The arrest of young Dalit leader and Independent MLA Jignesh Mewani in Gujarat by the Assam Police and his airlifting to Guwahati showed how the dirty tricks department of the political establishment worked overtime to achieve its hidden aims. A team of the Assam Police flew in post haste to Gujarat and headed for a circuit house where the MLA was staying to effect the arrest. All these happened within a matter of a day after an Assam BJP activist filed a police complaint in Kokrajhar, saying Mewani had, through a social media post, attempted to disturb communal peace. The allegation is far-fetched and the speed with which the police acted on it obviously meant there was pressure and even a plot at the highest level to immobilize the young Gujarat politician.
What Mewani stated in his post was that Prime Minister Modi seemed to look at Godse – killer of Mahatma Gandhi – as God; and that the PM should instead try restoring religious and communal amity. Considering the manner in which netizens make free-wheeling observations on social media, this was no provocation. For the common eye, the plot to jail Mewani was not the brainwork of the BJP activist in Assam but he might have acted as a pawn in the hands of someone at the highest level. The context is important. Gujarat will have assembly polls in the next few months; and anti-BJP forces are already making serious attempts at dislodging the BJP from power there. The Congress is hoping to have Mewani on its side while the AAP of Arvind Kejriwal is entering the poll fray there. New alliances are attempted against the BJP. This is making the saffron party jittery. Keeping the influential Dalit leader with a large fan following away from the state for the coming months should help the BJP. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has said, rightly, that truth cannot be jailed. Truth, though, can be covered for some time — as the Gujarat government did on Thursday when it erected large curtains to hide the slums in Ahmedabad before British PM Boris Johnson passed by.
Several human rights activists who spoke up for truth in Gujarat are having a hard time, facing a series of cases and threats to their lives after PM Modi took power in Delhi. Their passports have been impounded and there have been complaints of mental harassment. It is advisable that the BJP as the main political establishment and its governments stand on a moral high ground and avoid indulging in excesses and rights violations.
