India is the world's largest democracy and protesting is also a right in democracy. That's why, dissent is often called the safety valve for a democracy. True, in a democracy, everyone has a right to have their views — even if those views contradict with opinions of the ruling dispensation. After all, a democracy without dissent is just another authoritarian regime.

But, at the same time, one must not forget the difference between fear mongering and dissent. Fear mongering in a democratic society can't be allowed in the name of dissent. When scaremongering is encouraged, there are equal chances that it will have an adverse negative effect on the society — recent riots of Delhi, which took the lives of 53 people, are glaring examples of perils of fear mongering.

For the last three months, the country has been witnessing protests against the Prime Minister Narendra Modi led BJP government at the centre over the issue of Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019, (CAA), National Population Register (NPR) and National Register of Citizens (NRC). The protests are mostly led by Muslims based on an imagined danger that “the Modi government is attempting to make Muslims second citizens”. This fear has been eulogised as dissent by a section of intellectuals, mostly leftists and left liberals.

CAA is seen as “anti-Muslim” for non-inclusion of Muslims immigrants in the law. The fact is the new citizenship law has nothing to do with any Indian citizen, including Indian Muslims. The law is to fast-track the citizenship of religious minorities of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan — the three constitutionally Islamic declared countries. Importantly, the new law doesn't change the existing policy of giving Indian citizenship to legal immigrants belonging to any religion.

On the other hand, NPR is collecting family data of Indian residents — which was first done in 2010 by the Congress led UPA government. Every country requires a register. The fears regarding NPR have been addressed by the government. The new questions added to the list of NPR are optional and nobody will be marked as “doubtful” citizen through NPR — clearly stated by home minister Amit Shah on the floor of the parliament. As far as NRC is concerned, the government hasn't prepared any draft and drawing comparisons with that of Assam's NRC isn't appropriate. The reason is that Assam's NRC is completely different where pre-1971 documents were required — the most common reason for fear of nationwide NRC. Here too, the government has said repeatedly that the NRC of Assam is totally different and if there will be a nationwide NRC or any NRC out of Assam, the provisions won't be the same. Not to forget that nationwide NRC itself acquired the legal status when Atal Bihari Vajpayee led NDA government enacted the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2003. In fact, the NRC was legalised way back in 2004 but ironically protests against the nationwide NRC in Shaheen Bagh started from mid December, 2019! Importantly, the idea of NRC stems from the Foreigners Act, 1946 — which gives power to the administration to detect, detain and deport any foreigner living illegally in the country.

Despite all these facts, the protestors of Shaheen Bagh continued completely with a false narrative of “India marching towards Fascism where Muslims would be reduced into second-class citizens'' — who are supported by a section of intellectuals, mostly leftists or left-leaning liberals. While these protests continued, the local markets, according to reports, incurred heavy losses of more than 100 crores. This contributed to the rise of a strong counter polarisation. This polarisation also rose due to hate speeches which came from both sides — pro-CAA and anti-CAA supporters. Instead, there have been reports of involvement of radical Islamic organisations fuelling the fire of polarisation in both the sides — and converting pockets of Delhi into virtual time bombs. Delhi riots are the result of explosion of these virtual time bombs — where both the pro-CAA and anti-CAA supporters clashed with each other — and within minutes the clashes converted into deadly Hindu-Muslim riots.

If that riots weren't enough, there has been one-sided analysis of the deadly riots which completely focusses to put the entire blame on the pro-CAA supporters. Such attempts only add to more polarisations in a society which is already heavily polarised. As usual, the eulogising of Shaheen Bagh protests continued — even drawing false comparisons with that of India's freedom struggle. As a result of this, pockets of Delhi, particularly in areas near Shaheen Bagh, still continue to be virtual time bombs.

And now, there is a new danger in the form of Coronavirus — but the protestors aren't still ready to end their protests, which are based on fear mongering. Already, these protestors have done enough damage to the social fabric and by continuing these protests at this crucial juncture, they are doing more harm to the society — and undoubtedly, this harm caused to the society will take years to repair. In order to prevent such deadly riots that happened in north-east of Delhi, it is high time that the citizens, particularly the civil society, realizes the perils of legalising fear mongering as dissent in the name of saving democracy — as it only ends in harming the structure of the democratic system. (IPA Service)