Aap chronology samajhiye!

The Indian electoral system is back in the news because of the controversy surrounding the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), where critics claim that nearly 150 million voters could be omitted from the national electoral rolls. Former Indian Chief Election Commissioner SY Qureshi has called it a scam. Political activist and psephologist Yogendra Yadav sees it as a backdoor attempt to impose a National Register of Citizens (NRC). What is the NRC? I will explain what that is and how it fits into the BJP's politics. And how it is linked to the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB), now an act (CAA). It all began in Assam, where the record of citizenship dated back to 1951. A major change came in 2013. To understand the court case that triggered this immense change, one must understand the predatory political mood in the country at the time. The Manmohan Singh-led UPA government was completing a decade in power, and India was globally on the rise. This is the moment when a country's elite feel they no longer need procedural cover to seize power. Anna Hazare's 2011 movement had already fatally weakened the UPA government. The RSS and assorted billionaires were out for the kill and making their role plain. Sangh figures, including KN Govindacharya and later Bhaiyyaji Joshi, admitted that RSS ground cadres, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) workers and affiliated networks had provided the logistical muscle, crowd mobilisation and stage management for both Hazare's Ramlila Maidan protests and Baba Ramdev's anti-black-money campaign. In April 2012, Subrata Roy, promoter of the now defunct but then very powerful Sahara Group, began nudging India in a nativist, Hindutva direction. By January 2013, Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani had publicly endorsed Modi as India's future leader. Indian bureaucracy, from the CAG to the CBI, was on the prowl, and this effort was overseen by the judiciary. The media used everything it had to hurt the Singh government. Hence my use of the phrase predatory political culture. Amid all this, a subtle but sinister sleight of hand occurred at the Supreme Court. A 2009 petition by Assam Public Works (APW), a subnationalist NGO, was brought up, heard and accepted. The petition alleged the presence of illegal immigrants and foreigners on the electoral rolls in Assam. That phrase was a dog whistle for alleged Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh, or in real terms, Muslims in the state. Thus began the witch hunt supervised by puisne judges Ranjan Gogoi and RF Nariman. When Gogoi, himself from Assam, became Chief Justice, pressure mounted on him to conclude the NRC. To cure him of any foot-dragging, a sexual harassment scandal targeting him conveniently appeared, then disappeared, in the intervening period. Gogoi gave up all semblance of agency after that, and as a reward for being a good boy, he was given a Rajya Sabha seat upon retirement. The final Assam NRC list was published on 31 August 2019. It left some 1.9 million residents in stateless limbo. But here is the sleight of hand: by demanding proof of birth or citizenship, the NRC inverted the relationship with the citizen. One was not a citizen until proven otherwise. The poor and the uneducated hardly maintain birth records. According to 2023-24 Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) macrodata issued by India's Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, 82 per cent of Muslims of working age, out of a 200 million strong population, are in the informal sector, surviving strictly on self-employment (street vending or micro-enterprises) or casual, daily-wage labour. Who has the time to keep those records? Enter the CAA debate. An amendment to the 1955 Citizenship Act was passed in December 2019, offering an accelerated pathway to Indian citizenship for six religious minorities, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians, who arrived from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan on or before 31 December 2014. It pointedly excludes Muslims. Now if a poor citizen in the NRC cannot prove their nationality, they can be recognised as a citizen on the CAA basis. But Muslims among them will not be afforded that luxury. Now recall what Amit Shah said in the Lok Sabha in April 2019: "Aap chronology samajhiye" (Understand the chronology). "First, we will bring the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB), and after that we will bring the National Register of Citizens (NRC). And the NRC will not only be for Bengal but for the entire country." The plan is clear. In case you are wondering whence came the impulse to disenfranchise such a large segment of the population, here is a direct quote from the RSS's second chief, MS Golwalkar, from We or Our Nationhood Defined: "To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic Races, the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for Races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by." And the piece de resistance: "The foreign races in Hindusthan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but those of the glorification of the Hindu race and culture, i.e., of the Hindu nation, and must lose their separate existence to merge in the Hindu race, or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu Nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment, not even citizen's rights." Why SIR, and why now? Because of 2024. The BJP lost its majority in an election dogged by controversy. The Supreme Court dismissed the Association for Democratic Reforms' (ADR) plea to verify Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) using 100 per cent Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips. The Election Commission of India withheld booth-level turnout data, which was rather amusing. The alternative media would report a decline in voter turnout, and the ECI would release only vague percentages, as if in response, which belied lived experience on the ground. Rahul Gandhi called EVMs an unauditable "black box". He later gave proof of systematic electoral roll manipulation in some constituencies, claiming it to be a wider problem. Recall also Mark Zuckerberg's off-the-cuff remark, which Meta India had to walk back, that incumbents in India had lost. These men seem to know more than they let on, to make such a major factual error. What if he was right? So, SIR followed by delimitation and One Nation One Vote, and the Modi or Amit Shah dynasty can remain in power forever and change the constitution at will. (Stay tuned. Much more to come.)