Are we all enemies of the state?

Representation pic/Getty Images

I think it's safe to assume that I am no longer a patriotic Indian. I have arrived at this conclusion based on what the government of India has spent a lot of time and taxpayers' money to prove over the past few years. I have come to accept that I agree with almost nothing done by the senile men in Delhi who have been placed in charge of our collective fate. I believe they have done everything in their increasingly unchecked power to dismantle everything that once defined India, and find it strange that this opinion can now land me in jail.

If I were to look at the people who reside in my building today, a significant number of them would fall into the category of anti-nationals, simply because governance has given way to an endless witch hunt that has no end in sight.

It started with minorities because anyone who isn't part of the majority has always been an easy target in any insecure nation. It was predictable, too, because governments need scapegoats to divert attention from their inefficiencies and failures, and minorities have conveniently fit that bill for centuries.

Then, students started to become a problem. They asked questions, which in any developed country is a sign of intelligence. Here, it was turned into an act of war. Universities were broken into, libraries turned upside down, and young men and women jailed because they dared to say what their parents were too afraid to. This wasn't a surprise either, because governments ruled by people with no intelligence, and leaders with fake degrees, have always been afraid of those who spend time in real institutes of learning.

No one raised eyebrows when Dalits were targeted next because they have been mistreated for as long as India has existed. After all, we are the people who came up with that inhuman concept of a caste system in the first place. And so, this, too, wasn't a surprise.

At the start of the last horrendous year, women became the enemy. Poor, downtrodden, exhausted women who dared show their faces in public and ask their government to stop separating families and communities based on religious beliefs. Their concerns were valid, but women in India are meant to be seen, not heard, so this was another problem. They were promptly belittled and attacked as agents funded by mysterious foreign powers.

Film stars didn't escape either, especially the ones who didn't show up for PR group photographs. They were enemies of the people because a few of them had dared to show support for the other anti-nationals crawling out of the woodwork. They weren't supposed to say anything that wasn't scripted, nor were they allowed to have opinions that didn't match those of a political party, and so they were vilified as morally bankrupt people who should be ignored.

Activists were then rounded up and jailed, NGOs shut down for dubious reasons, and random people jailed across India for daring to put up posts on Facebook or Twitter. A controversial law related to sedition has been used more over the past few years than over the past few decades, and the threat of jail time is now brandished with the kind of ease that ought to have been reserved for doing business.

Speaking of doing business, that is only being reserved for those who toe the line. Contribute to the right kind of fund and you can have doors opened for you. Forests and airports can then be sold to you for marginal sums, while your competitors are shut down under the weight of conveniently placed red tape. Say the wrong thing, and you can expect calls from all kinds of agencies convinced that you have been defrauding the state. This sort of diligence is mysteriously absent when billionaires fly out leaving unpaid loans behind, but one can't ask questions about why they were given those loans in the first place because to do that is also anti-national.

What is to be left of India in the coming years? I think about that now and again when I hear of another arrest or threat or social media campaign targeting someone for simply daring to stand up and speak. If we are all a threat to the idea of India, what sort of India will we be living in? If politicians accused of murder can walk freely into Parliament while 80-year-old activists struggle to get bail, is this even a country worth defending?

When he isn't ranting about all things Mumbai, Lindsay Pereira can be almost sweet. He tweets @lindsaypereira. Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com

The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper