Courtesy: The Wire
Civil rights activist Harsh Mander has filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking the registration of FIRs against BJP leaders Kapil Mishra, Parvesh Verma, Anurag Thakur and Abhay Verma for allegedly making hate speeches. In response, solicitor general Tushar Mehta on Wednesday read selective excerpts from a speech Mander made at Jamia Milia Islamia (JMI) University on 16 December 2019, during an anti-Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) protest, claiming it incited violence.
The Wire is publishing the translation of the speech that the former bureaucrat made, in which Mander appeals for peace and non-violent mode of protests. The Hindi original is available on thewire.in website.
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I will first raise a slogan. What is this fight for? Who is this fight for? This fight is first for our country, then for our Constitution, and then for love. This government has thrown a challenge and declared war not just against the Muslim brothers and sisters of this country, but also against the way this country was imagined. During the freedom struggle, there was an imagination of India, an imagining of what kind of a country ours would be after the British left.
Our imagination was that we would build a nation where it would not matter whether you believed in Bhagwaan or Allah or didn’t believe in anything. It would not matter what jaati one belonged to or what language one spoke. It would not matter if you were rich or poor, male or female. Everyone would be considered an equal human being and an equal citizen of this country. You would have as much right to this country as anyone else.
Today, when the Muslims of this country are being asked to prove their love for this country, the question arises that this demand is being made by people who never participated in the freedom struggle and made no sacrifices.
The Muslim brothers and sisters and children who are present here are Indian by choice. The rest of us are Indians by chance. We had no choice. We had only this country. You [Muslims] had a choice and your ancestors chose this country.
Today, those who are in the government are trying to prove that [Pakistan’s founder Mohammed Ali] Jinnah was right and Mahatma Gandhi was wrong. The name of their party should be changed from Bharatiya Janata Party to Bharatiya Jinnah Party. Mr Jinnah had said that India is not one country but two: Muslim Pakistan and Hindu India.
What we are saying is that this is one country: India, and that all—Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists, atheists, Adivasis, Dalits, rich, poor, man, woman, all—have equal rights.
Anyone who asks you these questions and claims to take away your rights is being challenged by a movement going on across this country to save the Constitution of the country and to save love and friendship which form the soul of the Constitution.
To do this, we have come out on the streets and will continue to occupy the streets.
This fight cannot be won in the parliament because our political parties, who declare themselves secular, do not have the moral strength to take up the fight.
This fight can also not be won in the Supreme Court because, as we have seen in the case of the NRC, Ayodhya and Kashmir, the Supreme Court has not been able to protect humanity, equality and secularism. We will definitely try as hard as we can in the Supreme Court, because it is our Supreme Court after all. However, the final decision/verdict will be given neither by the parliament nor by the Supreme Court.
What will be the future of the country? You are young people—what kind of a country do you want to leave for your children? Where will this decision be made? On the one hand, the decision can be taken on the streets. We are all out on the streets. However, there is one more space, bigger than the streets, where this decision can be taken. What is this space where the solution to this struggle can be found? It’s in our hearts—in your heart and in mine.
If they want to reply to us with hatred and we respond likewise with hatred, hatred will grow and become denser. If there is someone spreading darkness in the country and we say that we will spread more darkness, it is natural that darkness will grow thicker. If there’s darkness, it can be countered only by lighting a lamp. If there’s a greater darkness, we will light our own individual lamps. That’s how darkness can be defeated. We have only one answer to their hatred, and that answer is love.
They will cause violence, they will incite us to violence, but we will never commit violence. Please understand that it is their ploy to incite you to violence. If we respond with violence, we will create 2% violence and they will respond with 100% violence.
We have learnt from Gandhi what violence and injustice can do.
Most importantly, we have to fight with non-violence. Anyone who incites you to violence and hatred is not a friend of yours.
I will raise a slogan now: The Constitution
[crowd responds] Long live
