The anti-CAA protests at Shaheen Bagh have been largely touted as ‘Gandhian’ style ‘satyagrah’ by Muslims against giving citizenship to persecuted minorities from neighbouring Islamic nations and also the yet-to-be-implemented NRC. The protest at Shaheen Bagh has been ongoing for the past 33-days but now, journalists who have been so far peddling the virtues of this protest, have started laying the groundwork for a ‘tactical retreat’.
Veteran propagandist, who has so far been hailing Shaheen Bagh protestors and has even managed to keep quiet at the blatant Islamist nature of these “protests” and the riots the preceded it, took to Twitter to rue the ‘political nature’ the protests have taken.
I was at Shaheen Baug when the protests began a month ago; then, I was impressed with the genuine spontaneity of the protests, esp against police action inside Jamia; now, I fear with Delhi elections approaching,netas are slowly taking over. Guess who benefits from polarisation?
— Rajdeep Sardesai (@sardesairajdeep) January 16, 2020
He said that a month ago, he was impressed by the so-called ‘spontaneity’ of the Shaheen Bagh protests, however, now he is afraid that with Delhi elections approaching, politicals are taking the protest over.
Another propagandist, co-founder of Leftist rag The Wire too took to Twitter to talk about a tactical retreat.
Shaheen Bagh is a hugely successful Gandhian satyagraha-type protest. It showed remarkable stamina and resilience all these weeks .But it must also learn another essential Gandhian method- when to tactically withdraw an agitation only to re launch at another opportune moment!
— M K Venu (@mkvenu1) 16 January 2020
MK Venu said that the Shaheen Bagh protests are ‘hugely successful’ Gandhian satyagraha-type protest, however, another essential Gandhian method is to tactically withdraw and then relaunch at another opportune time.
After weeks of shielding even Islamist mobs running riots, one has to wonder why Rajdeep Sardrsai and MK Venu are, in almost a coordinated manner, laying the groundwork for a tactical retreat of Shaheen Bagh protests by Muslims.
Blatantly Islamist, the anti-Hindu constitution of protests exposed
One of the possible reasons for a tactical retreat being planned is the manner in which the Islamist nature of the protests have been thoroughly exposed, even if the Islamist mobs running riots was not enough.
When Islamist mobs ran riots in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, West Bengal and other parts of the country after CAA was passed by the parliament, the journalists simply chose to look away and hope that the their silence would keep people uninformed about the deeply communal violence being unleashed by Muslims.
Then, when police took action against these rioters from various places in the country, including colleges like Aligarh Muslim University and Jamia Millia Islamia, the narrative shifted to blaming the police for doing their job. The riots were brushed under the carpet and violence given the colour of ‘peaceful protests and dissent by oppressed Muslims’.
After all of that failed to build the narrative in their favour, the Shaheen Bagh protests were launched and nurtured. However, even the Shaheen Bagh protests could not keep up the pretence of ‘secularism’ for too long.
Read: Anti-CAA riots: ‘Liberals’ brought back the ‘urban riot’, but Yogi Adityanath might have a solution
Soon, we heard slogans like ‘Jinnah Wali Azadi’ resonating from Shaheen Bagh. The call for the division of India and a separate land for Muslims (what ‘Jinnah wali Azadi’ would mean) had many scampering to redeem the legitimacy of the protests. Thereafter, Indian flags were raised and multi-religion ‘pooja’ was conducted where images of Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus praying were made viral.
The charade would have been believable, but alas, the Hinduphobia could not be hidden for too long. Soon, a deeply Islamist poster emerged from Shaheen Bagh where the Hindu Swastika lay shattered and Hindu women were seen wearing the Burkha.
The desperation to redeem the protests were such, that self-proclaimed fact-checking website, AltNews, even did a shoddy hit job proclaiming that the Swastika in the poster was indeed the Nazi hooked cross. They were wrong, of course, but they did try to water down the Islamist nature of the protest.
Amidst chants of La Illaha Illallah, it has become increasingly difficult to convince the average population that these “protests” that started with rioting Muslim mobs and ended with the Swastika being smashed are not the groundwork for Khilafat 2.0 and deeply anti-Hindu in nature.
Given how the deeply Hinduphobic and Islamist nature of these protests have been exposed, it would only make sense for propagandists to suggest that these protestors ‘tactfully’ withdraw, for now, hoping, that once the memory of these Islamist images and slogans fade away, they can relaunch later, to target the government and lay the groundwork for Khilafat 2.0 again.
Delhi elections
The Delhi elections are upon us. The Delhi Legislative Elections are to be held on 8th February and the counting is to be done on 11th February 2020. Historically, we have seen how such violent and lie-ridden campaigns have born and died with the electoral cycle. We saw the pattern repeat over and over again, whether it was the Rafale saga pre-2019 or the propaganda about Church attacks, Lynchistan, Not In My Name protests, Beef eating or even the Jai Shree Ram fake lynchings.
Perhaps the anti-CAA riots by Muslim mobs and the subsequent protests at Shaheen Bagh have done their job and once the Delhi elections conclude, the utility of chaos would be over temporarily only to be relaunched at a later date, right before another electoral cycle.
It must be remembered here that several Congress and AAP functionaries have been booked for the anti-CAA riots.
In fact, AAP MLA Amanatullah Khan was one of the people booked for inciting violence in Delhi.
Read: AAP MLA Amanatullah Khan spotted leading the protests which turned violent in Delhi: Reports
It is also pertinent to note that Aam Aadmi Party led by Arvind Kejriwal on Tuesday gave a ticket to Abdul Rehman to contest from New Delhi’s Seelampur constituency in upcoming elections. Rehman, along with ex-Congress MLA Mateen Ahmed, has been named in an FIR by Delhi Police for ‘provoking the crowd’ to join the protests.
According to the FIR, a crowd had gathered at Seelampur T-point and had started pelting stones and throwing petrol bottles at police. At around 2:30 PM, an uncontrolled mob marched toward Jafrabad Police Station and Rahman had allegedly provoked people from nearby streets to join the mob. Rehman is currently East Delhi Councillor.
Read: Delhi elections: AAP leader Abdul Rehman, an accused in anti-CAA riots, to contest from Seelampur
In December 2019, a rioting crowd in Delhi’s Seelampur set a school bus on fire and also resorted to beating up policemen. A Police post was also set on fire by the mob along with police and private motorcycles. Drone cameras were brought in to assess the rioters. The mob reportedly taunted the policemen to run after them following which they pelted stones at them.
One has to wonder if the electoral cycle coming to an end is one of the reasons why the ideological backbones of Islamists are now trying to lay the groundwork for a tactical retreat.
Considering Citizenship Amendment Act has already come into effect with the Modi-Shah duo disregarding the rioting mobs, the aim of the protests were clearly far more than just the legislation and one of the key ingredients was to ensure that the protests come off as ‘secular’. With that mask slipping off, one can expect the protests to die down for now, and resurface, with a different packaging.
