Days after the Citizenship Amendment Bill was passed in the parliament, with a majority vote of 125-99 in the lower house, it had inevitably been met by a nationwide disapproval which had manifested into fervent protests across the country, the waves of dissent had been felt across all the states, primarily in the North Eastern and capital region.
The Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB), was one of the inherent focal points of the Bhartiya Janata Party’s election manifesto in the 2019 general elections. The proposed bill allows citizenship to religious minorities, such as Christians, Buddhists, Sikhs, and Jains, who are facing persecution in the neighbouring countries. The criterion simply requires a person, belonging to one of the listed communities, to have entered the country before 31st December 2014, due to threats of persecution. The bill, however, blatantly marginalizes Muslims by omitting them off the list of eligible communities. Unsurprisingly, the bill, being constitutionally flawed, invited staunch criticism from political opponents as well as the common people, who were now mobilizing to exercise their right to protest.
On 15th December 2019, students of Jamia Millia Islamia College were to organize a peaceful protest march to the parliament, while the house was in session. While the protest started customarily, it culminated into a chaotic upheaval in the hours that followed; social media was flooded with reports of a disproportionately violent crackdown by the Delhi Police on the students, numerous narratives were been shuffled, videos and pictures of distraught and heavily injured students were going viral, utter chaos had gripped the capital as the nation
watched in disbelief.
The primary narrative – and the seemingly most accurate, out of the many – was that the Delhi Police – claiming to be searching for a group of ‘outsiders’, who had pelted stones at them, and had indulged in arson and vandalism; lighting buses and police vehicles on fire – had entered the Jamia campus forcefully, without permission, and had violently detained over 100 students. To do so, the police used the means of tear gas shells, and lathi charge, which many witnesses claim was unnecessary as there was no resistance by the unarmed students. According to an article published by the Quartz, the police fired tear gas shells inside the campus library and canteen and then started beating students, while hurling abuses and racist terms such as katwe. Many students were heavily injured and were still subjected to the brutal treatment and were preposterously denied medical or legal aid. The university’s Teacher’s Association and the student body, both denied any involvement in the violent altercations and vandalism that the students were accused of. Waseem Ahmed Khan, the Chief Proctor of the University, issued a statement claiming that the permission to enter the campus was not given to the police and went on to add that the students of the university were innocent.
While there are different facets of this matter that need to be tackled immediately, the gross distortion of narrative that took must be one of the crucial ones. The events that took place at Jamia college are undeniably one of the most controversial ones that we have witnessed this decade, but the confluence of communal bias, lack of timely and unadulterated media attention, political polarisation, and absence of legal supervision, exacerbated the situation beyond repair. Social media played a major role in catapulting this matter into the spotlight, but at the same time, misleading content cost the narrative its credibility. Before an accurate line of events could be established and distilled into a proper reportage, various unchecked reports on the internet gave rise to numerous conspiracy theories and accusatory conjectures which did nothing more than adding to the chaos at expense of the credibility of the victims. Stories and reports shared on social media platforms were claiming casualties without confirmation. Right-leaning posts were accusing students of burning down buses and injuring police officers, while left-leaning posts consisted of ambiguous videos, accusing police forces of having burned the vehicles themselves. People on social media, as they are accustomed to it, shared all the content without confirming the authenticity, or putting even the minimum subjective thought into it.
There is no denying that the students were treated abysmally, a treatment that is beyond condemnation in any democracy, but it is imperative to acknowledge the prospect that by sharing unauthentic content, even if one feels it is for the greater good, does more damage than good. It is these illegitimate stories and details that add up to become another petty but significant argument that the wrongdoers will hurl back at the victims, to cripple their
narrative, to eradicate the credibility which is already on the hinges.
It does not take a political scientist to notice the upcoming trends of dissent, there are going to be more protests, more students, more universities, and many other narratives, as it should be, for it is our right to protest in these times of political turmoil, and it is our moral duty, as privileged citizens, to do the bare minimum of spreading awareness, but with authenticity, in order to sustain the truth, to avoid political adulteration, and to make sure that the values of the constitution are not undermined by outdated fascist mindsets.
Aryan is an aspiring journalist and freelance content writer, who is currently studying in Jaipur.
You can find more of his work here.
Feature Image Courtesy - The Week | Aayush Goel
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