| Novelist| Coming soon: Black River | The Wildings & The 100 Names of Darkness | Columnist, @FTLifeArts, formerly NYT, Business Standard
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A thread on protests, and attempts to discredit them. In 2015, I was one of the many to report on the writers' protest after the murder of Dr M M Kalburgi. Hundreds of writers joined in spontaneously, returning awards, "everything except the garland".https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-34513311 …
+ In retrospect, this was one of the first warning flares of what was to come. The writers had it right when they sounded the alarm about rising intolerance, less space for free speech, and violence against dissenting voices.https://www.hindustantimes.com/india/and-it-continues-kundan-shah-saeed-mirza-join-award-wapsi/story-t7guKRzkGv7ZrsTY6vOMZJ.html …
+ It was 2015. We were not yet fully used to the IT Cell's tactics, or to the spread of fake news, disinformation, the "godi media". When this happened, most writers were taken aback and unprepared for the "award wapsi gang" tag.https://www.india.com/news/india/anupam-kher-slams-filmmakers-for-returning-awards-describes-dissidents-as-award-wapsi-gang-politically-motivated-667364/ …
+ The late Arun Jaitley called the protest -- sparked by the *murder* of a respected writer and scholar — a "manufactured rebellion" by rabid anti-BJP elements. This, even as writers and scientists spoke of the fear they saw spreading in our democracy.https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/manufactured-rebellion-growing-says-arun-jaitley-on-awardwapsi-against-intolerance-1237746 …
+ The "award wapsi" tag stuck, causing damage. In later years, other labels would be deployed as ruthlessly. Like "award wapsi", many of them -- tukde tukde gang, urban naxals -- would be based on lies and smoke. But they were part of the lexicon of television and politicians. +
+ By 2019-2020, the investigation into the murder of Dr Kalburgi had established a connection between his killing, and the murders of Gauri Lankesh, Govind Pansare and Narendra Dabholkar. Right wing organisations were involved: https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/kalburgi-murder-case-chargesheet-filed-against-7-accused-1581893-2019-08-18 …https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/arrested-govind-pansari-murder-dabholkar-gauri-lankesh-kalburgi-1596483-2019-09-06 …
+ Everything the writers had sounded the alarm about back in 2015 — the rise of Hindutva, the threats to democracy, growing violence — turned out to be true. But the labels stuck. The conspiracy theories stuck. +
+ At high cost. Public attention in the case of the writers' protest — I refuse to call it "award wapsi" any more — shifted *away* from the murders of rationalists and writers, to the possibility of a non-existent conspiracy. It's clear that shift was carefully engineered. +
+ Today, you can see a lot of noise around the #CAAProtests, targetting one iconic protest — #ShaheenBagh in Delhi.
The focus for the protestors is on the citizenship laws, the detention camps. Distractions are meant to take your attention away from this. Don't be fooled again.
+ Not my place to tell people what to write about @Shaheenbaghoff1, or make suggestions about handling the road stand-off.
But I hope I can keep remembering what these new citizenship laws mean, the existential threat they pose, how close they are to becoming reality. *ends*
(Sorry, longer than I meant it to be. Thanks for reading.)
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