marriages of women and girls from Hindu, Sikh, and Christian religions and stop religious persecution against Shias, Ahmadiyas, Ismailia and Hazaras.

“Blasphemy law against Aasia Bibi, persecution of Abdul Shakoor, an Ahmadiya, Jagjit Kaur, a minor Sikh girl subjected to abduction and forced marriage are the norms of the day for minorities in Pakistan,” he said.

He also accused Pakistan of recruiting children for terror activities including a suicide bombing in other countries.

“Stop killing and targeting political dissidents and legitimate criticism in Sindh, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and prevent enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings of journalists and human rights activists by its security agencies,” the Indian diplomat said.

Speaking about the state of democracy in India and Pakistan, Aryan said that the world knows about the dismal human rights records of Pakistan and a tight control cannot hide it all while India’s time tested democratic institutions are robust and adequate enough to address any challenge including those instigated from outside, in order to safeguard interests of all our citizens including minorities.

Reacting to the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation’s statement on the Kashmir issue, he said that the grouping has no locus standi to comment on the internal affairs of India.

“Jammu and Kashmir was, is and shall forever remain an integral part of India,” he asserted.

Referring to Belgium’s comment on the National Register of Citizens (NRC), Aryan said: “as a close partner of India, we wish, Belgium could have checked the factual position with us before coming to any conclusion on the issue”.

“Our Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) has clearly said that no discussions have taken place on NRC anywhere except following the Supreme Court directives in Assam,” he added.

Silchar Physics Lecturer Held After Rightwing Activists Complain he Insulted ‘Sanatan Dharma’

A District Magistrate’s court has given orders to remand Souradeep Sengupta in judicial custody at Central Jail until Monday.

New Delhi: A 25-year-old guest lecturer at Assam’s Silchar has been arrested by Cachar Police and remanded in judicial custody till Monday, after members of rightwing groups lodged an FIR against him for “making a derogatory remark against Sanatan Dharma” on Facebook.

Souradeep Sengupta, who had been applying for PhD positions in physics while teaching at the city’s Gurcharan College, had posted on Facebook on the situation in north east Delhi. In them, he blamed Prime Minister Narendra Modi as having been responsible for the situation.

In a separate post, he shared another person’s account of purported rightwing terror with a caption alleging that “Hindutva is cancer.”

Screenshots of Sengupta’s posts uploaded by rightwing activists. The highlights are theirs.

By evening on February 27, Sengupta’s friends and family began noticing an outpouring of vitriol against him online. “He had begun receiving threats on social media. Many of them were from members of the ABVP, who were also making individual posts calling for action against him for these posts that he had made on the next day [February 28] at the college campus itself,” said a relative of Sengupta’s who was initially named but requested anonymity.

Also read | Kashmir: Police Arrest Man for ‘Fake’ Facebook Post About Armed Forces

Uneasy with the threats, Sengupta decided to skip college that day. In the morning, college students, who could be members of ABVP, submitted a memorandum to the principal, calling for Sengupta’s immediate resignation.

Students then held an impromptu protest on campus itself where they raised slogans like ‘Vande mataram’, ‘Bharat mata ki jai’ and referred to action they are going to take against ‘traitors’. The video below, of the demonstration, was shared by Rohit Chanda who identifies himself both as an RSS swayamsevak and the ‘development in-charge’ for ABVP’s Silchar unit.

At around 3 pm, says the relative, a mob of nearly 40 men from rightwing outfits had gathered at Sengupta’s house. At that time neither Sengupta, nor his father were at home. The only remaining member, his mother, opened the door, only to have the crowd barge into the house.

“They were loud and kept on asking what kind of Hindus they were, if there were no photos of gods on their portico. They refused to leave until he made a Facebook Live video, apologising to everyone for his comments. His mother, who by then was pretty nervous, agreed. Souradeep too had been informed of what was going on, and he rushed back home,” said his relative.

However, police picked him up just as he was about to enter his house. “At that time, they said they were only taking him for his own protection, from the mob that had gathered outside,” said the relative.

His friends and family reached Sadar police station to find that the rightwing activists had gone there too. Police reportedly asked the two parties to come to an understanding first.

“The rightwing activists sent two people to us who identified themselves as ‘former ABVP members’. They gave us a list of demands, which kept on altering as time passed. By the time it was 9 pm, they had asked us to convince Souradeep to kneel down and beg for their forgiveness. The minute he agreed, they left en masse. Perhaps they realised that he would have to be kept in confinement if no understanding could be reached,” said the relative.

While noting that police officers were never rough with Sengupta or his family and friends, his relative said that police registered the FIR against him at around 9 pm.

A report by Indian Express quotes the Cachar superintendent of police Manabendra Dev Ray as confirming his arrest.

Sengupta has been booked for non-bailable offences under sections 295A and153A, and the bailable offence of criminal intimidation under Section 507 of the Indian Penal Code.

He has also been booked under Section 66 of the IT Act, which has been struck down by the Supreme Court. The Wire has done reports on police’s wilful ignorance of the judicial pronouncement.

Also read: HC Notice on Plea Seeking FIR, NIA Probe Against Harsh Mander, Swara Bhaskar, Others

In the copy of the complaint [top right], it is visible that in addition to calling him a “hate monger” for his Facebook post, the 10 complainants cite that he abused “Sanatan Dharma as a whole.” Sanatan dharma is understood to refer to the entire set of religious duties that are to be executed by Hindus.

It is not clear if all 10 are current students of Gurcharan College.

Sengupta spent the night in the lock up. At around midnight, the following ‘apology’ appeared on his Facebook account. The posts which had caused the outrage in rightwing groups had been deleted.

The District Magistrate’s court, where he was produced at around 4 pm on Saturday, will announce his bail decision on Monday. It gave orders for Sengupta to be taken to Silchar Central Jail for the term of his judicial custody.

Members of rightwing groups, meanwhile, have been quick to celebrate Sengupta’s detention. Chanda himself was among them.

Both Chanda and Karanjit Deb who identifies himself as the Silchar city secretary of ABVP and has been equally celebratory on Facebook, have been sent questions. Both are also signatories to the police complaint. Notably, rightwing activists’ screenshots of Sengupta’s original posts are still doing the rounds on Facebook, even though the originals have been deleted. It is likely that even with Sengupta’s posts having been set to ‘public’ and the 3000-odd people who followed him on Facebook, his posts would have reached fewer people than they have reached now.

This story will be updated when Chanda and Deb reply.

Several commenters in the posts uploaded by the rightwing complainants have sought to highlight Sengupta’s Bengali roots.

Family and friends of Sengupta’s who The Wire spoke to said not only have the scholar and his family lived in Silchar all their lives, their extended family have been residents there too. Alumni of two of the universities Sengupta attended, Presidency University in Kolkata and Delhi University, have campaigned online for his early release, in addition to condemning the incident.

A former classmate of Sengupta’s at Presidency, Preetha Sarkar told The Wire that he was always politically aware but polite. “In our last year at Presidency he was the assistant general secretary of the Student Union. He stood as an independent candidate in the elections. The only other person who was contending for the post dropped out of the election because he didn’t want to ruin his friendship with Souradeep, so he got the unanimous vote. Souradeep is probably one of the least likely people who would want to hurt people of any religion,” said Sarkar, a physics scholar.

The arrest over a social media post in a BJP-ruled state is the latest in a series with precedence. In February itself, Jammu and Kashmir police arrested a Imtiyaz Ahmad Kawa from Srinagar, after he accused the armed forces of vandalism in Kupwara district of north Kashmir on Facebook.

In this month itself, a trader was arrested in Greater Noida, of Uttar Pradesh, for allegedly sharing a Facebook post deemed “offensive” against Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath.

Note: The article has been updated to remove the name of Sengupta’s relative who later asked for anonymity.

UP: Constable Sentenced to Life in Jail for Rape, Murder of Minor Girl in Police Station

Apart from Ateeq Ahmed, the court has also sentenced then deputy SP Inayat Ullah Khan to imprisonment for five years in the case.

New Delhi: A special CBI court in Lucknow has sentenced then-Uttar Pradesh police constable Ateeq Ahmed to life imprisonment for rape and murder of a teenage girl inside Nighasan police station in Lakhimpur Kheri district in 2011, officials said Friday.

The court has also sentenced then deputy SP Inayat Ullah Khan to imprisonment for five years in the case, CBI Spokesperson R.K. Gaur said, adding the special judge also imposed a fine of Rs 1 lakh on Ahmed and Rs 50,000 on Khan.

“The CBI had registered a case on December 20, 2011, on the request of the Uttar Pradesh Government and taken over the investigation of FIR No. 706/2011, earlier registered at Police Station Nighasan in Lakhimpur Kheri (Uttar Pradesh) on the allegations of rape and murder of a victim inside the police station premises,” he said.

According to the spokesperson, the chargesheet was filed against four accused but the court acquitted two.

Also read: Jharkhand: Ranchi Court Convicts 11 in Law Student Rape Case

In the judgment, the court found constable Ahmed guilty under sections 302 (murder) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence) of the Indian Penal Code.

The then circle officer, Khan, was also found guilty Section 201. Atiq was posted as the gunner of circle officer Khan. Those who have been acquitted are constables Shiv Kumar and Uma Shanker.

On June 10, 2011, the mother of a 14-year-old girl had lodged an FIR with the Nighasan police station saying that her daughter had taken a buffalo for grazing to the field and crossed the boundary of the police station into the premises.

As the girl did not return for long, the complainant went inside and found the body of her daughter hanging from a dry tree. The mother had seen injuries on the body of the girl, and it appeared that she was raped and then was hanged make it look like a suicide.

Hindutva Activists Shout ‘Death to the Traitors’ at Rajiv Chowk Metro Station

New Delhi: In a sign that there is to be no let up in the strident Hindutva campaign to polarise the national capital on the issue of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, a group of right-wing activists on Saturday took their signature call for violence – ‘Desh ke ghadaaron ko, Goli maaron saalon ko‘ – to the city’s most busy metro station, Rajiv Chowk, which lakhs of commuters use every day.

A brief video clip of the incident, which tookplace at 10:52 am,  was posted on Twitter as 12 pm.

This clip was shot by Vaibhav Saxena, a commuter, who told The Wire that he saw a group of 10-12 people wearing saffron clothes shouting the slogan inside the station. “Other commuters were shocked, and made room for them since they were scared. After some time, the security people came and took them away.”

Also in the day, a group of activists marched through the busy shopping area of Connaught Place shouting the same provocative slogan without the police restraining them.

One commuter who was witness to the shouting of slogans at the metro station but was not able to video the incident said the activists also shouted ‘Jai Shri Ram’. “There was a big crowd outside gate number 3,” he said, estimating the crowd at around 500 people. “And they were shouting ‘Desh ke ghadaaron ko, goli maaro saalon ko’ and ‘Jai Shri Ram‘. The commuter, whose identity The Wire is withholding, said a smaller number of activists also entered the station and shouted their slogans inside. “I was running late for a meeting so could not stay long,” he said.

PTI quoted DMRC officials as saying six people were detained by security staff at the station and “immediately handed over to the Delhi Metro Rail Police for further necessary action”. PTI said its reporter saw some of the activists get off a train and shout the slogans.

While the call to violence agains perceived ‘enemies’ of the country has become a street-level staple of the Hindutva groups in recent years, the slogan shot to prominence during the Bharatiya Janata Party’s campaign for the Delhi assembly elections earlier this month when Anurag Thakur, minister of state for finance in Narendra Modi’s government, publicly incited party supporters to shoot those they regard as “traitors”.

Following Thakur’s exhortation, there were at least two incidents in which gunmen opened fire on those peacefully protesting the CAA a Jamia Millia and Shaheen Bagh. And during this week’s communal riots in north-east Delhi, more than a dozen of the 42 people confirmed killed fell victim to firearms.

In a hearing before Justice S. Muralidhar, then a judge of the Delhi high court on February 26, rights activists Harsh Mander and Farah Naqvi sought the registration of an FIR, a demand the Modi government’s solicitor general Tushar Mehta strongly opposed. The police was directed by the bench to take a decision on filing FIRs against Thakur, other BJP leaders like Kapil Mishra and Parvesh Singh Verma, and any other politician, in 24 hours but the next day, the matter went before chief justice D.N. Patel, who extended the deadline by four weeks.

In an interview to Karan Thapar for The Wire, former Delhi police commissioner Ajay Raj Sharma said that had he still been in charge of the police force in the city, he would have moved to arrest Anurag Thakur despite the fact that he is a minister.

The fact that Hindutva groups have now been emboldened to raise their provocative slogan in crowded public areas is a reminder, say observers, of what the failure of the police and courts to act in a timely fashion can lead to.

Delhi Riots: Stolen in the Looting, Baby Shoes, Never Worn

In Gali number 5 of Ashok Nagar, where a mosque was burnt, residents looting a footwear shop could be seen behaving like customers — finding shoes that fit and styles they liked.

New Delhi: On Tuesday, at Ashok Nagar, a mosque was burning. A saffron coloured flag featuring the Hindu god Hanuman had been hoisted atop its minaret, with Muslim houses behind the mosque burnt. The green panes of the mosque were broken, charred, jagged edges burnt black as smoke poured out. An air conditioning unit was still on fire.

We spoke quietly to two young men close by, giving them false aliases to convince them we were Hindu, to urge them to talk. They told us that only a few Muslim families lived in that lane, and the police had helped them all to escape. (This came after the alert which pushed us to go there, which said the police had been uncooperative.) When we arrived, we could see no major police force there, despite it being an easily accessible lane not five minutes away from the main road where the police forces had been stationed. Cries of Jai Shri Ram echoed constantly in the area.

The mosque on fire in Ashok Nagar. Photo: The Wire

When we arrived, a crowd had gathered around the mosque. A fire engine arrived and began to shoot water into the mosque to douse the still burning flames. There were shops beneath the mosque, one of which was a footwear store called Magic Footwear. It was shuttered, and while we watched silently from the corner of a lane looking directly into it, a member of the mob came and broke down its door.

Shoes were neatly lined up along the walls, in pairs, on display for sale. A large desk stood at the front of the shop.

People smiled nervously at each other. These were people who lived in this neighbourhood, who were locals here. A small child ran up and stole a pair before scampering away, breaking the momentary spell of sanity and unleashing a crowd hurrying over each other to steal the shop’s shoes.

Also Read: Delhi Riots: Mosque Set on Fire in Ashok Nagar, Hanuman Flag Placed on Minaret

“Come on,” a man cried joyously, beckoning the rest of the crowd. “New shoes for everyone!”

Everyone was grinning, and the mood was one of festive celebration. The firemen watched.

Sickened, I smiled too, in fear that letting my horror would lead to being caught out.

A lady who lived just behind where we were standing, and who had been talking to us about what had happened, smiled, said “Ek minute,” and briskly walked out to take a pair of shoes. They were red. As she walked back, a man shouted toward her, “Aunty, why are you taking just one pair?”

Men stood at the entrance to the shop, throwing shoes outside. Some asked if they had the right size, and told their friends to take more pairs in case the one didn’t fit. Small children, about four or five years old, were checking the shoes the other had stolen, to see who had taken a better pair. Three or four men went up to the front of the store and pulled out the desk, throwing it into the street.

“They shouldn’t do that,” the young man standing beside us said. “Uski kya zaroorat hai. (What’s the need to do that?)” When the lady reached him, he jovially said, “Aunty, jodi toh mili na? Ek ke saath kya karoge?” (I hope you found a pair! What will you do with one shoe?)

People stand by watching as a shoe shop is looted in Ashok Nagar beneath a burning mosque. Photo: Naomi Barton

Another woman walked out and watched. She asked him if he had taken any shoes, and he swiftly said no.

We wanted to shoot a video, to have proof, but everyone there said they had been given strict instructions not to let anyone take any videos at all. To pull out our cameras was to invite a beating.

The crowd started taking shoes out from the back room, in boxes, unopened. Instead of just one pair or two, or as many as two hands could hold, they were now walking out with unopened boxes tied together with blue twine. One child, about ten, walked by with a clear plastic sack filled with what looked like children’s plastic sandals.

A fireman broke open an electronics mobile store that was beside the shoe shop, presumably in an effort to douse any interior fires going on there. In the chaos, a few people standing behind perked up – a new mobile was worth a lot more than a new pair of shoes.

We drew back, intent on finding a way to get video footage and I saw a young Hindu woman standing in the doorway of a building behind the one facing directly out into the mosque. I went up to her and asked if she could let us onto her terrace. She said no, her father had told her not to let anyone in, and not to let anyone take any videos.

I asked her for her name, in an attempt to build trust, and she said her father told her not to tell anyone her name either. (We found out her name later). After checking to see if her father was anywhere close by, she finally let us in, and took us to her terrace, from where we had a clear view of the saffron flag atop the minaret of the burnt husk of the mosque. While making conversation, she told us she was studying in college.

Quietly she said, “I don’t know why they had to burn the mosque. That’s not right.”

The level of thoughtless, violent glee that the neighbourhood was complicit in had scared her. On her terrace, we had to make sure we covered each other so that the other young men stationed atop other terraces could not see that we were shooting video.

For the residents of Gali number 5 in Ashok Nagar now, life will return to a semblance of normalcy, with a gutted mosque as the backdrop to their lives. And every now and then, they will glance down and see each other walking around with shiny, brand new shoes.

Watch | Artworks That Aestheticise Politics – Full Tour of ‘Visions in the Making’

The Wire looks at the ongoing alter-modern art exhibition at the Italian Culture Centre in Delhi

‘Visions in the Making’ is an ongoing alter-modern art exhibition at the Italian Culture Centre in Delhi. Some of the work that the exhibition features talk about the ‘aestheticization of politics’, women’s ownership of property and gender and sexuality – through the lens of six women artists from South Asia and Europe. As you enter the exhibition, everything on from the carpets to the chairs and the wall adornments are pieces of art. “They defy a certain expectation,” says Myna Mukherjee, one of the curators of the exhibition.