Is india launching a crackdown of government critics police prosecute opposition activists and muslims in connection with rights triggered by the controversial citizenship law well the detained received justice this is inside story. Hello and welcome to the program im imran khan it was some of the worst violence for years in india riots in new delhi triggered by the newly introduced citizenship law in february killed at least 53 people the legislation fos trucks nationalities for someone overseas but excludes Muslims Police have charged 15 people saying prosecutors have more than 17000. 00 pages of evidence against them but Rights Groups say politicians from the ruling b. J. Pay who incited attacks on muslim protestors havent been arrested the government and Police Reject allegations of bias dozens of opposition activists and academics have been arrested over the past few months Human Rights Watch is called the charges against the activists baseless and hes calling for the prisoners unconditional release the watchdog says 12 prominent human rights activists and academics have been jailed on politically motivated charges in june 2018. Prosecutors accuse them of supporting a maoists rebellion and being responsible for inciting violence which led to fighting with b j p Party Members the arrests have been widely condemned in india and abroad United Nations experts as the detentions seem to be designed to send a chilling message to indias vibrant Civil Society that criticism of Government Policies will not be tolerated. Lets bring in our guests in london turn of hate arent professor of public law and legal theory at Oxford University and general editor of the indian law review in new delhi karuna nandi advocate at the Supreme Court of india and an International Lawyer and here in doha today chandra assistant professor of government at Georgetown University welcome to the program that we did contact indias ruling party the b j p but no one was available to join the panel now id like to begin in new delhi with you karuna nandi can you just explain to us what this citizenship lore is and why critics of it think its so controversial well in iran the citizenship Amendment Law actually now essentially changes the nature of citizenship and what it does is that a distinguishes between people on the basis of religion so its its completely contrary to the values on which this country was founded on the values on which the entire constitutional are just the preamble which mentions the word secular but the entire constitution is framed what it says is that refugees from particular countries. Everyone you know from every religion except islam pretty much will be admitted under certain conditions now it fails to recognize for example that the enemy of the our community is discriminated against minority focused if its true and you know recognize a ring yes. And recognize the kind those kinds of discrimination more insidiously what it all sought. Revealed i think were the faults lie in census like Data Collection like the National Population or just and. National emir register for citizens. That if implemented what potentially create various categories of citizens that wouldnt have to demonstrate that they were citizens of india so for example you would the onus would then be on the poor person from western you be used to. The. Muslim migrants from behind who came to delhi the hindu woman who was destitute and doesnt have people so. The trouble is that in its implementation a lot of people who are deeply deeply concerned about the discriminatory nature of the cme the various rules the government was in visiting under it and what happened across the country was a huge wave of protests in which for the 1st time in my lifetime there was a sort of reclamation of not just the values of the constitution of india but the actual constitution itself so in meeting after meeting after meeting there would be how zones of people. Reciting the preamble of the constitution and speaking of the kind of citizenship that does not speak of religion or of caste or gender or other identity after this we have seen a number of arrests in the guise of under the quiet of call vote where protests cant happen and under the sort of slightly bizarre pretext that the. Protests and the stopping of traffic and asking people to come out onto the streets to protest was the same thing as coming out onto the streets because right now this is for example who was you know one of them was from and people who have been arrested. Was in the context of the speech so in the speech the young man said that. Let us come on to them im paraphrasing let us come on to the streets and then a few sentences up so he said we will not respond to violence with violence weve been not respond to his christmas pictures we will only respond with love hes full of gandhi ji he spoke of that theyre going to nonviolence so frankly there is a way in which i think that these arrests under a very draconian terror law are. Razan well lets talk about all that is all about the arrests i want to bring in terre haute on whos in london youre a professor of public law and legal theory also the university and the general that its over the indian law review how does a law like this pass if it is so almost empty constitutional. Well so i think we need to understand that in u. S. Criminal Justice System has a long colonial legacy. A colonial legacy which gives the government of the day extremely strong say indeed control of the police from the Prosecution Services judicially is notionally into to a great extent has been independent in yemen but in a system where trials can take a long time and you can be in prison without bail for a long time the process is the punishment even if you are arguing here quit it 14 years happens and. So you know this makes complete sense for a colonial state because in a colonial town or didnt state there is an identity of the state and the government but after the democratic transition what one would have liked to see was a separation off of the committee of the system to police in the prosecution from the ruling party and the government of the day that did not happen even under the Congress Party regime and all their previous regimes in india and you know they were largely benign they were not completely for free the Congress Party governments also used the police for their political ends but but no when mean. In the same degree of brazenness as today will be exception of the emergency rule under. So what that means today is that we have to have an equal ation after country with a government and a party and criticism of the party becomes sedition in this world view in this hyper nationalist party lens with which the reader be seized. The constitution of this is completely contrary to the constitution but but the structures have preceded the read your p. C. Government under Prime Minister only what is new is theyre extremely in my line and brazen used to punish all forms of dissent and i actually feel that this is in some ways a fall off previous inion regimes and even the opposition states in the country today are pretty. Competent a sufficient theory. Which you can call it by political insurance and so you know democracy every limb party must govern with the notion that it will be the opposition tomorrow and what you do when youre in government is to buy political insurance by making the police and prosecutors independent so that when somebody else is in government theyre not target you wrongfully and that never happened in the i think the b. If you people need to also understand that they will not be the government but ever in that in that for their own in might in south and you know we also see a state governments using police in particular to target. Opposites and you know during Party Candidates you know that in the states i think theyd like them just as machinery needs to be freed from the Current System of political stranglehold on what a tender and what aaron upsets me saying is quite interesting that this isnt an overnight phenomenon with the big j. P. Its been decades in the making but the pace seemed to have. Accelerate to the hype and nationalize that and border into a much more powerful form is that a correct assumption yes i think thats a fair reading and i think i completely agree about the political you know legislation especially emergency laws which have been used if i was just here but also by its congress predecessor most notably in emergency on. That up but of course trying some have been. Ways of cracking down on us using its laws but i do think theres a critical difference between our current government and its predecessor are including the b. Chip even it was. A pretty does and that critical difference that. Theres an ideology the dealing with the party of state documents of each other and where no dissent is brought it is really a very top down ideology that sense and you are simply expected to conform to what about the Supreme Leader and the party which i see thats so you decide to arm the idea of an independent media or judiciary or universities or Civil Society simply dont make sense in the sport you just deeply in the group are going to be hostile to any kind of notion of right or dissent and any kind of criticism of the government or the media or in universities all. The engineer or some Society Sector is simply not going to be tried it and i think this really boils down to the kind of ideology that militants are more percents it is no longer well indeed of at 97 to 20 years ago that we ship it doesnt need to be part of a grand coalition it can simply through looking at so it can dispense with that rights and there are so it is the state. Kernan india it can dispense with allies it doesnt need to rule by consensus but this is a country where the language the culture changes every 50 kilometers hows a spin able to help. Its an interesting question and i think that the big b. Is particularly good at winning elections theyre always in capital so all they have i think there were or 4000 crores of rupees in from the public and i dont know what that is in dollars but its a massive massive amount was spent purely on keep in mind that this is a country that is that has a lot of extremely poor people. Its not reformed to a poor country anymore because it also has a very few extremely rich people which increases the g. D. P. But we know that thats not pocket income isnt really a very relevant figure. And so you have a situation where theres a huge amount of advertising all the time. There are media the media has become completely color and much of the media is and you know theyre the ones that get the government ads and all sought to a significant extent the corporate at all only it reports very very strongly the government and the party line in the park in the government or some one form you said is has now fused into the same thing a lot of money is also flowing in through all the Electoral Bonds and the Electoral Bonds are one of the biggest scandals i think of our what remains of our constitutional democracy. What it does is that it anonymizer the dollar and the recipient so. Foreign corporates any corporate really care give money to the beach if you or any other bogey on the face of it and not a and not declare it as it were and you know none of us would be the wiser so theres no way in which you can establish a quid pro quo that one might think that this benefits all Political Parties while on the face of it and does what about 90 or 90 percent of the money that came in through it has come into and through. In the last year for instance has been. To the beach so there is a huge amount of money now also the beach if this project which is to build in the ash hindu nation is something that in a deeply religious country where. There are many hardships that you know the government has feels not only failed to really alleviate but me and much work through all uninformed all economic policies lady monetisation for instance. This is the box within which various riots have been triggered by you know in some places by members of the party and theres a huge study that says that. Riots the tween community and between communities where the new communities in more benefit elect ordinally the b. G. Be consistent. Let me bring in turn up let me just bring in tired of titan here as well just in in london i want to ask you the same question almost actually you know this has happened our guest in new delhi suggesting that its partly to do with an influx of huge amounts of cash but also the selling of hindu ideology is the solution to all of indias problems but how does that work practically when you have huge minorities. So the v. P. Has benefited enormously apart from the factors that governor mentioned has benefited significantly from and he has. To reality based 1st bastable to electrical system is a lift in a total system where in 24. 00 d. In the b. G. P. One a simple majority of seats in parliament based on only 31. 00 point are percentage of popular votes they improved it having 2019 but in popular vote share terms it was still under 37 percent so that obviously works for a party which is able to polarize in elections significantly because. You know b. G. P. Is if you understand english references like marmite you either love it or you hated. A choice based on a Preferential Voting system that asks would you still rank their candidates 123 for example. What would result in an election where the video was either your 1st choice or your last choice you know its not nobodys number 2 choice of india needs to think about more centripetal list constitutional systems back also its politics to the center. Of the polity why the b 2 b. Succeeds in this in the so in part is that in part of the excellent election machinery an excellent beyond machine really but also in part and ive written a paper about this car killing a constitution with a 1000 terms in their 1st regime there was a sophisticated extremely well coordinated incremental attack on the democratic constitution. And this is not a full frontal attack that is not Accurate Enough an emergency that im not trying some of the streets of delhi but what it did was launched a program which away from the areas mechanisms that hold the government to account whether its electoral mechanisms but if something is accusing mechanisms or to the society and media mechanisms. And the single goal of all of these micro and science on the constitution was to fuel the ruling party with the state so what you have is a sort of compromise democracy where its really becomes really difficult to remove the party in power from government its not you know selection but still broadly thing but the institutions are captured including you key institutions that are Holding Elections pointed you to form for ministry the laws of the country and so basically what you have is an expedient nice huge Playing Field in which the opposition is fighting with a hand tied behind its back and sometimes quite literally in its you know its leaders in prison so its no longer its no longer a fan electoral battle and thats thats thats thats the moment of reckoning how how has it been that a constitution recently last obviously suffering under the emergency of the regularly in the seventys but outside now recently democratic as. We can do such a great degree to microsoft now do you form an amendment in a way that its democratic characters in russian that Word Microsoft actually is almost i think very crucial when it comes to talk about indian politics all 3 of you almost one article away one speech away possibly one more article away from being either arrested all being taken into custody because of the way the b j p is acting under is that a Fair Assessment do you think of of the way the b j p is cracking down on dissent. I think thats a very poor act and out it started with activists getting whats the academics. You know being kept out of john we are familiar and delhi as well as jeb you are in delhi university. Your bar that chair by. But i have to your different campuses. There has been a kind of raise it must not just on civil rights but among students on teachers and of course this is done in art by the police and the instruments of the state but also by actors with these spaces who might be simply picked from the party and its ideology this could be students who would have you know the. Student wing of the egypt. It could be do you chose the professors who are administrators who are aligned with the governments point of view who broke no dissent and in that sense these spaces of being gradually changed in a very slow and systematic way. We do have private universities and should carry on the carrier aspects tech but in fact and they are still nonetheless subject to a similar issue as public universities i really dont want to say that because that space is limited to demand the same to me because in many cases the proprietor of the. Universities have political grow up before getting to the top and to use so i do think that the University Sector in particular has been. Attacked by a kind of death by cuts and it will take you know to be built this particular aspects but a critical aspect of society in a sustained you know. In of the average age its in the mid twentys and Higher Education so significant. Colonel indeed the british tried this didnt they with colonialism and colonial rule they try to arrest as many people as they could they put most of Congress Party in jail at one point during their role and here we are the same tactics almost being used but you cant arrest everybody can you is there do you think