ANTI-CAA MOVEMENT CAN FORM THE CORE OF OPPOSITION UNITY
By Nitya Chakraborty
Only six months have passed since the formation of the Modi.2 Government at the centre .There was no usual honeymoon period for this Government as despite the massive win by the BJP led NDA, the general mood in the country among the common people was sullen because of the intensity of the economic crisis due to slowdown and job losses. Now along with the failure on the economic front, the Narendra Modi Government monitored by the BJP president Home Minister Amit Shah has brought about a sea change in the mood of the nation by leading the major parts of the country into acute political turmoil through their hurriedly passed Citizens Amendment Bill in Parliament which has now been made into an Act.
The template of the nation has totally changed and in the last seven days since the enactment, different states are burning and the most aggressive has been the participation of the students in both Assam, North East as also the universities in other states including Jamia Milia Islamia in Delhi, AMU in Uttar Pradesh and many other universities and IITs and IIMs in various parts of the country. The Opposition parties led by Sonia Gandhi appealed to the President to take action for non implementation of the Act while the leading writer Arundhati Roy called the need for an all out second Independence Movement to save the country and the nation from the savage attacks by the ruling government against the Constitution and the Indian ethos.
There has been an unprecedented unity of the opposition parties, the students and the civil society and there is complete agreement that the BJP leadership is hell bent to take India towards a Hindu Rashtra and there will not be any backtracking on their part unless the opposition and the forces wedded to a secular India, force them through their movements strength to change their plans. This is a stupendous task for the opposition but not fully impossible.
The moot question is the unity which has been achieved so far, has to be sustained and expanded. The Shiv Sena chief minister of Maharashtra Uddhav Thackerey has called the police attack on Jamia students like Jallianwala Bagh. He has distanced himself from BJP’s Hindutva position. He has to be cultivated by the Congress and the NCP to take a hardened anti-BJP position. In Bihar, Nitish Kumar is changing finally. In North East, the BJP friendly parties have revolted. All these developments have to be coordinated to culminate in a pan India movement for saving democracy and Constitution.
At the state level, the Chief Ministers have to take action. Mamata Banerjee of West Bengal has already taken the, lead in declaring that West Bengal will not implement CAA in the state. She has been followed by many other states like Kerala, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and now Bihar. The North Eastern states governments also might oppose the implementation of the CAA. The task becomes easier if the Supreme Court strikes down the Act due to its anti-Constitutional features. But the apex court has postponed the hearing till January 22 and it is not clear what action the Supreme Court will finally take. The anti-CAA movement has to continue in a peaceful manner and its full impact should be felt when the Parliament session starts in the third week of January.
The fact is that the Modi-Shah duo are implementing the BJP’s election agenda and the massive mandate in the 2019 elections, has emboldened them to go the whole hog to maintain the time table for the setting up of Hindu Rashtra. They are committed to their core constituency and they are proceeding accordingly. That is why when the entire country is agitated over the CAA and the economy is downhill, Amit Shah says that the Ram temple in Ayodhya will start in next four months and it will be a huge structure. The BJP leadership are following their agenda and the opposition cannot just do its duty by criticising that. The BJP wields power through mandate and only by reversing that, the opposition can defeat the BJP agenda.
That is why the coming assembly elections are important and the anti- BJP forces have to see that the BJP is weakened further at state level after Maharashtra. The Jharkhand assembly results will be out on December 23 and this will be followed by elections in Delhi in February next year and in Bihar soon after. All the three elections are very crucial in fighting BJP agenda. If BJP can be defeated, especially in Bihar, the task of the opposition become easier and the battle against the BJP agenda, can get further boost.(IPA Service