“I am issuing this warning because we should all be concerned about the country,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi told both houses of parliament a week into the budget session. “If the Rajasthan assembly passes a law but no one in Rajasthan is ready to obey it,” he asked, where would it lead? “Can the country run like this? Should we go on the path to anarchy?”
Only what had irked Modi was not the residents of a state defying local legislation, but entire states lining up to resist a central law—the Citizenship (Amendment) Act. To date, a dozen states and the union territories of Delhi and Puducherry have rebelled against the CAA. Six of them have also adopted resolutions denouncing it. Modi’s reproach was aimed at this reality.
India’s federal balance is under strain, with a stern centre snarling at recalcitrant states. We have witnessed a similar combat before. That early episode—and its unlearnt lessons—ignited a belligerence that still gnaws at Indian federalism.
Kerala was the first state to pass an anti-CAA resolution, just before the new year, and the first to invite the centre’s ire. Early this January, the union law minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad, chided Kerala’s chief minister, Pinarayi Vijayan, for piloting an anti-CAA resolution through his state assembly and promising to flout the law. “CAA has to be implemented,” Prasad said at a press conference, and Kerala could not dodge it.
Denne historien er fra March 2020-utgaven av The Caravan.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent ? Logg på
Denne historien er fra March 2020-utgaven av The Caravan.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
Mob Mentality
How the Modi government fuels a dangerous vigilantism
RIP TIDES
Shahidul Alam’s exploration of Bangladeshi photography and activism
Trickle-down Effect
Nepal–India tensions have advanced from the diplomatic level to the public sphere
Editor's Pick
ON 23 SEPTEMBER 1950, the diplomat Ralph Bunche, seen here addressing the 1965 Selma to Montgomery March, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The first black Nobel laureate, Bunche was awarded the prize for his efforts in ending the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.
Shades of The Grey
A Pune bakery rejects the rigid binaries of everyday life / Gender
Scorched Hearths
A photographer-nurse recalls the Delhi violence
Licence to Kill
A photojournalist’s account of documenting the Delhi violence
CRIME AND PREJUDICE
The BJP and Delhi Police’s hand in the Delhi violence
Bled Dry
How India exploits health workers
The Bookshelf: The Man Who Learnt To Fly But Could Not Land
This 2013 novel, newly translated, follows the trajectory of its protagonist, KTN Kottoor.
