Witch hunting of muslims after the protest
The CJP protest is being called a victory. Pradhan resigns, a few demands accepted, people told to pack up and go home. On paper it looks so perfect and happy. But look at who is still paying.
Junaid spent weeks at Jantar Mantar doing the most basic work imaginable, distributing food and water so students wouldn’t collapse in the unbearable heat. Just quiet labour and act of service. Now he faces police visits to his family, document seizures, questions about “funding". Serving water, such a simple act, became suspicious the moment a Muslim name was attached to it. In Bengal, at least thirteen other Muslims were detained under the Goonda bill, saying that they weren't students but gundas attacking police and journalists. When the faces are Muslim, the system somehow escalates and it turns into a witch hunt.
The worst part is that this isn't new. During the CAA-NRC protests, the same pattern was played out. Muslim women, students and ordinary citizens sat for months in places like Shaheen Bagh, exercising the right to dissent against a law they believed threatened their citizenship, and these peaceful sit-ins were met with sustained police pressure, internet blackouts, and a wave of UAPA and sedition cases that landed disproportionately on Muslim participants (I'm not saying it was only muslims who suffered, but a large number of muslims). While some non muslim protesters faced action too, the scale, the speed of FIRs, the prolonged detention, and the public framing of “anti-national” hit Muslims the hardest. The state treated their exercise of constitutional rights as a security threat rather than legitimate dissent that's a constitutional right. Article 19(1)(a) and (b) of the Constitution guarantee every citizen the right to freedom of speech and to assemble peaceably without arms. These rights apply to everyone whether it be a Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian, atheist, ANYONE. Courts have repeatedly affirmed that peaceful protest is a fundamental democratic right. Yet in practice, when Muslims organise or even simply support a protest, the machinery of the state — Section 144 orders, preventive detention, UAPA charges, slower bail, heavier media trials— is applied and they are tagged anti-national. The law is equal on paper but the enforcement is certainly not equal.
A partial win for the organisers does not erase the selective cost paid by people like Junaid and those in Bengal. The protest may be over but the pattern of treating Muslim protesters as inherently more dangerous is not. The protest is not a success till the witch hunting of muslims is not over.
