World

Bangladesh Today Mirrors The Script Written For India During The Farmers’ Protest

Aravindan Neelakandan

Aug 06, 2024, 07:03 PM | Updated Sep 05, 2024, 11:53 AM IST


Farmers protesting in India (top) and students protesting in Bangladesh (bottom).
Farmers protesting in India (top) and students protesting in Bangladesh (bottom).
  • As Bangladesh burns and Hindus are allegedly attacked, Modi's strategic actions during CAA and farmers' protests prevented a similar situation in India.
  • What is happening in Bangladesh today is in a way the script that was written for India during the farmers’ protest.

    The farmers’ protest actually derived its methodology from the Marina Beach protests in Tamil Nadu. The similarities are amazing. The same modus operandi was intensified and used in the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protests.

    In each of these protests which happened in India, spread across the timeline of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rule and in varied geographies, there was constant provocation of the police forces and the ruling party. Those who were the brain behind these protests, wanted the foot soldiers killed. They wanted to create martyrs.

    In each of these protests, the Modi government showed extraordinary caution and patience. The patience was so much that the government was called names by even its supporters. They remembered how Indira Gandhi used to quell such protests with force.

    That was exactly where Bangladesh fell for the trap while the Modi government seemed to have understood the larger plot.

    In Tamil Nadu, the Marina protests strangely aimed at Modi for the ban on Jallikattu even though the ban was introduced during the Congress regime and it was the 'Shakuni-in-chief' to the present day Congress chief, Jairam Ramesh, who played an important role in that ban.

    But the Marina protests were important milestones in the protests politics against Modi government in the sense. It showed that with a right cocktail of anti-Brahminical narrative, infusion of regional pride and blatant false allegations, a wave of hatred could be generated against the Bharatiya Janata Party in general and Modi in particular.

    Once a mass movement is thus generated then with constant provocations it is only a matter of time before some foot soldiers become ‘martyrs’ and then the movement can easily transform itself into mindless orgy of violent rampage, as in Bangladesh.

    Strategy tested and perfected was then played in the field in both the so-called farmers' protest and anti-CAA protests. In each of these protests, there were provocations, almost always violent.

    It was as if they wanted the police to fire at the foot soldiers and generate martyrs for the movement. It was not impulsive. It was planned. Perhaps, even the scripts to be used to light the fire, once martyrs were obtained, were prepared in advance.

    There are indeed some chilling indications that there was a pre-written script to the dot. On 26 January 2021, the farmers’ protest took a violent turn. Then a farmer died with his tractor overturned.

    At once, a senior television anchor and a consulting editor of a major media house, went with a report of how the farmers were telling him as to how the sacrifice would not go in vain. Here is a possibility. Causalities were expected with the ‘farmer protesters’ attacking the police on that Republic Day. And the script to be read and the narrative to be set once the movement obtained its martyrs were already in place.

    The discovery of a 'toolkit' further suggested the possibility of a planned escalation. If police had fired and some violent protesters had died, it could have triggered a secessionist movement across Punjab with international support. This would have led to further deterioration, possibly even the resignation of Modi as Prime Minister.

    The Modi government's patient approach may have cost it politically but prevented India from spiralling into a Bangladesh-like situation. This 'nation-first, politics-later' behaviour contrasts with the legacy of Indira Gandhi and the current stance of the Congress.

    Rahul Gandhi's politics, marked by sophisticated rhetoric, appears tilted towards a belief that if he cannot be prime minister, India better balkanise. This stance likely pleases certain foreign powers and their deep states, who would prefer such a force in India's politics.

    Beyond politics and geostrategies there is also another dimension. And this dimension is vital for our survival.

    Whether it is anti-CAA protests or the so-called ‘farmers’ protest’, there is an unmistakable element of Hindu hatred. Anti-CAA protests want to seal the fate of Hindus in the Islamist countries where Hindus face existential threat and are undergoing a slow-motion Holocaust.

    In the case of the pseudo-farmers’ protest there was always the anti-Hindu Khalistani forces waiting for an opportunity to unleash the same type of violence as in pre-1984 times — where again the primary target would be Hindus.

    As Bangladesh burns there are increasing reports of Hindus being systematically attacked. Every Indian should realise that the same scenario could have happened in India, particularly Punjab, but for the sagacious and yet strategic behaviour of Narendra Modi. It should also be clear to us as Hindus that whether it is right wing or left wing in the West, they prefer Islamists to Hindus in their games of geo-strategy.

    Those who think of any alliance with Christian right-wing in the West should remember that the West that is hesitant to give asylum to a democratically-elected leader of Bangladesh, did not hesitate to give asylum to Islamist perpetrators of 1971 genocide.

    Do not ask for whom the mobs in the streets of Bangladesh are setting the fires of arson. They are doing it as a rehearsal for the streets you and I live.


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