Mapping New India

Aakar Patel

 

A ‘New India’ has come upon us at such a rapid pace that it is important to step back occasionally and assess where we have arrived. On August 28 last year, the BJP in Assam published a note on its website (https://assam.bjp.org/en/state-pressreleases/state-bjp welcomes-new-government-regulations-land-sale-and-purchase-between) under the headline: “State BJP welcomes new Government regulations on land sale and purchase between different religions.” The note stated that for “land sale and purchase between two different religions, an application will first have to be submitted to the office of the Circle Officer… the Circle Officer will forward it to the Deputy Commissioner.

The District Commissioner will then forward the application to the Revenue Department of the State Government… after which the file will be sent to the Special Branch of Assam Police.” Following this process, the file returns to the District Commissioner, who will then make the final decision regarding permission. Why is the ‘Mother of Democracy’ doing this? To understand this, we have to look to Gujarat, the font of such laws. Poor people forced to live clubbed together is what we know as a slum. An ethnic group forcibly relegated to certain neighborhoods is a ghetto.

The former lack the means to go elsewhere; the latter have no choice, even if they have the means. Apartheid means “separateness” and refers to South Africa’s historical policy of forcing Black Africans into ghettos. They could only live in fixed spaces by law. Conversely, when segregation in the United States legally ended in the 1960s, the government passed laws that sought to integrate the races, such as the Fair Housing Act. It prevented discrimination in the buying and selling of properties, which was keeping the races separate. All across Gujarat, in all major cities and several towns, the government has done the opposite. Muslims are deliberately forced into ghettos through a law known as the Disturbed Areas Act. The law requires citizens in particular parts of cities to seek permission from the government before selling their property or changing their tenant, effectively filtering them by religion. The law was initially meant to be temporary—designed to protect vulnerable people from forced eviction or coercion during episodes of communal violence.

However, Gujarat under the BJP has used the law, renewing it and extending it across the state, to keep Muslims out of neighborhoods other than those traditionally Muslim. It criminalizes attempts to integrate, permanently separating Muslims from Hindus. The law states that if the state government feels the intensity and duration of a riot is such that an area is “disturbed,” it isolates the area under the Act for a specified period. When satisfied that the area has “ceased to be disturbed,” the government can rescind the notification, and buying and selling properties can go back to being unregulated. What has happened instead is that thirty-five years after the law was introduced, and nearly two decades after the 2002 riots, the law remains active even in cities where there is no violence. Furthermore, it is being expanded through the addition of more geographical areas, placing more restrictions on Muslims and creating more hurdles to their leaving their ghettos.

In 2009, the then-Modi government amended the Act to give discretionary powers to the collector to hold an inquiry suo motu and take possession of property under the Act. In July 2019, another change was introduced. Previously, property sellers had to apply for permission to transfer their property and register their consent via affidavit. Now, it does not matter even if the sale occurs with free consent and fair value is paid to the owner. The collector can stop a property sale if he feels, at his discretion, that the transfer would cause a “disturbance in demographic equilibrium,” an “improper clustering of persons of a community,” or a “likelihood of polarization.” The collector can reject an application for the legal transfer of a property after making an assessment on these grounds. The punishment for transferring property without clearance was raised to six years in jail (it was a mere six months when the law was first introduced). The new law also allowed the state government to form a “Monitoring and Advisory Committee” to keep a check on the demographic structure in neighborhoods. This committee advises collectors on whether or not sales should be permitted. Laws criminalizing the possession of beef first came to India in 2015, beginning in Maharashtra and then Haryana. Laws banning interfaith marriage started in 2018, beginning with Uttarakhand. The laws criminalizing Muslim divorce came in 2019, as did the exclusion of Muslims under the Citizenship Amendment Act. The list goes on, and like the situation in Assam, there will be more ways in which this nation will harass and target its minorities. We have various terms to describe the changes we are going through. Some say ‘New India’, and some say the ‘Gujarat Model.’

The interesting thing is that there is no available description or definition of what these terms actually mean. What is the Gujarat Model intended to achieve, and what does New India finally look like? We are meant to understand viscerally what they stand for. It is only by examining the actions of the state that we can appreciate the structure and consider what it truly is. And after that, we have to ask ourselves this question: Is this what we stand for, and is this how we want the world to see us? (https://assam.bjp.org/en/state-pressreleases/state-bjp-welcomes new-government-regulations-land-sale-and-purchase-between)