# Tukde Tukde Gang

Tukde Tukde Gang is a pejorative political catchphrase used in Indian political media for groups allegedly supporting sedition and secessionism. Whereas the words tukde-tukde refer to "breaking or cutting something into small fragments", the phrase "tukde tukde gang" can be translated as "a gang that wants to divide the country". The phrase is also used in contemporary Indian politics to refer to groups that believe India is better if broken into smaller nation states.

## Usage

Sudhir Chaudhary, the ex-editor-in-chief of Zee news (currently Consulting Editor of Aaj Tak), took credit for coining the term. According to him, it was targeted at "designer journalists", and "English-speaking page 3 celebrities" who allegedly "sympathise with terrorists" and "malign the judicial system". Shivam Vij, the contributing editor of ThePrint, credited Republic TV's Arnab Goswami for having popularised the term as a device to club together all the Leftist critics of the government as anti-nationals who allegedly wanted to see India broken to pieces.
The term was popularised during the 2016 JNU sedition row. Then it was used to brand the left-leaning students of the Jawaharlal Nehru University that protested the hanging of Afzal Guru, who was a convicted terrorist. In a cellphone video that emerged after the protests, some protesters were heard shouting slogans such as "Bharat tere tukde honge....Insha Allah. Insha Allah" (India, you'll be divided into pieces...if god wills, god wills) and "Aur Bharat ki barbaadi tak jung rahegi, jung rahegi" (The fight will continue until the destruction of India) which was later alleged to be "Bhartiya Court Zindabad" (long live the Indian Courts) raised by counter protesting ABVP members. Some students, including Kanhaiya Kumar and Umar Khalid, were arrested under charges of sedition and later released on bail for six months.
Since then, numerous senior members of the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) have used the phrase multiple times, including the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, former Law and Justice Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and MoS External Affairs S. Jaishankar. In December 2019, Shah, while addressing a gathering in Delhi, claimed that people protesting the recent Citizenship Amendment act belong to the "tukde tukde gang" and that they needed to be punished. In a February 2022 speech to parliament, Modi stated that Indian National Congress was the leader of Tukde Tukde Gang and had been practicing a divide and rule policy.

## Criticism

An RTI request was filed in the Ministry of Home Affairs headed by Amit Shah, querying the particulars of the "tukde tukde gang" and whether it was banned under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). In its reply on 20 January 2020, the Ministry said it had "no information concerning tukde-tukde gang." Yashwant Sinha, former Minister of Finance and External Affairs under PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee said, the real tukde-tukde gang is the one who are in the BJP indicating to Modi and Shah. Historian Ramachandra Guha said the real tukde-tukde gang are those, who are sitting in Delhi who want to divide the country on the basis of religion and languages while he was detained by police during CAA-NRC protest. P. Chidambaram, the former Minister of Finance under PM Manmohan Singh, said that the "real tukde tukde gang" is the ruling party which is determined to divide the country on religious lines. He criticised the comment of Ravi Shankar Prasad, the former Law Minister of India, for calling protesters as a part of tukde tukde gang. Talking to the National Herald (India), Kanhaiya Kumar, on whom the BJP government registered a seditious case, said that it's been using, the imaginary “tukde tukde gang” to deflect public attention from the real issues of unemployment, economy and education.