A Time to Kill
By: Paul S. Mudahar
Tags: Sikh, Punjab, India, Caa Protest, Muslim

Part II: Violence in Delhi (2020)

The “Doubtful Citizen”

Fast forward to December 11, 2019, when the central government passed the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). The CAA was the final step in a series of policies with the power to disenfranchise millions of Indian Muslims — leaving them stateless and at risk of deportation.

The CAA was enacted after the National Register of Citizens (NRC), which is essentially a list of Indian citizens. And if someone is not on that list, then the CAA fast tracks citizenship — but only for people of the Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, Christian, Parsi, or Sikh faiths. Muslims are conspicuously missing from the list.¹²

This practice of disenfranchisement was already in place in Assam, a state in northeastern India. A statewide NRC for Assam gave government officials arbitrary powers to label individuals as “doubtful citizens.” Muslims who are unable to prove citizenship are destined for one of the multiple detention centers in the state.¹³

It was this framework of policies that launched a series of protests around India, the most extraordinary of which was the Shaheen Bagh protest. Without the planning and sophistication of other organized protests, it started when a handful of women sat down in the middle of a major roadway and blocked traffic in the Shaheen Bagh neighborhood of southeast Delhi.¹⁴

Grandmothers, with children in their laps and daughters by their side, sat with an unwavering resilience. Day and night, they sat through one of the harshest winters in the last 100 years. This handful of protesters swelled into thousands, as women continued to join with every passing day.

Lacking the powers of wealth and influence, these protesting women looked for any way to become visible to a society that was prepared to look past them. They blocked the roads and slept on the unforgiving pavement to try and protect their identities, families, and homes. These women stood, in strength and solidarity, as the last line of defense.

Bilkis Dadi (center) at Shaheen Bagh protest. (PTI)

One of these women was 82-year-old Bilkis Dadi, who became the face of the Shaheen Bagh protest. In discussing the role women played in the protest, Dadi remarked,¹⁵

Women should feel empowered to step out of their homes and raise their voice, especially against injustice. If they don’t leave their homes, how will they showcase their strength?

Bilkis Dadi inspired women all across the country “to step out of their homes and raise their voice.” One such example was in the poor neighborhoods of Yamuna Paar.

Expendable

Yamuna Paar comprises a collection of neighborhoods like Jaffrabad, Seelampur, and Maujpur just beyond the Yamuna River in northeast Delhi. It has the highest population density in the city and also the most abject living conditions.¹⁶ Some areas could be categorized as slums, others as simply poor. It would not be uncommon for a Delhi resident to never venture past the river and into the reality of Yamuna Paar.

In these neighborhoods live not only the highest concentration of Muslims in Delhi, but also a large number of Bajrang Dal members.¹⁷ Bajrang Dal is a militant Hindu nationalist organization with strong connections to similar right-wing organizations like the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), and BJP. The Bajrang Dal is notorious for their propensity for violence and most recently caused mayhem this year when they protested Valentine’s Day as a threat to Indian culture.

With the river serving as a protective barrier for the rest of Delhi, it is no surprise that this combination of people and circumstances has resulted in violence — sometimes spontaneous, other times strategic — in the past. The poor neighborhoods of Yamuna Paar are the perfect powder keg for India’s communal strife.

And it was in these “expendable” neighborhoods that over 500 women, inspired by the Shaheen Bagh protest, began a sit-in to block traffic in protest of the CAA.¹⁸

Kapil the Chemist

Anti-CAA protestors in Jaffrabad neighborhood of Yamuna Paar PC: unknown

The women of Yamuna Paar began their sit-in on February 22, and President Trump was scheduled to land on February 24. Sandwiched between these two events on February 23, a low-level BJP operative named Kapil Mishra convened a pro-CAA rally just down the street from the women’s anti-CAA sit-in.

In a speech he delivered while standing next to a Police official, Mishra gave a public ultimatum to clear the women’s protest from the street within three days or he and his supporters would “hit the streets.” He stated they would stay peaceful for the duration of President Trump’s visit to India but could promise nothing after the visit if the protestors were not cleared.¹⁹

Mishra delivering a speech demanding the streets be cleared of anti-CAA protest or he would clear them.

On the surface, holding one peaceful protest to counter another seems reasonable. However, the planning and build-up of Mishra’s counter protest were suspicious. Mishra gathered hundreds of members of nationalist Hindu organizations across the street from their opposition and riled them up with speeches about vigilante justice. Given the context, it seems highly unreasonable to have any expectation of peace, especially with the implicit backing of Delhi Police.

Mishra combined this combustible mix of people, created the optimal conditions for violence, and walked away. As he did, a witness overheard him talking to people in the crowd and saying²⁰–

Yahi sahi mauka hai. Isse bhuna lo. Ab chook gaye to dubaara mauka nahi milega.

This is the right time. Exploit it. If you miss it, you won’t get ano­ther ­opportunity.

A History of Violence

Prime Minister Modi chose Gujarat as President Trump’s first stop before going on to Agra and Delhi. Gujarat was where Modi began his rise to power, and it was also Gujarat that was home to India’s last major incident of communal violence in 2002, when mobs of militant Hindus brutally killed Muslims for several months.

Eyewitness accounts depict especially brutal descriptions of gang rape, the mutilation of pregnant women, and children set afire.²¹ The mobs, aided by voter registration lists and the complicity of police forces, continued the massacre under the newly appointed chief minister of the Gujarat state — Narendra Modi.²²

PM Modi welcoming President Trump in Gujarat. (Mandel Ngan/AFP)

Eighteen years later, Chief Minister Modi had become Prime Minister Modi. And on February 24, he welcomed the visiting President Trump to India at a packed cricket stadium in Gujarat. Standing just miles from where thousands were hacked to death in 2002, Trump praised Modi for “being tough” and India for how it “embraces freedom, liberty, individual rights, the rule of law, and the dignity of every human being.”²³

The violence in Yamuna Paar had already started the night before on February 23. When Mishra left his rally, tractors filled with stones and bricks arrived, providing an arsenal for the riled-up mob.²⁴ By the morning of February 24, the day Trump arrived, the stone throwing had transitioned to killing and destruction.²⁵

The violence in Delhi continued throughout the President’s visit. As Trump visited the Taj Mahal, Muslims were beaten and burned in the streets, their dead bodies thrown into sewage drains. As he held a business roundtable in New Delhi, Muslim shops, mosques, and schools were looted and set afire. As Trump praised Modi for his stance on religious freedom, ambulances were blocked from the wounded, and others were left dying in unequipped hospitals.

“The city is burning”

In an attempt to force police action and stop the ongoing violence, human rights lawyers filed an inquiry with the Delhi High Court. On February 26, Justices Muralidhar and Talwant Singh were scheduled to hear the inquiry.

Justice Muralidhar is a known figure in progressive circles. He had previously decriminalized homosexuality and given Congress leader Sajjan Kumar a life sentence for his role in the 1984 anti-Sikh pogroms. If there was any hope that the judicial system would work as a check against police inaction, he was it.

Justice Muralidhar

At the inquiry, Justice Muralidhar questioned the Delhi Police about why they had yet to file cases against BJP politicians for the hate speeches that instigated the violence in the first place. Furious at their responses, he gave them 24 hours to make a “conscious decision” regarding their next steps and ordered them to take a more active role in stopping the violence and providing aid to the victims. “The city is burning,” he told police officials and warned that “we can’t let another 1984 happen,” in reference to the anti-Sikh pogroms of 1984.²⁶

However, Delhi Police was never forced to make that “conscious decision” because, close to midnight that night, Justice Muralidhar was informed by the central government that he was being transferred from the Delhi High Court to the Punjab and Haryana High Court.²⁷

The transfer had been recommended by the Supreme Court Collegium a few weeks earlier, but the decision to act on that recommendation and transfer Muralidhar in the middle of the night — effective immediately — just hours after he had reprimanded Delhi police officials, indicated a nefarious and underlying agenda.

The violence in Yamuna Paar continued.

Eat, Pray, Hate

The final death count from that week is estimated at 53, with hundreds more injured. But the statistics cannot tell the full story of the hate that filled those streets that week.²⁸

Mohammad Zubair was surrounded and ruthlessly beaten in broad daylight by a mob of young Hindu men. As they yelled slogans of victory and glory to God Ram, he curled up into a ball. He survived.²⁹

A mob chanting pro-Hindu slogans, beat Mohammad Zubair, 37, who is Muslim. PC: Reuters/Danish Siddiqui

Imran Khan was beaten by the mob with iron rods and metal pipes until he was unconscious. Thinking he was dead, the mob tied a rope around his neck and he was dragged into a gutter.³⁰

Thirty-year-old Musharraf was dragged out of his house and into the street. They beat him, even as his 11-year-old daughter Kushi fell to the mob’s feet and begged them to stop. They killed him and threw his body in the gutter.³¹

An unidentified body fished out of a drain in Khajuri Khas on Feb 26. (PC: unknown)

And on and on. Twenty-eight-year-old Mehtab Khan left his home to buy milk. His body was beaten and set on fire.³² All that remains of fifty-eight-year-old Anwer Qassar’s is a charred leg, who was shot and set on fire. Gulshan, Qassar’s daughter, had to get a DNA test to confirm whether the burnt and unidentifiable body was actually her father’s.³³

The Delhi Minorities Commission reported that the violence was “one sided and well planned.”³⁴ Eyewitness accounts support that finding. Abdul Kalam, who fled the area on the second night, described how “over 1000” men arrived in trucks.³⁵

Most of them wore helmets to hide their identity and shield their heads from possible stone attacks…apart from being armed with pistols, iron rods, crow bars, hammers, and other heavy tools, the attackers carried gas cylinders, big jerry cans of acid and petrol.

The Politics of a Public Lynching

There is no doubt that the violence could have been stopped quickly. Aside from the fact that Delhi already has a massive police and military presence, the city further prepared for President Trump’s visit with an unprecedented increase in security. Police personnel from six districts with nearly 40 companies of the Central Armed Police Forces were called in, as well as deployments of Army, paramilitary forces, an anti-drone detachment, snipers, and elite SWAT commandos.³⁶

And yet, when Mishra and his band of agitators began looting and murdering Muslims down the street from the Presidential festivities, the state refused to step in.

This violence was not random and chaotic; it was methodical and strategic. And the most shocking aspect of it was the audacity and arrogance to perpetrate the violence, and the local and auxiliary police merely stood by, all while the entire world watched. This did not happen behind closed doors or in some dark corner of the country. The media was not shut down or forced to leave.

Rather, it was the opposite. It happened when the world’s cameras were firmly fixed on the capital, with reporters staying in the city’s hotels and bearing witness to this morbid Trumpian reality show.

In fact, that seems to have been the whole point of it. Following big election wins in 2019, Prime Minister Modi was arguably one of the most powerful prime ministers in India’s history. Similar to President Trump, he had created an odd coalition between the capitalistic elite and extremists who fear cultural and religious obscurity.

With that abundance of political capital in hand, his administration moved quickly to remove Kashmir’s autonomous status and begin the process of delegitimizing Muslim citizenship. No Prime Minister since Indira Gandhi has wielded the same power and resources to even attempt such actions.

And now, with the ideologically similar President Trump as his guest, Prime Minister Modi allowed the mob to unleash on the Muslim population with impunity — all while we watched from home. He flaunted his power, with no rebuke from the American President. In fact, President Trump’s continued praise seemed to make the carnage permissible.

It was a purposeful, public show meant for the cameras. It was a reminder to India’s Muslims that things could get much worse, and a message to the world that the hegemony of the Hindu culture and religion is no longer some agenda hidden behind the veil of secularism, but a national identity.