Sharjeel Imam: Symbol of 2020

Student leader Sharjeel Imam embodies the three themes emblematic of the year 2020 which has had citizens protest in fury even as they dreaded death because of the Coronavirus pandemic and encountered the Indian states repression This misfortune is extraordinary for the 32yearold Sharjeel who lived the life of the mind until he drifted into the eye of the storm raging against the Citizenship Amendment ActThere can be little doubt about Sharjeels sparkling brilliance B Tech and M Tech in computer science from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay two years of work experience in Bengaluru MA in history from Jawaharlal Nehru University Delhi M Phil on the exodus of Muslims from Bihar in 1946 his pending PhD thesis will track the link between cowslaughter and communal conflictThe sparklingly brilliant perceive the structures of injustice not readily visible to others The few among them who have empathy are inspired to become persons of action their awakening subjecting them to misery as they stake out a position against the state which brooks no challenge Sharjeels insights however arrayed him against not just the state and the Hindu Right but also unforgivably against Indias entire ideological spectrumIn a speech Sharjeel delivered on January 16 at Aligarh Muslim University he cited the backwardness of Muslims and the communal carnages they endured to claim they had been constantly betrayed by all He wondered whether the Indian Constitution could be called secular as it denied reservations to those who convert from Hinduism to Islam and Christianity He called Mahatma Gandhi a fascist for going on a fast to deprive Dalits through the 1932 Poona Pact the right to elect their own leadersMuslims cannot hope for justice from those whose privileges arise from an unjust order Their hope he said lay in organising themselves to mount pressure on the state to withdraw the CAA Conscionable Hindus were welcome to join the protest of Muslims but they must function under a Muslim leadership without demanding the eschewing of Islamic slogans such as Allah Is Great without diluting the Muslim character of their resistanceHis swipe at the totems of nationalism had already isolated him from civil society groups and segments of Muslims even though his critique echoed mdash cockily and erroneously at times mdash views of theorists belonging to different ideological persuasions He became a pariah overnight as a Bharatiya Janata Party spokesperson plucked out 40 seconds of his hourlong speech to portray he wanted to dismember India In those 40 seconds Sharjeel had said Muslims could organise a chakka jam to cut off Assam from the rest of India Only then the state would listen to themFive States including Assam filed FIRs against Sharjeel for sedition He was now the states quarry even though the Supreme Court had ruled in 1962 that no speech could be treated as seditious unless it incited violence On February 18 Sharjeel was taken to Guwahati handcuffed surrounded by commandos gawked at for threatening to dismember India I felt like an exotic animal in a zoo Sharjeel told his counsel Ahmad IbrahimSinister stares haunted Sharjeel at Guwahati Central Jail where he awaited bail until the inmates realised he was not a terrorist but a bookworm inclined to spending all his time in the prison library His discovery of the peace of prison was shattered as Coronavirus swept through Guwahati Central Jail On testing positive for it Sharjeel was assigned to the barrack reserved for the infected He dreaded death as some of his mates groaned with pain fever and struggled to breathe I will not come out alive Sharjeel would tell AhmadHe turned negative a month later only to be whisked away to the Capital where he was among those chargesheeted under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act UAPA Back on the train in handcuffs with commandos The state enjoys magical powers to turn scholars into exotica Sharjeel has become an addition to his own list of examples testifying to the oppression of Muslims Does he in his cell in Tihar Jail wonder why those who preside over pogroms against Muslims are never booked under UAPA Will he abandon his PhD thesis to write on Indias Islamophobia of which he is decidedly a victimSharjeels friends quote political philosopher Hannah Arendt who famously said If one is attacked as a Jew one must defend oneself as a Jew Not as a German not as a worldcitizen not as an upholder of the Rights of Man Likewise Sharjeel had wanted Muslims to defend themselves as Muslim as they had been attacked for their religious identity He ran into the hypocrisy of those who object to Islamic slogans but not to the chanting of Jai Bhim Jai Siya Ram or its masculine variant Jai Sri Ram or Jo Bole So Nihal Sat Sri Akal They cannot fathom the widespread nervousness over the desire of Muslims to have their own leadership even as subaltern stirrings are read in the politics of caste mobilisation The cure for phobias does not lie in acquiescence Nor in banishing the victims of phobias to jail Goodbye the year of suffering ndash for us and SharjeelThe writer is a senior journalistSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individuals and dont represent those of the paper