Silence of the Calves

The list of questionable silences that the McGill Indian Students Association (ISA) has maintained is not limited to its recent reticence to speak openly of the widespread attacks on university students on campuses throughout India. Forget about statements on the Indian occupation of Kashmir, which intensified in August 2019, and has shown no signs of diminishing in terms of its sheer inhumanity, or other recent brutalities, like the murder of several prominent educators, activists, and journalists, or the widespread physical violence against, and murders of, Dalit and Muslim people by upper-caste Hindus, because the former were “accused of possessing beef,” and cows are “sacred” to the latter.

The ISA paints itself as a “cultural organization” and has been consistently “apolitical;” a stance which, frankly speaking, is a piece of fiction. There is such a thing as history, and recognizing its twists and turns is the only way in which culture can properly be understood. In other words, to champion culture without paying heed to what this culture does, or where it comes from (i.e. its historical grounds), is what leads to questionable takes that span a spectrum that would include enjoying Ezra Pound’s poetry to appreciating works like The Birth of a Nation (1915). So the ISA’s recent failure to understand how our cultural and political practices over the last few years led to the current impasse over the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) is strikingly political. An apolitical subject, honestly, would’ve spoken out at this point. Simply put, the CAA relaxes older grounds for claiming Indian citizenship, and amends the definition of “illegal immigrant” for people coming to India from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. Migrants from these countries who have resided in India from before December 31, 2014 and who claim Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Parsi, Jain, or Christian identity, are no longer considered “illegal” (undocumented) under the law. Such a law explicitly excludes Muslims from these three countries seeking similar refuge in India, including Ahmadiyya Muslims from Pakistan or Muslims from other neighbouring countries, such as the Rohingyas from Myanmar, who may be seeking asylum. The NRC is simply a “register” which contains the details and identities of those considered “legitimate citizens” of India. The government’s implementation of an NRC would require all Indians to prove their citizenship. If a resident possesses such paperwork, they are put in the NRC. However, if they don’t have this paperwork, two things can happen depending on their religious identity. If you belong to a religious community mentioned in the CAA, you will simply be a resident, but if you are a Muslim person who cannot furnish paperwork for the NRC, you will also not be able to claim residence rights under the CAA, and will be placed under direct government power, as has been the objective behind the construction of detention centres for such “illegal immigrants” across the country.

The ISA paints itself as a “cultural organization” and has been consistently “apolitical;” a stance which, frankly speaking, is a piece of fiction.

The ISA has failed Indian students on campus by not depicting their interests fairly. The rhetoric of reticence with which they open their, till now, sole statement on the protests, and the manner in which they equate fascist violence with anti- fascist demonstrations that are largely peaceful, are remarkably familiar, borrowed as they are from the mannerisms and style of global far-right leaders. Watch the Indian Prime Minister’s speech from December 21, 2019, and you’ll see how he couches his remarks on the NRC; first through oblique references, then, reluctantly, until finally, in a seeming overflow of emotion, he denounces the people protesting against this law.

I will refrain from detailing what the NRC and the CAA are, because that is not my point of contention, although I do unequivocally believe in opposing them. Suffice it to say that the two laws, built on their premise of documentation, will debar several groups of people that simply don’t have access to the bureaucratic centres from which such paperwork can be procured as proof of citizenship. Such communities include, apart from India’s Muslim community, the Dalit community (the Supreme Court of India is currently restructuring laws to tamper with affirmative action programmes built to support them), the trans community (the government also recently passed a Trans Rights Bill that ends up limiting their autonomy). The problem of procuring documents is also, of course, a class-based problem and all sections of society do not have the material means to do so. I simply believe that the Indian Students’ Association should speak out about police and government violence against young people, many of them students, who are raising their voices to protest the laws of an unjust, violent, casteist, and capitalist government. Suffice it to say that in my view, these laws are nothing more than the Indian manifestation of a global spirit whose other faces include the Bolsonaro government’s actions against Indigenous peoples in Brazil, the ICE detention centres in the United States of America, and more recently, the Canadian government’s imperialist actions on unceded Wet’suwet’en territory, to name the most immediate instances.

The ISA has failed the Indian students on campus by not depicting their interests fairly. The rhetoric of reticence with which they open their, till now, sole statement on the protests, and the manner in which they equate fascist violence with anti-fascist demonstrations that are largely peaceful, are remarkably familiar, borrowed as they are from the mannerisms and style of global far-right leaders.