After Times Magazine granted legitimacy to Bilkis Bano, the ‘Dadi of Shaheen Bagh’, another international news organisation provided its platform to the face of the unlawful Shaheen Bagh protests to lie about the Modi government’s Citizenship Amendment Act. Bilkis Bano was featured in its list of top 100 influential people of 2020 in Times Magazine, for her role in continuing the demonstrations at Shaheen Bagh. These protests were recently termed by the Supreme Court of India as unacceptable.
DW News, a global English-language news and information channel from German public international broadcaster Deutsche Welle, used the octagenarian Bilkis as a prop to discredit the Modi government and the Citizenship Amendment Act. It recently uploaded a eulogising video about Bilkis Bano, lavishing praises on her for standing up to PM Modi opposing the CAA.
“We are staying put. We live here and we’ll die here.”
— DW News (@dwnews) October 13, 2020
For months, 82-year-old Bilkis Bano, one of Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People of 2020,” has been protesting against India’s new citizenship law that critics say discriminates against Muslims. pic.twitter.com/Yu7LQmSuXG
In the video, Bilkis Bano can be seen repeating the same lies that were cited as a premise for the violent protests that convulsed the country following the passage of the Citizenship Amendment Act by the parliament last year. Bano claimed that the Modi government’s Citizenship Amendment Act favoured the Hindus while discriminating against the Muslim population of the country.
Lies peddled by anti-CAA proponents to throw the country into chaos
One of the most pernicious lies spread about the Citizenship Amendment Act by the anti-CAA proponents is that it seeks to disenfranchise the Muslims in India. The Citizenship Amendment Bill has nothing to do with Indian citizens, Muslim or otherwise, as it seeks to grant citizenship to persecuted religious minorities in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. People belonging to Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, Sikhs, Parsi or Christian communities from these three countries who have come to India before 2014 for religious persecution and already living in India will be able to apply for citizenship. No Indian citizen will be asked to produce any document to prove citizenship after the CAB is passed, it is just false propaganda being spread by some people.
Further, it only fast-tracks their citizenship process. People from other religion from these countries, including Muslims, as well as other people from other countries seeking Indian citizenship will continue to get one under the due procedure.
The lie that the Citizenship Amendment Act would strip Indian Muslims of their citizenship has been perpetuated by individuals harbouring unmitigated hatred for PM Modi and the BJP government. It has been used as a rallying cry by the detractors to disingenuously incite fear among the Muslims against the Modi government and engineer a nationwide movement against it. Large-scale protests were witnessed in the aftermath of the enactment of the CAA, where the demonstrations carried out under the guise of peaceful protests, saw widespread acts of arson, stone-pelting and vandalism.
The violent protests against the CAA culminated into one of the deadliest riots that the country’s national has witnessed in recent times. Scores of Muslim mobs, armed with weapons, ran riot in different parts of the northeast Delhi in February this year. The riots were a part of a pre-planned conspiracy and the role of former AAP councillor Tahir Hussain in hatching a conspiracy to stoke riots had come to fore in the investigations that ensued following the riots.
Shaheen Bagh protests
The anti-CAA detractors had launched a multi-prong attack against the government, to pressurise them into repealing the Act. Besides riots and violent protests, one of the busiest thoroughfares of Delhi was captured and squatted on by the protesters, causing grave inconvenience to the passersby and the daily commuters. The Shaheen Bagh protests soon turned into an independent enclave where journalists who did not subscribe to the lies fashioned out by the protesters and who sought to expose the hollowness of their cause were heckled and treated with great hostility.
The anti-CAA protests, especially at Shaheen Bagh, which began as a peaceful protest crossed all the boundaries as it turned out to be another typical left-wing managed anti-India event. Eventually, the Shaheen Bagh protest site had provided fodder and a shield for violent rioters who had, in February, targeted Hindus and gone on a rampage burning the capital, timing the bloodbath with US President Trump’s visit to Delhi.
Following the failure of violent protests perpetrated by the mobs led by Muslim men on the streets of Delhi and Jamia Millia Islamia University, few women belonging to Muslim community sat on a protest at Shaheen Bagh, blocked a bus stop and a highway causing severe problems to the public of Delhi.
Shaheen Bagh protests, which were initially passed off as an organic protest in a bid to ‘save the constitution’ began to turn into a blatantly communal event. It was earlier reported that the mobs led by Muslim men had shouted pro-Pakistan and Hinduphobic slogans like “Jinnah Wali Azadi”, demanding another partition of the country.
