Organised by People’s First, Citizens for Justice & Peace (CJP) and Vote for Democracy (VFD), the consultation examined the growing concerns surrounding electoral-roll revision, the exclusion of eligible voters, transparency and accountability within the Election Commission of India, and the legal and democratic consequences of conducting elections on disputed or procedurally defective electoral rolls.

Among the prominent voices at the consultation were MG Devasahayam, soldier, economist, administrator and public servant and an expert on India’s electoral system; Dr Pyarelal Garg, former Dean and Professor of Surgery and an expert with VFD; Professor Harish Karnick, formerly of IIT Kanpur; senior RTI activist Venkatesh Nayak; former Union Home Secretary Gopal Krishna Pillai; former Union Finance Secretary EAS Sarma; former bureaucrat Amitabha Pande of the Constitutional Conduct Group; actor Prakash Raj; human rights activist Usha Ramanathan; Thomas Franco, former General Secretary of the All India Bank Officers Confederation; Tara Rao and Noor Sridhar of Wake Up Karnataka; and academic Ashoke Chatterjee.

The consultation reflected the breadth of concern over the SIR process, with participation from Assam, Manipur, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand, among other States. Independent journalists Prashant Tandon of DB Live and Indra Kumar Theradi from Tamil Nadu also participated.

The strong representation from Assam was particularly significant. In a State where citizens have for decades faced the enormous burden of establishing their citizenship through documentary records, Dr Ghyansham Nath, senior academic; Nanda Ghosh of CJP; advocates Mrinmoy Dutta, Abhijeet Chowdhury, Abdur Rahim and Jamal Uddin; Harkumar Goswami; Dr Rituraj Kalita of the Forum for Social Harmony; and Professor Taijuddin Ahmed brought the experience of Assam’s citizenship and electoral processes into the national discussion. The consultation was conducted by Teesta Setalvad, Secretary of CJP.

The diversity of those participating was itself a reflection of the seriousness with which the question of SIR is being viewed. Electoral-roll revision is not merely an administrative exercise. It determines who is recognised as an elector and therefore who is able to exercise one of the most fundamental forms of democratic participation: the right to vote.

The consultation consequently resolved to bring together public mobilisation, systematic documentation, social audits, legal intervention and institutional accountability around a single overarching demand: SIR must be scrapped and the electoral rights of every eligible citizen must be restored and protected.

Demands for the Public Campaigns/ Protests

1. CEC GYANESH KUMAR MUST RESIGN: Resignation/ removal Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) (Impeachment is the legal provision for this process if there is no resignation)

2. SIR MUST BE SCRAPPED: Completely reverse SIR. All future elections to be based on 2024 rolls + any revisions made as per law and past practice for addition/deletion for the past 2 years.

3. ELECTION COMMISSION OF INDIA MUST BE DISBANDED

4. 2023 ACT THAT GRANTS IMMUNITY TO ECI ETC FROM PROSECUTION & NON-TRANSPARENT APPOINTMENT OF COMMISSIONERS BE REPEALED: Repeal 2023 law giving commissioners immunity for decisions taken.
5. RE-ENACT A LAW FOR THE APPOINTMENT OF ALL ELECTION COMMISSIONERS: This new law should ensure that the Appointment Committee and procedure is broad-based, diverse and ensures some accountability: Appointment by/through a broad based committee of 8-10 people containing two government nominees, two opposition nominees, two past election commissioners (not holding any position given by govt.), two representatives of the higher judiciary (retired judges of high/supreme court not holding any position). The Final Selection should be by two-third majority.
6. ANNUL AND RE-DO ELECTIONS CONDUCTED AFTER THE SIR 2025 PROCESS: Elections to be conducted based on Electoral rolls verified and transparent after annual Summary Revision of 2025 and 2026 as the case may be.
7. TRANSPRENCY & ACCOUNTABILITY IN ECI FUNCTIONING: Complete transparency and public access to all data in machine readable form as soon as it is available to the EC both during elections and during normal times. In particular all electoral rolls, all forms filled by presiding officers during elections, counting related data.
8. MAKE SOURCE CODES(S) PUBLIC: Source code of EVM software, ECInet/EROnet software and any other s/w used for any sanity checks of the electoral roll (e.g. logical discrepancy) should be in the public domain.

Electoral transparency is a constitutional necessity

The Assembly has called for complete transparency in the functioning of the ECI, including public access to electoral data in machine-readable form, electoral rolls, relevant forms filled by election officials and counting-related information. It has also called for the source codes of EVM software, ECINet, ERONet and other software used for electoral-roll verification and discrepancy detection to be placed in the public domain. These demands arise from a fundamental democratic principle. Citizens cannot effectively challenge an electoral decision if the processes producing that decision remain inaccessible or impossible to independently scrutinise. Digitalisation cannot become a substitute for accountability.

If an elector’s name is deleted, the citizen must be able to know why. If a deletion application has been filed, the grounds and source of that application must be capable of scrutiny. If a claim for inclusion is rejected, the elector must have access to the reasons. If an appeal is pending, its status must be ascertainable. If software contributes to identifying a discrepancy or exclusion, there must be an auditable record of how that decision was generated and reviewed. A constitutional election process cannot be allowed to operate as a black box.

Legal intervention must be narrow, rigorous and evidence-based

The Assembly has resolved to assist in exploring appropriate legal remedies concerning the SIR and electoral processes conducted on the basis of disputed or procedurally defective rolls. The legal strategy must begin with evidence. It must document patterns of exclusion, bulk deletion applications, Forms 6 and 7, software-related exclusions, unresolved appeals, failures of restoration and instances where citizens were denied meaningful opportunities for verification or hearing.

This approach is especially important after the Supreme Court’s May 2026 judgment concerning Bihar. The appropriate constitutional question now is not simply whether the ECI possesses the power to undertake an intensive revision, but whether particular exercises of that power comply with the statutory framework and constitutional safeguards.

Where elections have already been conducted on rolls shown to have been seriously compromised, remedies must be examined through the statutory framework governing election challenges and on the basis of constituency-specific evidence. The Assembly has specifically identified the large number of pending appeals and limited restoration of voters in West Bengal as matters requiring close examination before any conclusions are drawn about the validity of elections conducted on the revised rolls.

Give every excluded voter a name and a face

The Assembly has therefore called for a nationwide Public Social Audit of electoral rolls across SIR-affected States. Civil-society organisations, community groups, youth organisations and citizens are being encouraged to undertake participatory verification at the booth, ward and Gram Sabha levels, with the involvement of the concerned Booth Level Officer and Electoral Registration Officer wherever possible.

Such exercises have already been undertaken in parts of Delhi and across approximately 100 booths in Karnataka. The Assembly seeks to expand these efforts into a systematic national campaign documenting exclusions, pending claims and objections, Forms 6 and 7, deletion notices, bulk applications and procedural violations.

This public process will include comparing the SIR-driven deletions and additions with a comparison of earlier electoral records, including the 2002-03 rolls where relevant, with the 2025-26 SIR rolls is intended to establish what happened to individual voters rather than allowing their exclusion to disappear into administrative statistics.

The campaign is intended to give a face and name to the 13.60 crore Indians so tragically and shamefully excluded. That too by a constitutional authority like the Election Commission of India. The conduct of this Campaign for a Public Social Audit is crucial to drum up and sustain the demand for a Scrapping of the 2025-2026 SIR.

Every proposed deletion and addition must be publicly disclosed, with the voter given a meaningful opportunity to contest the deletion and have their name restored where wrongly excluded. The process must ensure transparency regarding who sought a deletion, on what grounds, whose name is proposed to be deleted and what verification was undertaken. No electoral-roll change should be affected without public notice, verification and an effective opportunity to object.

Independent inquiry must strengthen public accountability

The Assembly has welcomed the Independent Commission of Former Supreme Court and High Court Judges constituted by the Lawyers Association for Constitution (LAFC) to examine the constitutional and statutory validity, methodology and impact of the SIR. The five-member Commission, chaired by former Supreme Court judge Justice Madan B. Lokur, includes former Supreme Court judge Justice A.K. Patnaik and former judges of the Jammu & Kashmir, Delhi and Patna High Courts. It proposes to conduct public hearings, collect testimony from affected citizens and analyse electoral-roll data, with a report expected by December 2026.

The Assembly will assist this process by placing before the Commission relevant data, documentation and evidence emerging from public campaigns, independent investigations and social audits. Such an inquiry must complement, not replace, judicial and statutory remedies. Its importance lies in bringing together evidence that is otherwise dispersed among individual voters, election officials, civil-society groups and independent investigations.

Electoral democracy cannot survive exclusion without accountability

The controversy surrounding SIR has brought together questions that cannot be treated separately: the integrity of electoral rolls, the right to vote, institutional independence, and transparency, collective decision-making and judicial accountability. The integrity of an election begins long before polling day. It begins with the electoral roll.

If an eligible citizen is removed without adequate notice, verification or an effective remedy, the democratic injury occurs before that citizen ever reaches the polling station. The October 3 Assembly has therefore resolved to combine public mobilisation, social audits, evidence-building, legal intervention and institutional accountability around one central demand.

Every eligible citizen must have the right to remain on the electoral roll, to know why any deletion is proposed, to challenge it effectively and to have a wrongful exclusion corrected.

Scrap SIR and restore electoral rolls

The Assembly has called for the SIR process to be completely reversed and for future elections to be conducted on the basis of the 2024 electoral rolls, subject to additions and deletions carried out through the ordinary statutory processes and established safeguards. The demand comes against the backdrop of the Supreme Court’s May 2026 judgment upholding the constitutional validity of the Bihar SIR. That judgment, however, cannot be read as placing every subsequent decision or implementation of SIR beyond judicial scrutiny. The present controversy concerns not merely the existence of a power to revise electoral rolls, but the manner in which that power is exercised, the safeguards accompanying it and the legality of particular decisions taken during the process.

The distinction is crucial. A constitutional power must still be exercised in accordance with the Constitution, the Representation of the People Acts, the Registration of Electors Rules, applicable directions and the principles of procedural fairness. The Assembly therefore proposes an evidence-based legal strategy focused on specific violations, documented exclusions, defective procedures and departures from statutory safeguards rather than relying on broad assertions about the SIR in the abstract.

The Election Commission cannot function without accountability

The Assembly has demanded the resignation of CEC Gyanesh Kumar and has also called for a fundamental restructuring of the institutional framework governing the Election Commission. These demands have acquired renewed significance following the Supreme Court’s October 5 proceedings concerning allegations that important decisions connected with the SIR were taken unilaterally by the CEC despite objections from the other two Election Commissioners.

Reports based on an investigation by The Indian Express have stated that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi recorded objections on at least 14 occasions over ten months concerning decisions and orders connected with the SIR, with some objections alleging that decisions were taken without their knowledge or contrary to their recommendations. The Supreme Court has now sought responses and records from the concerned authorities. The Court declined, at this stage, to suspend the CEC, but made clear that the legality of the alleged unilateral decisions remains open for examination. It also indicated that decisions of the Commission must comply with the legally prescribed mechanism of collective decision-making.

The controversy over Form 6 makes the issue particularly serious. During the October 5 hearing, Chief Justice of India Surya Kant clarified that the Supreme Court had not approved modifications allegedly made to Form 6 and indicated that the Court would examine who authorised those changes.

Form 6 is a form distinctly and procedurally meant for enrolment of first-time new voters. The ECI, by using this process meant for a limited and specific purpose, for the re-enrolment of wrongfully deducted previous voters is itself committing a flawed illegality and asking citizens to do the same. Making matters worse, the amended Form 6 includes a declaration on oath by an older voter to the effect that ‘she or he has not voted before’, making matters worse.

The question before the country is consequently larger than whether one particular administrative decision was correct. It is whether a constitutional body exercising enormous power over the democratic franchise is functioning collectively, transparently and within the limits imposed by law.

The complete resolution may be read below:

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From Statelessness to Citizenship: CJP helps Adori Bibi reclaim her Indian identity

Who had access to 3,404 SIR forms? CJP, VFD and BCS seeks statewide audit after Kharghar breach

The language of the lathi

Another CJP Victory: Barpeta Tribunal declares Alam Khan ‘not a foreigner’

The post Scrap SIR, Restore Electoral Integrity: A national call to defend the right to vote appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The form of “majoritarianism” may vary from one society to another. If there is an authoritarian regime, the manifestation of majoritarianism will be very severe. It will be very crude. It will be very harsh. It will be more reactionary. It may be more brutal in appearance.

But we should never forget this key point: majoritarianism is not only found in non-democratic or illiberal societies. Today, majoritarianism poses a serious threat to democracy.

What is the idea of democracy?

Democracy is understood to be opposed to dictatorship. Democracy is not authoritarianism. Democracy is not monarchy. Democracy is not oligarchy.

This is the definition that is generally accepted by most liberal thinkers.

But Dr. Ambedkar added one important dimension to the idea of democracy and went beyond liberal thinkers. The messiah of the downtrodden said that a true democratic system is one where marginalised community are given opportunities; they are given a space to make laws, and they are in a position to implement policies. In other words, power is shared with the marginalised castes and communities. It is not just the government of the people; it is also government by the people.

If a “democracy” is to be called a democracy, it should not just feel content with holding elections and sending people to legislative assemblies. Unless marginalized communities such as Dalits and Adivasis, and religious minorities such as Muslims, Christians, and Buddhists, among others, are given proper representation, it will not work. If they are not given effective representation, if they are not involved in the process of law-making, and if they are not given a space to implement policies, then that is not democracy.

Dr. Ambedkar has also added another thing: democracy is the system through which we have to bring about social change.

So, in Ambedkar’s view, if society is becoming more and more egalitarian, if inequality is reduced, if marginalised communities are given power and representation, then we can call it a true democracy.

In fact, majoritarianism is the perversion of Dr. Ambedkar’s idea of democracy. While Dr. Ambedkar’s definition of democracy lays stress on effective and proportionate representation and safeguarding minority rights, majoritarianism is the dominance of a particular religious community, caste group, or racial group over the rest of the population.

Under a majoritarian system, a particular caste, a particular religious community, or a particular social group starts believing that they are the “real” citizens of the country. They are the “sons of the soil”. They are the “warrior” race. They are truly “patriotic”, while the rest of the population are “inferior”, “subordinate”, “second-class citizens”, and their culture and their way of life are a “threat” to the nation.

The dominant sections of society, believing in a majoritarian ideology, make efforts to enact laws or promote social practices to disempower minority communities and other weaker sections.

We see the irony in a democratic society most clearly. It is possible that, in the law books, everybody is given equal rights. But in practice, what is happening is that those equal rights are not translated into reality, and a large section of the population is denied what is promised in the Constitution. This is because the majoritarian forces are rising and they sabotage democratic processes.

Friends from Nagaland leave their homes and go to Delhi to pursue higher education. They study at the University of Delhi, JNU, Jamia, and other educational institutions. They also go to other north Indian cities for education and jobs.

Outside their homes, friends from the northeast face discrimination. They are discriminated against at colleges and workplaces. They are made to suffer when they go to get a house on rent. People in north India pass inappropriate comments on them. They create stereotypes about the people of Nagaland and other north-eastern states. These are all manifestations of majoritarianism.

However, in the rule book, in the Constitution of the country, everybody is given the same rights. A person born in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, or Delhi has the same rights as a person living in Arunachal Pradesh or Nagaland.

But in actual reality, a large number of people, such as Dalits, Adivasis, lower-caste people, religious minorities, and women, are victims of discrimination because democratic processes are being distorted. They are tampered with, and reactionary elements and communal forces that are spreading hatred have become more active in the recent past.

And why are they so active?

Because they get political patronage and support from the system. And this is an ugly manifestation of majoritarianism.

Dr. B. R. Ambedkar has made a wonderful observation that when the dominant groups, when the upper castes, when the caste Hindus serve their own interests, they call it “nationalism”. They call it national interest.

But when a person belonging to the Dalit community or religious minority communities, according to Dr. Ambedkar, and in today’s context, the residents of Dimapur or Nagaland, speaks about their genuine rights, they are dismissed, rejected, and demonized by the dominant sections as “communal” or “sectarian”.

That is why I would like to argue that majoritarianism today is one of the biggest threats to democracy. It lays bare its fangs not only in India but elsewhere also.

Look at the scene at the international level. So much racism is rising across the globe. People from the Black community and other marginalised social groups are discriminated against. They are discriminated against on the basis of colour, on the basis of religion, and on the basis of language. These are against the spirit of humanity.

This is against the message of Jesus Christ. He says that we should love our enemy. And what are we doing today? We are discriminating against our own neighbours and our own fellow citizens, our own people. Today, minorities and other marginalised social groups in India are being attacked in the name of beef, in the name of the “holy” cow.

Indian democracy has given all Indians equal voting rights. But in Parliament, some states dominate policy-making and discourse. Similarly, some castes dominate the process of enacting laws. Are then, the sentiments and interests of the minorities safeguarded while making laws?

I doubt if our rulers and politicians are concerned about protecting the rights of minorities. I would argue that today our ruling classes sitting in Delhi and controlling the system from other north Indian states have been infested with the reactionary ideology of majoritarianism. They believe that India belongs to one race. In their perverted thinking, India is a home of a few upper castes. For them, India belongs to the Aryan race.

We are students of Political Science. There is a paper on Indian Knowledge System, which is almost compulsory at the undergraduate level. Everybody has to opt for it.

And if one goes through the syllabus of the Indian Knowledge System, what does one get?

In the syllabus of the Indian Knowledge System, most of the themes are centred on “Vedic/Aryan culture”. Sanskrit is given the dominant position. The contributions of Christianity and Islam are erased. The history and contributions of Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism are suppressed.

The syllabus is designed in such a way that instead of working towards national integration and promoting true knowledge, it is creating division. It is injecting suspicion among a large section of the people. It is alienating a majority of the people because they do not find their own history in the syllabus, reading materials, and textbooks. Non-Brahmin history is almost deleted, and they are nowhere to be seen.

Our rulers and administrators are fast implementing majoritarian agendas in every walk of life. Road names are being changed, and monuments are being renamed. The Islamic past and the contribution of Muslims are special targets. Minorities are attacked in the name of beef and the “holy” cow. They are the worst victims of mob lynching. The so-called liberal cities are also not safe for minorities. There too, students from minority communities and other weaker sections are attacked on different pretexts. Dalits and Muslims find it hard to get rooms or flats in savarna localities.

The lifestyles of minorities and weaker sections—their culture, their food habits—they are all being attacked.

Recently, I read a book. The name of the book is The Adivasi Will Not Dance. It is a collection of ten stories written by a Jharkhand-based doctor and author, Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar. The author is a Santhal Adivasi, and what is he saying in the book?

In one of his stories, he has narrated the story of an Adivasi family. The family was earlier working in Bhubaneswar, in Orissa. They were then transferred to Gujarat. They were asked to go to Vadodara.

The Adivasi family, when they landed in Gujarat, had difficulty finding a house on rent. Somehow, they got a house, but the landlord told the Adivasi family that they should not eat eggs, fish, and meat.

Facing cultural dominance, the Adivasi family secretly boiled eggs. They peeled them, wrapped the eggshells in a paper, and secretly went far away to throw them in the dustbin. The Adivasi family feared that somebody might notice that they were eating non-vegetarian food. They feared that they might be caught. They feared that they might be abused or beaten up.

This incident points to the majoritarian nature of Indian society. It is totally against the spirit, values, and laws of the Constitution.

Our Constitution has given us fundamental rights. Liberty is one of them. Whatever you want to eat, whatever religion you want to follow, you can marry anybody, the Constitution gives freedom to individuals. But in practice, what is happening? Our fundamental rights are being eroded by orders and laws enacted by the rulers. Even the food habits of minorities and other weaker sections are being demonised, and they are attacked in the name of the holy cow.

Since the dominant sections of society have political power, they are imposing their own food habits on the rest of the people. People from the north make laws without thinking deeply about the fact that those living outside the Hindi belt may have different food habits, lifestyles, and cultural practices. It is dangerous to national integration that the dominant sections are imposing their own food, dress, and rituals on the rest of the people.

The sad part is that majoritarianism is happening in the “largest” democracy of India.

It is to be kept in mind that majoritarianism is not confined to any social group or any region. For example, Hindus are dominant in one region and they are dominated in another region. Christians are dominated in one region, but they are dominant in other regions. Muslims are suppressed in one particular part of a region, and they suppress other communities in another region.

In brief, majoritarianism is a disease that has spread far and wide. It is becoming something like a pandemic, as it is found in both democratic and non-democratic societies.

As I have argued earlier, the challenge of majoritarianism is greater in a democratic system like ours because sometimes majoritarian forces appropriate democratic logic to suit their own interests.

While majoritarian groups have little regard for the rule of law, they spread the propaganda that it is the minorities who do not follow the Constitution and are guided by religious-based Sharia laws in opposition to secular and democratic values.

While the majority groups are least interested in initiating social reform movements within their own society to get rid of caste and gender-based discrimination, they are at the forefront of giving lip service to the rights of Muslim women and tarnishing the image of Muslim men as “patriarchal”, “cruel”, and “violent”. The right-wing groups that promote majoritarian thinking manipulate democratic and electoral processes to perpetuate their dominance and attack minority rights.

While we have a good Constitution, its laws are often not implemented in the true spirit. In fact, the processes are being tampered with to marginalise the weaker sections. Our leaders have no willpower. They are driven by petty interests.

The rulers want to remain in power at any cost. They are not following the spirit of the Constitution. They believe that India can only be strong when it is coloured in one religion, one language, and one race. In fact, this is the process of weakening India. This is not the process of strengthening India.

National integration can only happen when people from Arunachal Pradesh to Gujarat, from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, are given a share in power, if they are given representation, if they all come together to make laws, and if their food habits, their culture, and their religion are protected.

Without protecting minority rights, India will not become strong. But today, the terms “minority” and “minority rights” have been given a negative connotation under right-wing propaganda. The media, too, has become complicit in the anti-minority narrative. The values of diversity and pluralism are being attacked. Uniformity is being promoted as a desirable value.

But in both our social and natural worlds, we find that diversity is the reality. Around our surroundings, we find multiple varieties of flora and fauna.

That is why we need to learn from each and every community. Every community has something great to offer.

Humayun Kabir was the secretary of Maulana Azad, the first Education Minister of India. After Maulana Azad, Humayun Kabir also became the Education Minister of India. He wrote somewhere that a society which has people from different religions, different communities, different castes, and different social groups has more power and more strength to face challenges.

Take the example of cricket. If a team has only good batsmen, the team will not win the match because the team also needs good bowlers. Similarly, if a team has only good bowlers, who will score runs? If a team has only good fast bowlers, who will spin the ball? That is why a team which aims at winning the match needs all kinds of players. It must have diversity in the team.

Similarly, our ideals should be diversity and pluralism. Power-sharing and minority rights are integral parts of democracy. The bedrock of democracy is social justice and minority rights.

And in practice, what is happening? Majoritarianism, religious fundamentalism, communal violence, and discrimination are rampant.

So today, I argue that majoritarianism is one of the biggest challenges in the modern world. I put forth my hypothesis that it is a more serious challenge than deadly weapons because deadly weapons can destroy some buildings and can kill some human beings. But majoritarianism may destroy everything.

Majoritarian thinking may destroy society. It can create violence. It can give rise to hatred at the mass level. Majoritarianism is against humanity.

Some right-wingers say that giving minority rights is weakening the nation. I disagree with those people. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar has said at many places that caste Hindus are wrong to think that majority rule is sacred.

Babasaheb says that without the protection of minority rights, without safeguarding minority rights, democracy cannot be successful.

Let’s assume that your class has fifty students. Forty students want to eat chow mein, and ten students want to eat rice and curry.

If you apply democratic processes mechanically or in a vulgar manner, you will hold an election to decide the choice of food. In an election, forty students will definitely win by majority vote. It may be the case that the winners make a law that both at lunch and dinner, only chow mein will be served and everyone will have to eat it. But imposing the majority view on the minority through the electoral process is not democracy. In fact, this is majoritarianism.

A true democracy is one where minority rights are protected, where the will of forty people is not imposed on ten people. A true democracy is one where the minority’s views and interests are safeguarded.

It is very sad that minority rights are seen as a “threat” to the nation. Scholars advocating minority rights are seen as “anti-national”. But I differ with such a view.

Instead, I would argue that the social groups and organisations promoting majoritarianism and speaking against minority rights are, in fact, anti-national because they are weakening national integration by creating division in society.

Irrespective of what the right-wing propaganda is, India belongs to everybody. India belongs as much to the people of north India as it does to the residents of the southern and north-eastern states.

That is why the whole debate about “Indic” and “non-Indic” religions is nothing but an example of majoritarian thinking.

That is why I argue that Christianity is not alien. Nor is Hinduism indigenous.

Soon after the emergence of Christianity, churches were established in the coastal areas of India. The history of Christianity in India is over two thousand years old.

The history of Christianity in India cannot be tied to colonialism.

It may be true that some Christian missionaries might have come through colonial interventions. Some Christian missionaries might have been supporters of colonialism.

So what?

There were so many Hindus who supported the British Raj. There were so many Muslims who sided with the British Raj.

So, the very idea that an Indic religion is Hinduism and that Christianity is a foreign religion, or that Islam is the religion of the “invaders”, is a manifestation of majoritarianism. It is weakening national unity. It goes against the fundamental values of the Constitution. In brief, majoritarianism is against the values of liberty, equality, fraternity, and secularism.

V. D. Savarkar wrote the book Hindutva in the early 1920s. The book is mandatory reading in your Indian Political Thought course. In this book, Savarkar argued against the liberal and social notion of citizenship and created a social division based on religion through his fake theory that Hindus are patriotic because their religious places are located in India, while Christians and Muslims cannot be patriotic because their religious places are somewhere else, in Mecca or perhaps in Palestine or Jerusalem. Such a view is a manifestation of majoritarian thinking.

Savarkar was one of the major architects of the majoritarian narrative in India. I am afraid that majoritarianism has gained strength in recent years as his ideological supporters have assumed power at the national level.

If you go through the writings of right-wing thinkers in the colonial period, you will find that an aggressive current of Hindu nationalism promotes majoritarianism because they make the argument that Hindus and Hinduism is indigenous and minorities and their religions are foreign.

I think today we need to seriously conduct research and reading about the challenges to democracy posed by majoritarianism and the demonization of minority rights.

In this endeavour, the Department of Political Science can contribute. But it should be ready to learn from other disciplines such as history, sociology, literature, and anthropology. We, as intellectuals, need to learn from social and political activists as well, as they have first-hand knowledge. We all need to work collectively towards making this society, this country, and this world more egalitarian.

Before I conclude, let me make a quick reference to a book by the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy. Leo Tolstoy was a great disciple of Jesus Christ, and in the book, he said that only principle in this world is love. According to him, love is the only principle through which we can bring humanity together. Love is the only principle that is the bedrock of humanity. Violence has no place in the spirit of love.

So, I would like to conclude with what Tolstoy has said about love. He said that the message of love was given by all the prophets. With the spirit of love, we need to work to promote humanity, brotherhood, and sisterhood.

We need to work hard to ensure that the democratic rights enshrined in our Constitution are implemented on the ground, and that minorities, weaker sections, and marginalized communities are given their due rights.

And all those who have become self-appointed guardians of the country, who are promoting majoritarianism, must be challenged. But our struggles should always be democratic and guided by the true spirit of love.

This is how we can make India stronger.

 [This is an excerpt from the speech delivered online by the author, to the students of St. Joseph University, Dimapur, Nagaland, on October 5, 2026. It has been slightly edited for clarity and flow.]

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Understanding power through caste: Dr. Ambedkar’s contribution to the sociology of law

My Ambedkar is a leftist Ambedkar

The post Why Majoritarianism today is the single most acute threat to democracy appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The students travelled to Mumbai by bus and on foot after seeking permission to protest at Azad Maidan. According to the Times of India, the students said they had received no response to their request for permission and, having nowhere to stay in Mumbai, were accommodated overnight at the Maharashtra Congress headquarters, Tilak Bhavan, in Dadar.

The Congress alleged that police action began around midnight, with personnel entering or attempting to enter Tilak Bhavan and threatening students with detention and police cases. Maharashtra Congress president Harshvardhan Sapkal claimed that students, including women, were taken into custody and that police also detained NSUI functionaries. The report by Hindustan Times provided that the party further alleged that students were stopped around 3 a.m., photographed and that a bus carrying protesters was taken into custody.

The reported police action has drawn strong criticism from Congress leaders. Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh called the Maharashtra government “Adivasi-virodhi”, while Sapkal warned that Congress leaders would gherao Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis’ official residence, Varsha, if the detained students and party workers were not released. Leader of Opposition and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi also criticised the government over the treatment of the protesting students.

महाराष्ट्र के छात्र फडणवीस सरकार की शिक्षा व्यवस्था और अन्याय से त्रस्त हैं।

आदिवासी छात्र अपनी माँगें लेकर मुंबई पहुँचे – कुछ बस से, और कुछ पैदल चलकर।

उनकी माँगें क्या हैं? आदिवासी आश्रमशालाओं और छात्रावासों में बुनियादी सुविधाएँ। छात्रवृत्ति। वही चीज़ें जो किसी भी बच्चे का हक़ हैं।

मुंबई में रुकने की जगह नहीं थी, तो कांग्रेस ने उन्हें तिलक भवन में ठहराया। और आज सुबह होने से पहले – पुलिस कांग्रेस कार्यालय के अंदर घुसी और इन बच्चों को उठाकर ले गई। आज़ाद मैदान पर प्रदर्शन शुरू होने से पहले ही। जो बच्चे नासिक से पैदल चलकर आए, उनको ये जवाब मिला।

उधर पुणे में MPSC के अभ्यर्थी सत्याग्रह पर बैठे हैं। ये माँगें नई नहीं हैं – मैंने मुख्यमंत्री फडणवीस से इन पर बात की थी। तब कुछ नहीं हुआ। इसीलिए आज ये बच्चे सड़क पर हैं।

मैं और कांग्रेस पार्टी महाराष्ट्र के छात्रों के साथ खड़े हैं। हम एक इंच भी पीछे नहीं हटेंगे।

— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) October 5, 2026

आदिवासी बांधवांनी आपल्या न्याय्य हक्कांसाठी आंदोलन करणे हा गुन्हा आहे का? सरकार नेमके स्वतःला काय समजते?

आपल्या न्याय्य मागण्यांसाठी नाशिकहून पायी मुंबईपर्यंत आलेले आदिवासी विद्यार्थी, महाराष्ट्र प्रदेश काँग्रेस कमिटीच्या टिळक भवन या मुख्यालयात मुक्कामी थांबले होते. मात्र मध्यरात्रीपासून पोलीस बेकायदेशीर रित्या, टिळक भवनमध्ये घुसून या विद्यार्थ्यांवर दबाव निर्माण करत आहेत, त्यांना धमकावत आहेत आणि चुकीच्या पद्धतीने अटकेची कारवाई केली जात आहे.

हे अत्यंत गंभीर आणि निषेधार्ह आहे.

आपल्या हक्कांसाठी शांततेच्या मार्गाने आवाज उठवणाऱ्या आदिवासी विद्यार्थ्यांशी सरकारने संवाद साधला पाहिजे. त्यांच्या समस्या ऐकल्या पाहिजेत. त्याऐवजी त्यांना पोलीस बळाच्या जोरावर दडपण्याचा प्रयत्न कशासाठी?

लोकशाहीत प्रश्न विचारणे गुन्हा नाही. न्याय मागणे गुन्हा नाही. आंदोलन करणे गुन्हा नाही.

महाराष्ट्र हा कायद्याचा, लोकशाहीचा आणि सामाजिक न्यायाचा सन्मान करणारा प्रदेश आहे. त्या महाराष्ट्रात न्याय मागणाऱ्या आदिवासी विद्यार्थ्यांशी संवाद करण्याऐवजी, सरकार त्यांना बेड्या ठोकत आहे.

सरकारच्या या दडपशाहीच्या भूमिकेचा आम्ही तीव्र निषेध करतो. आदिवासी विद्यार्थ्यांच्या लढ्यात आम्ही ठामपणे त्यांच्या पाठीशी आहोत.

— Balasaheb Thorat (@bb_thorat) October 5, 2026

सुलतान फडणवीसांच्या पोलिसांना महाराष्ट्र काँग्रेसच्या मुख्यालयात घुसण्याचा अधिकार कोणी दिला?

आदिवासी विद्यार्थ्यांचा आवाज दाबण्यासाठी आता काँग्रेसच्या टिळक भवनपर्यंत फडणवीसांचे शेकडो पोलीस फौजफाट्यासह पोहोचले आहेत. विद्यार्थ्यांना अटक करण्यासाठी राजकीय पक्षाच्या कार्यालयात घुसणं ही केवळ पोलिसी कारवाई नाही, तर लोकशाहीच्या मर्यादांवरच प्रश्नचिन्ह आहे.

फडणवीसजी, आज सत्ता तुमची असेल; पण महाराष्ट्र तुमची खासगी जहागीर नाही! विरोधकांचा आवाज आणि विद्यार्थ्यांचा संघर्ष पोलीस बळाने दाबता येणार नाही.

टिळक भवनमध्ये घुसलेल्या पोलिसांनी लक्षात ठेवावं, काँग्रेस कार्यकर्ते आणि स्वाभिमानी आदिवासी विद्यार्थी घाबरणार नाहीत, झुकणार नाहीत!

— Maharashtra Congress (@INCMaharashtra) October 5, 2026

नाशिकहून पायी मोर्चा काढून मुंबईत आलेले आदिवासी विद्यार्थी टिळक भवन येथे मुक्कामी थांबले असताना, मध्यरात्रीपासून पोलीस बळाचा वापर करून कार्यालयात जबरदस्तीने घुसत आहेत. विद्यार्थ्यांशी अरेरावी करत त्यांना धमकावून ताब्यात घेण्याचा प्रयत्न सुरू आहे.

पोलिसांनी बेकायदेशीरपणे आमच्या कार्यालयात घुसून आदिवासी विद्यार्थ्यांना धमकावणे आणि जबरदस्तीने ताब्यात घेण्याचे प्रयत्न तातडीने थांबवावेत.

कायदा आणि सुव्यवस्था राखण्याची जबाबदारी असलेल्या पोलिसांकडूनच कायद्याचे उल्लंघन होत असेल, तर ही गंभीर बाब आहे.

आदिवासी विद्यार्थ्यांचा आवाज दडपण्याचा हा प्रयत्न आम्ही कदापि यशस्वी होऊ देणार नाही. विद्यार्थ्यांच्या न्याय्य हक्कांसाठी काँग्रेस पक्ष ठामपणे त्यांच्या पाठीशी उभा आहे.

@MumbaiPolice @CMOMaharashtra @Dev_Fadnavis

— Harshwardhan Sapkal (@INCHarshsapkal) October 5, 2026

The allegations have been disputed by the Mumbai Police. As reported by Times of India, DCP Manish Kalwaniya said that no one was arrested from Tilak Bhavan and that protesters who were planning to march towards Lok Bhavan, the Governor’s official residence, were detained from different locations. Police said legal action was being taken against those participating in the proposed march.

The confrontation comes against the backdrop of a larger dispute over the safety, dignity and living conditions of students in Maharashtra’s tribal residential education system. The students’ demands extend beyond scholarships to basic facilities, food, sanitation, medical care and accountability for deaths and injuries in hostels and ashram schools. After weeks of protest in Nashik, their decision to march to Mumbai was an attempt to press the state government directly on these unresolved grievances.

There were also accusations of women protestors being detained and denied access to food or washrooms, and being driven around the city with no breaks.

On the night of Oct 4–5, Adivasi student protesters with NSUI were picked up by Mumbai Police without notice or warrant and allegedly subjected to inhuman treatment. Yes, they had no permission to protest at Azad Maidan. But neither did the “Cockroach Janta Party”, who got VIP treatment and full media glare.
Why the differential treatment for Marathi-speaking Adivasi students protesting for months against brutal conditions in tribal welfare department schools?
Is the BJP scared of the Congress?
#AdivasiStudents #Mumbai #AzadMaidan #Maharashtra #StudentProtests #TribalRights #NSUI

— Teesta Setalvad (@TeestaSetalvad) October 5, 2026

The contrast with the treatment of the Cockroach Janta Party’s protest just days earlier is striking. On October 2, the CJP went ahead with a large gathering at Mumbai’s Shivaji Park despite Mumbai Police having denied permission. Hundreds, and according to reports thousands, gathered at the venue, even as police deployed around 500 personnel. The protest proceeded, with participants publicly demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. The police subsequently registered an FIR against the organisers and 400–500 unidentified persons, but there were no reports of a comparable midnight operation to prevent protesters from assembling in the first place.

The Adivasi students, by contrast, were stopped before they could reach their proposed protest site. Having marched from Nashik to Mumbai to raise demands concerning scholarships, hostel conditions, food, safety and accountability for deaths in tribal institutions, they were detained from different locations, while Congress alleged that police entered party offices where students had taken shelter. Mumbai Police has disputed the allegation of arrests from the Congress office and said those planning to march towards Lok Bhavan were detained.

The difference raises an uncomfortable question about how the right to protest is being enforced in Maharashtra: why was a large, unauthorised political protest allowed to proceed and dealt with through a subsequent FIR, while Adivasi students who had travelled hundreds of kilometres to press demands over basic educational and living conditions faced preventive detention before their protest could even begin? The contrast is particularly stark when the students’ demands concern their fundamental access to dignity, education and safe living conditions.

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The post From Nashik to Mumbai: Adivasi students’ protest meets police detentions appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The incidents documented this month of September range from demands linked to the Mathura temple-mosque dispute and provocative religious sloganeering outside a mosque to warnings against alleged “infiltrators”, claims of Hindu demographic decline and repeated exhortations to acquire weapons. While the speakers and settings differ, the rhetoric follows recognisable patterns of exclusion and otherisation.

From a place of worship to a demand for its “liberation”

Location: Basti, Uttar Pradesh

Date: September 4

On the occasion of Krishna Janmashtami, Vishva Hindu Mahasangh leader Akhilesh Singh asserted that if those celebrating Janmashtami had taken an oath to celebrate it only after demolishing the mosque in Mathura, similar to the Babri Masjid, and “freeing” the temple, it would have been “freed” long ago. He claimed that Krishna had been imprisoned in a jail and that the temple had been occupied. He also announced a march for “Krishna Janmabhoomi” in October.

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On September 4 in Basti, Uttar Pradesh, Vishva Hindu Mahasangh leader Akhilesh Singh used the occasion of Krishna Janmashtami to invoke the Mathura mosque-temple dispute. He said that if those celebrating Janmashtami had taken an oath to celebrate it only after demolishing the mosque in Mathura, “like the Babri Masjid”, and “freeing” the temple, it would have been “freed” long ago. He also announced a march for “Krishna Janmabhoomi” in October.

The significance of this rhetoric lies in the transformation of a contested place of worship into a religious obligation. The mosque is not presented simply as a structure involved in an ongoing legal and political dispute. Its presence is rhetorically framed as an obstacle to the fulfilment of a Hindu religious claim.

The invocation of the Babri Masjid demolition is particularly concerning. A constitutional and legal dispute over a place of worship is thereby connected to a historical episode in which a mosque was demolished by a extremist mobilisation. The language of “liberation” further recasts the removal of a Muslim religious site as an act of religious restoration. This is one of the recurring mechanisms through which religious difference becomes exclusionary: a particular religious community is represented as occupying space that rightfully belongs to another.

When religious practice becomes a public assertion against Muslims

Location: Achalpur, Amravati, Maharashtra

Date: September 8

During a grand Kanwar Yatra organised by Jableshwar Baba Mitra Mandal, participants recited the Hanuman Chalisa and raised “Jai Shri Ram” slogans outside a mosque, with former MP Navneet Rana seen reciting the Hanuman Chalisa. The religious recitation and slogan-shouting reportedly led to brief communal tension, following which security was tightened in the area.

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A similar dynamic appeared in Achalpur, Amravati, on September 8, where participants in a Kanwar Yatra organised by Jableshwar Baba Mitra Mandal recited the Hanuman Chalisa and raised “Jai Shri Ram” slogans outside a mosque. Former MP Navneet Rana was seen participating in the recitation. The incident reportedly generated brief communal tension, after which security was increased.

When religious activity is deliberately performed outside another community’s place of worship and accompanied by slogans that have acquired a powerful political resonance, religion can cease to function merely as an expression of personal faith. It can become a public demonstration of dominance, particularly where the immediate setting is already communally sensitive. The issue, therefore, is not the Hanuman Chalisa itself. It is the use of religious symbolism in a setting where the identity of another religious community becomes part of the spectacle.

Constructing the Muslim as the outsider

Location: Howrah, West Bengal

Date: September 11

A Hindu nationalist speaker, defending religious preacher Dhirendra Shastri’s comment about banning non-vegetarian food from Durga Puja, warned that anyone who insulted a saint again would be “beaten so badly” that they would be unable to get up. He targeted those he termed “Bangladeshi infiltrators”, accusing them of disrespecting Bengali culture and vandalising Durga Puja pandals, breaking Saraswati idols, and setting fire to pandals. He named Muslim leaders from opposition parties and alleged that such people had “become Bengalis” and accused “intellectuals” of abusing Hindus who worship Durga and Saraswati. He claimed that efforts had begun in Bengal to get rid of this “drug” from their minds.

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In Howrah, West Bengal, on September 11, a Hindu nationalist speaker defending religious preacher Dhirendra Shastri’s remarks on non-vegetarian food during Durga Puja threatened that anyone who insulted a saint again would be “beaten so badly” that they would be unable to get up. The speech then moved from defending a religious figure to identifying an alleged enemy.

The speaker referred to people he described as “Bangladeshi infiltrators” and accused them of disrespecting Bengali culture, vandalising Durga Puja pandals, breaking Saraswati idols and setting fire to pandals. Muslim political leaders were named, while “intellectuals” were accused of abusing Hindus who worship Durga and Saraswati. This is a familiar form of otherisation: disparate questions of nationality, religion, culture, political affiliation and alleged criminality are collapsed into a single hostile category.

The label “Bangladeshi infiltrator” is particularly potent in this construction. It does not merely describe an alleged immigration status. In the speech, it becomes attached to a broader image of the Muslim as someone who does not belong to Bengal, does not respect its culture and is therefore positioned outside the legitimate social body. The result is a rhetorical equation in which defending Hindu religious culture is presented as requiring resistance to an allegedly Muslim threat.

From demographic anxiety to militarisation

Location: Rasdhan, Kanpur Dehat, Uttar Pradesh

Date: September 14

During a Ganesh Utsav program, far-right monk Madhuram Sharan Shiva, leader of the armed monks’ group Shiva Shakti Akhada, invoked Partition to claim that Hindus were again facing a similar “tragedy” because they were “weapon less.” He claimed that 10 lakh Hindus were killed during Partition and suggested that a similar number of “Miya” could have been killed had Hindus been armed. He contrasted Hindus’ worship of Ram with his killing of demons and urged Hindus to take up weapons to protect their religion. He also alleged that Hindus were converting to Christianity and Islam because they lacked knowledge of Hindu deities and religious teachings. He urged organisers to establish classes in temples to teach children aged 6–14 about Hindu deities, arguing that merely installing Ganesh idols was not enough to establish dharma.

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The speeches by far-right monk Madhuram Sharan Shiva across Uttar Pradesh in September took this logic further. At a Ganesh Utsav programme in Rasdhan, Kanpur Dehat, on September 14, Shiva invoked Partition to claim that Hindus were again facing a similar “tragedy” because they were “weapon less”. He referred to the deaths of Hindus during Partition and suggested that a comparable number of “Miya” could have been killed had Hindus been armed. He invoked Ram’s killing of demons and urged Hindus to take up weapons to protect their religion.

Location: Kanpur Nagar, Uttar Pradesh

Date: September 15

During a Ganesh Utsav program, far-right monk Madhuram Sharan Shiva, leader of the armed monks’ group Shiva Shakti Akhada, questioned why the Ganesh idol does not carry weapons and alleged that Hindus were gradually declining across the world because they had abandoned weapons. He claimed that religious scriptures are torn and places of worship destroyed when Hindus do not practise weapons training, asserting that “if there is knowledge of dharma and shaastra (religious scriptures), that knowledge is incomplete without weapons.”

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The following day, at another Ganesh Utsav programme in Kanpur Nagar, he questioned why the Ganesh idol did not carry weapons and argued that religious knowledge was incomplete without weapons.

Location: Makhi, Unnao, Uttar Pradesh

Date: September 16

During a Ganesh Utsav program, far-right monk Madhuram Sharan Shiva, leader of the armed monks’ group Shiva Shakti Akhada, fearmongered about the decline of the Hindu population, citing Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh and alleging that Hindu populations in nine states had fallen from around 90% to as low as 5–10%, leaving Hindus unable to organise religious events. He claimed that religious scriptures are torn and places of worship destroyed when Hindus do not practise weapons training, alleging that more than 500,000 temples were destroyed over 500 years. He questioned why “no god” came to protect temples when the Ram temple and Somnath temple were destroyed, arguing that Hindu religious teachings require Hindus to protect their own faith and that “without weapons, protection is impossible.” He urged Hindus to study their religious scriptures and become “dharma yoddhas,” declaring that those who carry weapons become “veers” (brave warriors).

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On September 16 in Makhi, Unnao, the rhetoric centred on alleged Hindu demographic decline. Shiva invoked Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh and made claims about the Hindu population having fallen dramatically in several Indian states. He also alleged that hundreds of thousands of temples had been destroyed over centuries and asked why Hindu gods had not protected temples such as the Ram temple and Somnath. His conclusion was that Hindus themselves must become “dharma yoddhas” and that protection of the faith was impossible without weapons.

The argument begins with fear. Hindus are portrayed as a community in demographic decline, surrounded by hostile forces and historically dispossessed of temples. That fear is then connected to a solution: Hindu unity, physical preparedness and weapons. Religion thus becomes not simply an identity but a justification for militarisation.

The invocation of Hindu gods and religious texts plays an important role in this process. Religious figures are selectively interpreted through the vocabulary of battle, while the distinction between spiritual instruction and physical confrontation is deliberately narrowed. The implied message is that to be a sufficiently committed Hindu, one must be prepared to defend the community against an identified adversary.

The making of an internal enemy

The rhetoric also repeatedly moves beyond an abstract “threat” to identify Muslims as the people against whom Hindu unity must be consolidated. That distinction matters. A speech about preserving one’s religion does not automatically constitute hate speech. But when religious preservation is constructed through the identification of another religious community as dangerous, disloyal, invasive or responsible for historical and contemporary grievances, religious identity becomes a mechanism of exclusion.

The September speeches repeatedly follow this trajectory. Muslims are represented variously as occupants of Hindu sacred spaces, cultural outsiders, demographic threats, political enemies or people against whom Hindus must physically organise. The vocabulary changes, but the underlying structure remains strikingly similar.

From “Hindu culture” to political ownership

Location: Dongri, Mumbai, Maharashtra

Date: September 23

During a Ganesh celebration, BJP MLA Nitesh Rane declared that India was a Hindu Rashtra and said that in Dongri he wanted to hear “Har Har Mahadev” and not “I Love Mohammed”, while describing the government as one based on Hindutva ideology. He also referred to Muslims as “green snakes” and said he would always stand with Hindus in disputes with Muslims.

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The September 23 incident in Mumbai brought this directly into electoral and political language. During a Ganesh celebration in Dongri, BJP MLA Nitesh Rane declared that India was a Hindu Rashtra and said that he wanted to hear “Har Har Mahadev” rather than “I Love Mohammed” in Dongri. He described the government as one based on Hindutva ideology, referred to Muslims as “green snakes” and said he would stand with Hindus in disputes involving Muslims. Here, religious identity is explicitly linked to political authority and territorial belonging.

Dongri is not merely a neighbourhood in this formulation. It becomes a symbolic site in which one religious expression is presented as belonging and another as something that should not be heard. The contrast between “Har Har Mahadev” and “I Love Mohammed” is particularly revealing. It converts religious expression into a test of communal ownership: one slogan is presented as appropriate to the space, while the other is implicitly marked as alien. The reference to Muslims as “green snakes” goes a step further by reducing an entire religious community to a dehumanising metaphor.

A recurring grammar of exclusion

Read individually, these incidents come from different contexts. Taken together, however, they reveal a recurring rhetorical grammar.

First step: Sacred injury- A mosque is presented as occupying a Hindu sacred site. A temple is described as having been destroyed. A religious figure is portrayed as having been insulted. Hindu festivals are presented as being under threat.

Second step: Collective identification- The alleged perpetrator is no longer an individual. “Muslims”, “Miya”, “Bangladeshi infiltrators” or an undefined Muslim political establishment become collective categories.

Third step: Invoke fear- The community is portrayed as demographically declining, culturally threatened, historically victimised or physically vulnerable.

Final step: Mobilisation- The proposed response ranges from marches and public religious assertions to demands for religious unity and, in the most extreme speeches, weapons training and physical confrontation.

This progression is important because hate speech does not always begin with an explicit call for violence. It can begin by changing how a community is imagined. A mosque becomes an encroachment. A Muslim becomes an outsider. A demographic change becomes an existential threat. A historical grievance becomes a present danger. Religious self-defence becomes a justification for arming. And eventually, violence or confrontation can be presented as the logical consequence of protecting the community.

Religion as an instrument of otherisation

The central issue running through these September incidents is therefore not religious belief itself. It is the political use of religious identity to divide the population into those who supposedly belong and those who supposedly threaten that belonging. Hindu festivals provide the setting. Temples and mosques provide the symbols. Religious figures provide moral authority. Historical episodes provide grievance. Demographic claims provide fear. Political slogans provide mobilisation. Muslims are repeatedly positioned at the other end of this construction.

This matters because constitutional secularism does not require citizens to abandon their religions. It requires the State and public institutions to recognise citizens as equal members of the political community regardless of religion. The danger in this rhetoric lies precisely in the opposite proposition: that religious identity determines who has a stronger claim to public space, cultural legitimacy or political belonging.

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The post ‘Free the Temple’, ‘Protect the Faith’, ‘Take Up Weapons’: How September’s festivals became stages for anti-Muslim hate appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The SIR Investigation Report – A Narrative of Betrayal and Tears, released by the Anti-SIR Alliance and Citizens’ Vote Protection Committee, examines the implementation of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Karnataka. The report is based on voter-roll data, a survey of Booth Level Officers (BLOs), testimonies from affected voters and a continuing ground-level inquiry across 100 polling booths in 25 districts. It is based on voter-roll data, field investigations, and testimonies from voters and Booth Level Officers, the report examines large-scale deletions, notices issued to voters, and the difficulties faced by marginalised communities in retaining their names on the electoral roll. The investigation raises important questions about the accuracy, transparency and accessibility of the SIR process and its implications for the right to vote in Karnataka.

The report is sharply critical of the way the SIR was conducted. It argues that the process placed an extraordinary burden on voters to establish their electoral eligibility and that errors in enumeration and voter mapping resulted in large numbers of genuine voters being left out of the draft electoral roll. Its central concern is that the burden of correcting these errors has been transferred from the electoral administration to individual citizens.

The findings are striking in Karnataka, where the report says 1.08 crore names were excluded from the draft electoral roll under the categories Absent, Shifted, Dead, Duplicate and Others (ASDDO). It also records the unusually large number of deletions in Bengaluru and the disproportionate impact reported in areas with substantial Dalit, Adivasi, Muslim, nomadic and other economically marginalised populations.

The report’s conclusions and allegations are those of the Anti-SIR Alliance and Citizens’ Vote Protection Committee. They should therefore be read as an investigation and critique by a civil-society coalition, rather than as an independent adjudication of every allegation.

How the SIR process unfolded in Karnataka

Given the Bihar 2025 SIR experience, followed by the mass scale exclusions in West Bengal, some groups in Karnataka were preparing for the SIR process to commence in Karnataka. The Anti-SIR Alliance says it organised more than 25 conferences across Karnataka between November 2025 and February 2026 and subsequently brought together progressive organisations and secular political parties under a common platform. Its stated objective was to prevent SIR from being implemented, while also preparing to assist voters if the process went ahead.

The report states that adequate public preparation by the State Election Commission (SEC) did not take place once SIR was announced. It says voters were not sufficiently informed about the procedure, the enumeration form, the mapping process, required documents or the significance of the previous electoral roll.

This was especially serious, according to the report, for rural communities, migrant workers, Adivasis, nomadic communities and others with limited access to digital information. Although the Election Commission announced thousands of voter facilitation centres, the report says many voters were unaware that such facilities existed.

Difficulties faced by BLOs

A significant section of the report concerns the workload and training of Booth Level Officers.

A survey conducted by the Citizens’ Vote Protection Committee found that 23% of BLOs surveyed said they had received no training, while among those who had received training, many had been trained for only a few hours. According to the report, 56.4% of trained BLOs said they understood the process only partially, while 7.8% said they did not understand it at all.

Who are the BLOs? BLOs were often teachers and Anganwadi workers who had to perform their regular duties alongside SIR-related work. In some booths they were responsible for more than 1,500 voters. The report says that more than 80% of surveyed BLOs reported being unable to cope with the workload and more than 90% said their health had deteriorated. It also records the deaths of five BLOs which, according to the report, occurred after severe work pressure and mental distress

The report therefore portrays the problems of SIR not simply as a conflict between voters and election officials, but also as a process that placed considerable pressure on officials responsible for implementing it.

The problem of “Absent” and “Shifted” categories

One of the most important findings concerns the classification of voters as Absent or Shifted.

The report says that workers who were away from home when a BLO visited — particularly people who leave early for work and return late — could be recorded as absent. It also argues that internal migrants and tenants who had moved from one address to another were frequently treated as permanently shifted instead of being assisted in transferring their registration to their new address.

This becomes especially significant because 65, 45, 679 voters were classified as Shifted in the draft data cited by the report — the largest of the ASDDO categories.

The report argues that migration within Karnataka cannot automatically mean that a person has ceased to be an eligible voter. It cites cases where people living at their existing addresses were nevertheless classified as permanently shifted.

One crore names disappear from the draft roll

The most dramatic figures in the report appear in its examination of the draft electoral roll. According to the report, the 2025 electoral roll contained 5, 52, 49,719 voters. The draft roll examined by the investigators contained 4, 44, 53, 380, representing a reduction of approximately 1.08 crore names, or 19.5% of the earlier electorate.

The report breaks the deletions down as follows:

• Absent: 15,17,042
• Shifted: 65,45,679
• Dead: 16,39,864
• Duplicate: 7,09,870
• Others: 3,83,884

The report highlights Bengaluru in particular. It records a fall from 1, 11, 16,111 voters to 48, 48,574, which it calculates as a 43.6% reduction. Outside Bengaluru, it puts the reduction at 13.5%.

The scale of the Bengaluru deletion is one of the report’s central questions. It compares the draft figures with the number of people who voted in the 2024 election and argues that the remaining electorate appears inconsistent with the city’s actual voting patterns and population dynamics.

Contemporary reporting also confirms the broad scale of the exercise: more than 1.08 crore Karnataka voters were placed in the ASDDO categories, while about 43.8 lakh voters were subsequently identified for notices because of mapping or other discrepancies. Reported the Indian Express.

Who was most affected?

The report pays particular attention to the geographical and social distribution of deletions.

It says that, outside Bengaluru, some of the highest deletion rates occurred in relatively backward districts such as Bidar, Yadgir, Kalaburagi, Raichur and Ballari. It also notes high deletion levels in several SC- and ST-reserved constituencies.

The report gives examples of constituencies with relatively high deletion rates, including Gulbarga North, Narasimharaja, Raichur, Davanagere South, Vijayapura City and Bidar. It argues that constituencies with substantial Muslim populations and several reserved constituencies experienced particularly high levels of deletion.

The field investigation goes further. According to the report, some of the polling booths with the highest deletions were in settlements inhabited by nomadic communities, Adivasis, Dalits, Muslims and other economically marginalised groups.

Women were also disproportionately represented among those classified as shifted, according to the report. It attributes this partly to migration following marriage and says that women accounted for 52% of notices compared with 48% for men.

Ground verification tells a different story

Rather than relying solely on electoral statistics, the investigators conducted house-to-house verification in selected booths. Using a volunteer-based digital system, they compared the 2025 electoral roll, the draft roll, ASDDO classifications and notice information with the actual situation of voters. The investigation was still incomplete when the report was prepared, but the organisation says that numerous discrepancies had already emerged

Among the cases recorded were voters who:

• never received an enumeration form;
• continued to live at the same address but were classified as shifted;
• had submitted their forms but were absent from the draft list;
• were marked absent even though they lived at the address;
• were classified as dead despite being alive.

One particularly striking example cited by the report comes from Bengaluru’s Narasimharaja Colony. Of approximately 1,300 people in the locality, the report says 826 were still living there, had filled and submitted their enumeration forms, but were nevertheless classified as shifted.

The report also records cases involving nomadic communities in Ballari, voters in Kalaburagi, and families in Kodagu and other districts.

In the “Dead” category, the investigators found cases where living citizens had been recorded as deceased and therefore removed from the electoral roll. The report argues that such errors are particularly serious because the affected individual is effectively required to prove that they are alive and eligible to vote.

Forty-three lakh voters received notices

The next stage of SIR produced another major concern.

According to the report, approximately 43 lakh voters received notices. Of these, around 23 lakhs were associated with the failure to map their details to the 2002 electoral roll, while another 20 lakhs were identified through what the Election Commission termed “Logical Discrepancy.”

The report questions the basis for some of these discrepancies. It says notices could be triggered by spelling differences in names, differences in recorded ages or inconsistencies in the recorded ages of family members.

For people without passports, school records or other documents, the process of assembling acceptable documentation could be particularly difficult. The report says that promised assistance in obtaining residence and caste certificates was not easily available in practice.

The report also claims that Muslims received a disproportionately high share of notices under the Logical Discrepancy category. It records 21.44% of such notices going to Muslim voters, compared with 5.63% of Muslim voters receiving notices on this basis, according to the report’s calculations.

These are claims made by the investigators and should be read in that context.

Civil society attempts to fill the gaps

The report also documents extensive efforts by civil-society groups to help voters navigate SIR. Help desks and facilitation centres were established in several districts. Organisations trained Booth Level Agents, assisted BLOs, helped voters fill forms and created digital tools for checking voter information.

Civil-society organisations also pressed for more time for enumeration and appeals. According to the report, the Election Commission eventually extended the enumeration period twice, by a total of 19 days

The investigation report therefore records not only opposition to SIR but also a large effort by voluntary organisations to help voters negotiate the system once it was underway.

The continuing problem of re-enrolment

By September 24, according to the report, 7, 70, 988 Form 6 applications had been submitted. However, these applications included new voters as well as people seeking re-inclusion after being left out.

The investigators estimate that only a fraction of the 1.08 crore excluded voters had been restored at that stage. They therefore warn that the final number of voters excluded could remain substantial even after the claims and objections process.

This raises one of the report’s fundamental concerns: whether an existing voter who has been wrongly removed should have to undergo a process like that of a first-time voter in order to regain their place on the electoral roll.

“Operation Form 7”

The report devotes a separate section to what it calls “Operation Form 7.”

It alleges that, between September 20 and 24, large numbers of Form 7 applications seeking deletion of voters were submitted in several constituencies. It cites examples from Moodigere, Babaleshwar, Bidar, Bhalki and other areas.

The report alleges that many of these applications sought deletion of Muslim voters and were associated with local BJP or Sangh Parivar office-bearers. It also raises questions about the volume and apparent coordination of the applications.

These allegations are among the most politically consequential claims in the report and would require investigation and independent verification before being treated as established facts.

What the report says is at stake

The Anti-SIR Alliance’s broader argument is that the Karnataka experience reveals structural weaknesses in the SIR process.

For the investigators, the central issue is not simply the number of names deleted. It is the shift in the burden of proof. Instead of the electoral administration demonstrating that a voter is no longer eligible, the report argues, ordinary citizens are being required to demonstrate their eligibility through documents, hearings and repeated applications.

The report contends that this burden falls most heavily on people who are already disadvantaged: migrant workers, tenants, Adivasis, nomadic communities, Dalits, minorities, women, elderly people and people with limited access to digital systems.

Its ground survey is particularly significant because it suggests that some of the statistical categories used for deletion do not always correspond to what investigators found at voters’ homes. At the same time, the report acknowledges that its investigation covered only 100 booths out of approximately 50,000 and was still incomplete. It therefore calls for a comprehensive investigation rather than claiming that its sample by itself establishes the situation across every polling station in Karnataka.

A question about democracy and the voter list

The report concludes by placing the Karnataka SIR controversy within a larger question about the functioning of electoral democracy.

Its principal demands include stopping the SIR process, restoring wrongly deleted voters, conducting a fresh and transparent revision of electoral rolls, strengthening the institutional independence of the Election Commission and ensuring that eligible voters are not excluded because of administrative errors or difficulties in producing documents.

The report’s larger message is straightforward: an electoral roll is not merely an administrative database. It determines who can exercise the most basic democratic right, the right to vote.

The Karnataka experience described in this investigation therefore raises questions that extend beyond individual errors. How should electoral rolls be cleaned without excluding genuine voters? Who should bear the burden of proving eligibility? How should the system protect migrants and people without extensive documentation? And what safeguards are necessary when technology, databases and centralised verification become increasingly important to electoral administration?

The Anti-SIR Alliance argues that these questions cannot be left to individual voters to resolve one notice, one document and one hearing at a time. It calls for a process in which accuracy, transparency and universal access to the franchise are treated as the primary principles of electoral-roll revision.

The report’s central warning is that correcting a voter list must never become a process through which legitimate voters disappear from it.

Source: SIR Investigation Report – A Narrative of Betrayal and Tears, Anti-SIR Alliance / Citizens’ Vote Protection Committee, 23-page report. This article summarises the report’s findings and arguments; allegations concerning political parties, officials or deliberate targeting are presented as claims made by the investigators and are not independently established here.

Related:

September 26 ECI Press Note: Does it not render SIR redundant?

SIR row: ‘Enough is enough’: Civil society demands rollback of voter revision, accountability from ECI

Youth Congress escalates fight against CEC Gyanesh Kumar as SIR controversy fuels nationwide protests

A chargesheet against the ECI’s “All Is Well” defence

The post Karnataka: SIR Interrogated appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The protest followed a September 18 illegal search of the residence of Harshada, a 26-year-old student and volunteer with the group. e incident, which took place on September 18 and continued into the early hours of September 19, followed a September 15 kite-flying event organised in solidarity with children in Gaza. The event formed part of the Global Gaza Kite Weekend, an international campaign in which participants flew kites to draw attention to the situation of Palestinian children.

According to Mid-Day, Harshada alleged that five members of the group who were at her residence during the search were prevented from leaving while the police operation was underway. The incident has prompted concerns among members of the solidarity group about the treatment of young activists involved in Palestine-related advocacy.

At the Azad Maidan protest, activists demanded an end to what they described as harassment linked to the kite-flying programme and other solidarity activities. Chayanika Shah of Mumbai 4 Peace also joined the protest against the alleged harassment of young women activists by the Mumbai Police.

The protesters maintained that their activities were intended to express solidarity with Palestinian children and called for activists to be allowed to undertake such peaceful forms of expression without intimidation.

Related:

Palestine solidarity kite event followed by nine-hour police search in Mumbai

SIR row: ‘Enough is enough’: Civil society demands rollback of voter revision, accountability from ECI

Youth Congress escalates fight against CEC Gyanesh Kumar as SIR controversy fuels nationwide protests

Women journalists who were attacked prevented from reporting, protest attacks

“If I Believe in Democracy, How Can I Give Up Hope?”| Umar Khalid: 2,190 Days | Banojyotsna | Teesta

The post ‘Solidarity Is Not a Crime’: Mumbai activists protest alleged police harassment over Palestine event appeared first on SabrangIndia.

·         Muslim thinkers have often interpreted the West through Islamic ideals and secondary sources instead of studying Western civilization on its own terms.

·         The ideas of Shariati, Mawdudi, Qutb, and Nadwi provide important critiques of Western materialism, imperialism, and secularism, but remain largely reactive in their approach.

·         A balanced comparison must distinguish between Western ideals and practices, as well as Islamic ideals and the actual practices of Muslim societies.

·         Madrasas and Islamic universities should introduce specialized Western studies based on primary sources, including Western history, philosophy, political theory, and social institutions.

·         Genuine understanding of the West is essential for addressing modernity, migration, Islamophobia, democracy, liberty, feminism, and global political and economic challenges

Muslims have long struggled to understand the West, often relying on secondary sources and comparing Western practices with Islamic ideals rather than engaging with Western realities on their own terms. This fundamental methodological error has produced a distorted picture of Western civilization, fostering false notions of Islamic superiority while leaving Muslim societies ill-equipped to navigate the complexities of modernity, migration, Islamophobia, and ideological contestation. The path forward requires a radical reorientation: understanding the West from its own sources, recognizing its internal contradictions and achievements, and building specialized knowledge institutions, particularly in madrasas and Islamic universities, that can produce genuine comprehension rather than reactive polemic.

Westoxification and the Legacy of Shariati

The Iranian philosopher Ali Shariati coined the term “Westoxification” (Gharbzadegi) to describe a civilizational malaise afflicting Muslim societies, an intoxication with Western materialism, technology, and values that erodes Islamic identity and revolutionary potential. Shariati argued that Western-dominated modernization serves the market interests of European industrialists, converting non-Europeans into consumers of surplus production while blunting their resistance to imperialist domination. For Shariati, this was not merely cultural imitation but a deeper spiritual and political poisoning, the westernized Iranian generation abandoned religion as useless for resolving contemporary problems, accepting West-constructed values that declared Islam irrelevant to modern challenges.

Shariati’s critique extended beyond governments to Western intellectuals themselves, positioning Westoxification as a degenerative but ultimately rational disease with identifiable causes, symptoms, and potential cures. He distinguished between “Red Shi’ism” (revolutionary, populist, aligned with the oppressed) and “Black Shi’ism” (clericalized, state-sanctioned distortion), attempting to reformulate Islam as an ideology of liberation for the mustadh’afin (the dispossessed). Yet even Shariati’s sophisticated analysis remained partly reactive, framing Islam primarily in opposition to Western capitalism and imperialism rather than developing an independent epistemology for understanding Western civilization from within.

Mawdudi, Qutb, and Nadwi: Three Visions of the West

The twentieth-century Islamic thinkers Sayyid Abul A’la Mawdudi, Sayyid Qutb, and Syed Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi, each developed distinct approaches to understanding the West, yet all shared a tendency to interpret Western civilization through Islamic categories rather than engaging Western sources directly. Mawdudi’s political thought derived from Qur’anic interpretation provided an alternative to Western ideologies, but his framework treated Western concepts as responses to be countered rather than systems to be comprehended on their own terms. Qutb radicalized this approach, presenting the confrontation with Islam as motivated by an overriding objective to destroy Islamic doctrine.

Nadwi offered a more nuanced position, criticizing blind imitation and servility to Western civilization while advocating critical appraisal rather than complete severance from Western achievements. He identified the West’s nineteenth-century dominance as stemming from superior knowledge and education, not inherent civilizational superiority, and emphasized spirituality and morality in Islam as contrasts to Western materialism. Nadwi drew fault lines in Western philosophy by highlighting its dependence on the material while pushing spiritual and moral development behind, characterizing the modern world by imperialism, capitalism, and communism exported to the Third World. Yet even Nadwi, who cannot be accused of Westophobia and stood for proper understanding and appreciation of the West, ultimately framed his analysis within Islamic categories of knowledge rather than developing a methodology for reading Western thought from primary sources.

The Methodological Error: Comparing Practices with Ideals

The fundamental error in Muslim reformist and revivalist thought lies in comparing Western peoples’ practices with Islamic ideals, creating an illusion of Islamic superiority while obscuring the gap between Islamic ideals and Muslim masses’ actual practices. This methodological flaw produced what scholars have called a “wrong superiority” belief: reformists measured Western reality against Islamic perfection while measuring Islamic reality against Western imperfection, generating a distorted comparative framework. A proper approach would compare Western practices with Muslim practices of the masses, and Western ideals with Islamic ideals, revealing both civilizations’ gaps between aspiration and reality.

This error had profound consequences. By not understanding the West from its own sources, Muslim thinkers failed to grasp the internal dynamics of Western thought, the historical development of concepts like democracy and liberty, and the genuine achievements of Western science and philosophy. Instead, they produced reactive critiques that, while often insightful about Western materialism and imperialism, remained trapped within an Islamic epistemological framework that could not genuinely comprehend Occidental civilization. The result was a body of thought that could diagnose Westoxification but could not produce the specialized knowledge needed to navigate Western modernity strategically.

The West as Enigma: Why Understanding Matters

The West remains an enigma to many Muslims precisely because it has been understood through secondary sources, polemical frameworks, and reactive critiques rather than direct engagement with Western texts, institutions, and intellectual traditions. This ignorance has practical consequences: Muslim societies cannot effectively respond to Western foreign policy, cannot navigate migration and integration challenges, cannot counter Islamophobia with sophisticated arguments, and cannot build institutions that produce genuine knowledge about Occidental civilization. The West is not merely an enemy or a source of toxins; it is a complex civilization with internal contradictions, genuine achievements, and historical developments that must be understood on their own terms.

Understanding the West matters for strategic reasons. Muslim societies face Western military power, economic dominance, and cultural influence, without comprehension of Western motivations, decision-making processes, and ideological foundations, Muslim responses remain reactive and often counterproductive. Migration has brought millions of Muslims to Western countries, creating diaspora communities that must navigate Western legal systems, political institutions, and social norms, ignorance of these systems produces marginalization and vulnerability to Islamophobia. Furthermore, Western concepts like democracy, feminism, and liberty have global influence, Muslims must understand these ideologies in their historical context to engage them critically rather than simply rejecting or uncritically adopting them.

Oriental and Occidental: Different Trajectories of Religion and Science

A crucial dimension of understanding the West involves recognizing the different historical trajectories of religion in Oriental (Islamic) and Occidental (Western) civilizations, particularly regarding the relationship between religion and science. In the West, religion experienced retrogradation, decline and marginalization, partly because it was perceived as hampering scientific progress, leading to the Enlightenment’s secularization of knowledge and the separation of religious ethics from secular power. This historical development produced a Western civilization where religion has been pushed to the periphery, resulting in what Nadwi called moral degeneration and spiritual malaise, but also enabling scientific and technological advances that gave the West global dominance.

In the Muslim world, by contrast, religion maintained a more central role in intellectual and social life, with madrasas and Islamic universities preserving religious knowledge while often failing to develop specialized knowledge about Western civilization. This difference has profound implications: Western secularization enabled certain forms of scientific progress but produced spiritual crisis, while Islamic retention of religious centrality preserved spiritual continuity but often at the cost of scientific and institutional development needed to compete with Western power. Understanding this divergence is essential for Muslims seeking to navigate modernity: neither simple Westernization nor reactive Islamization offers a viable path; instead, Muslims must develop institutions that can produce both religious knowledge and sophisticated understanding of Western civilization.

Madrasas and the Missing Specialization

Madrasas, the traditional Islamic educational institutions, have failed to teach specialized knowledge about the West, focusing instead on Islamic sciences while leaving students ignorant of Western thought, history, and institutions. This gap is particularly striking given that madrasas could have developed specialized departments for Western studies, producing scholars who understand the Occident from primary sources rather than through reactive polemics. Instead, madrasa curricula often reproduce the methodological error of comparing Western practices with Islamic ideals, generating graduates who can critique the West from an Islamic standpoint but cannot genuinely comprehend it on its own terms.

The consequences of this educational gap are severe. Muslim societies lack the specialized knowledge needed to navigate Western diplomatic institutions, understand Western legal systems, engage Western media, or counter Islamophobia with sophisticated arguments based on genuine comprehension rather than reactive defensiveness. Furthermore, madrasas have not produced the intellectual infrastructure needed to understand Western ideologies like feminism, democracy, and liberty in their historical context, leaving Muslim societies vulnerable to both uncritical adoption and blanket rejection of these concepts. Reforming madrasa education to include specialized Western studies, taught from primary sources, with methodological rigor, and without reactive polemic, would be a crucial step toward producing a generation capable of genuine understanding rather than Westoxified imitation or Westophobic rejection.

Understanding Western Freedoms and Ideologies in Context

Western concepts like feminism, democracy, freedom, and liberty must be understood in their historical and philosophical context, recognizing both their achievements and their limitations. These ideologies emerged from specific historical circumstances: the Enlightenment’s reaction against religious authority, the French Revolution’s overthrow of monarchy, the industrial revolution’s transformation of social relations, and the Cold War’s ideological contestation with communism. Understanding this context reveals that Western freedoms are not universal truths but historically contingent developments with both emancipatory and oppressive dimensions.

The Muslim world lacks the ecosystem that produced these ideologies: no Enlightenment, no industrial revolution, no bourgeois revolution, no Cold War ideological contestation. This absence means that importing Western concepts without understanding their historical genesis produces distorted outcomes: democracy becomes majoritarian tyranny without liberal protections, feminism becomes Western cultural imperialism without genuine gender justice, and liberty becomes license without moral responsibility. Muslims must understand these ideologies in their Western context to engage them critically: recognizing their genuine achievements (individual rights, rule of law, scientific progress) while identifying their limitations (materialism, spiritual crisis, imperialist deployment).

This understanding requires reading Western sources directly: Enlightenment philosophers, liberal political theorists, feminist thinkers, and democratic theorists must be studied in their own words, not through Islamic critiques or secondary summaries. Only through such direct engagement can Muslims develop the intellectual resources to engage Western ideologies strategically: adopting what serves Islamic values, rejecting what contradicts them, and transforming what can be Islamized. Without this comprehension, Muslim societies remain trapped between Westoxified imitation and Westophobic rejection, unable to navigate the complexities of modernity with intellectual independence.

Migration and Islamophobia: The Urgency of Understanding

Migration has brought millions of Muslims to Western countries, creating diaspora communities that must navigate Western legal systems, political institutions, and social norms while facing rising Islamophobia. This Islamophobia is not merely prejudice but a structured phenomenon with historical roots in Western Orientalism, colonial representations of Islam, and contemporary geopolitical conflicts. Understanding Islamophobia requires comprehending Western historical constructions of Islam, the role of media in reproducing stereotypes, and the political economy of xenophobia in post-industrial Western societies.

Muslim communities in the West face practical challenges that require sophisticated understanding of Western institutions: legal systems that protect religious freedom but also enforce secular norms, political institutions that offer representation but also reproduce structural discrimination, and social norms that value individual liberty but also produce isolation and anomie. Without comprehension of these dynamics, Muslim responses remain reactive: defensive assertions of Islamic identity that reinforce stereotypes, or assimilationist strategies that erase religious distinctiveness. A more strategic approach requires understanding Western institutions from within, identifying points of leverage for Muslim political participation, and developing arguments against Islamophobia based on genuine comprehension of Western values rather than reactive polemic.

Furthermore, Islamophobia is not merely a Western phenomenon but has global dimensions, affecting Muslim minorities worldwide and shaping Western foreign policy toward Muslim-majority countries. Understanding this global phenomenon requires comprehending Western strategic interests, the role of media in constructing Muslim threats, and the historical development of Orientalist representations that continue to shape Western perceptions of Islam. Without this understanding, Muslim responses remain trapped in reactive cycles that reinforce rather than challenge Islamophobic structures.

The West as Enemy, Criminal, and Crony Capitalist: Beyond Reactive Critique

Characterizing the West as enemy, criminal, or crony capitalist captures certain realities—Western imperialism, capitalist exploitation, and geopolitical aggression, while obscuring the complexity of Western civilization. The West has indeed exported imperialism, capitalism, and communism to the Third World, producing what Nadwi called aggressive nationalism destructive to the Muslim ummah. Western-dominated modernization serves market interests of European industrialists, converting non-Europeans into consumers while blunting resistance to domination. These critiques are valid and necessary.

Yet reducing the West to enemy or criminal obscures genuine achievements: scientific advances, legal innovations, philosophical developments, and institutional forms that have improved human welfare. Furthermore, this reactive framing traps Muslim thought in opposition rather than comprehension: the West becomes a caricature to be rejected rather than a civilization to be understood. A more sophisticated approach recognizes Western contradictions: genuine emancipation alongside imperialist domination, scientific progress alongside spiritual crisis, individual liberty alongside structural inequality.

This recognition enables strategic engagement rather than reactive rejection. Muslims can adopt Western scientific methods while rejecting materialist metaphysics, embrace rule of law while critiquing imperialist deployment, and value individual rights while insisting on moral responsibility. Such engagement requires understanding the West from its own sources, not through reactive polemics that capture partial truths while obscuring complexity. Only through such comprehension can Muslims navigate Western power strategically, adopting what serves Islamic values while rejecting what contradicts them.

Toward a New Epistemology: Understanding the West from Its Own Sources

The path forward requires a new epistemology for understanding the West: one that engages Western sources directly, recognizes Western complexity, and produces specialized knowledge institutions capable of genuine comprehension. This epistemology must overcome the methodological error of comparing Western practices with Islamic ideals, instead comparing Western practices with Muslim practices and Western ideals with Islamic ideals. It must read Western texts in their original languages, engage Western institutions through direct observation, and produce scholarship that comprehends rather than merely critiques.

Madrasas and Islamic universities must develop specialized departments for Western studies, producing scholars who understand the Occident from primary sources. These institutions should teach Western philosophy, political theory, history, and social science alongside Islamic sciences, enabling students to engage Western thought with intellectual rigor rather than reactive polemic. Furthermore, Muslim intellectuals must read Western sources directly: Enlightenment philosophers, liberal theorists, feminist thinkers, and democratic theorists must be studied in their own words, not through Islamic critiques.

This new epistemology must also recognize the different historical trajectories of Oriental and Occidental civilizations, particularly regarding religion and science. Understanding why religion experienced retrogradation in the West while maintaining centrality in the Muslim world enables Muslims to navigate modernity strategically: preserving spiritual continuity while developing the scientific and institutional capacities needed to compete with Western power. Such understanding requires comprehending Western freedoms and ideologies in their historical context, recognizing both their achievements and limitations, and engaging them critically rather than through uncritical adoption or blanket rejection.

Conclusion: The Imperative of Comprehension

Muslims must understand the West not as enemy or toxin but as enigma: a complex civilization with internal contradictions, genuine achievements, and historical developments that must be comprehended on their own terms. This understanding requires overcoming the methodological errors of past reformists, developing specialized knowledge institutions, and engaging Western sources directly rather than through reactive polemics. Without such comprehension, Muslim societies remain trapped between Westoxified imitation and Westophobic rejection, unable to navigate the complexities of modernity, migration, and Islamophobia with intellectual independence.

The stakes are high: Muslim communities face Western power, global Islamophobia, and ideological contestation that require sophisticated understanding rather than reactive critique. Only through genuine comprehension can Muslims develop the intellectual resources to engage Western civilization strategically: adopting what serves Islamic values, rejecting what contradicts them, and transforming what can be Islamized. This is not Westoxification but wisdom: understanding the Occident to navigate it, comprehend it, and ultimately transcend the false choice between imitation and rejection.

M. H. A. Sikander is Writer-Activist based in Srinagar, Kashmir.

Courtesy: New Age Islam

The post The West as Enigma: Why Muslims Must Understand the Occident on Its Own Terms appeared first on SabrangIndia.

However, as soon as The Indian Express, September 23, reported on the dissent of the other two Election Commissioners (Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi), who had raised objections to decisions of the Commission over the past ten months on the ground that they were legally untenable, the Election Commission suddenly convened a meeting on Saturday, September 26. Within just two hours, it took a series of decisions and immediately made them public.

What prevented the Commission from finding these same two hours at any point during the last ten months? 

The reality is that every decision taken “unanimously” at this belated meeting reads like an acknowledgement of the serious wrongs committed by the Commission since the SIR process began.

The Commission has now decided that electors flagged for “logical discrepancies” need not be summoned to its offices and made to stand in queues; officials will instead visit their homes and collect the necessary documents. 

It has also decided that, henceforth, agendas must be circulated in advance for all Commission meetings and minutes of the proceedings must be shared afterwards. Any changes to the Commission’s IT modules will now require the Commission’s approval. It has further directed that all officials must implement the Commission’s decisions strictly and without deviation.

These decisions are welcome. But are these not the most elementary procedural safeguards expected of any public institution that is accountable to the people? And does not the content of the September 26, 2026, press release of the ECI admit to a not so tacit admission of the ECI’s guilt?

By announcing that such basic institutional discipline will be followed from now on, is the Commission not effectively acknowledging that these procedures were not being followed by the Chief Election Commissioner until now?

Therefore, are not the Gyanesh Kumar’s ‘unilateral decisions’ illegal?

Under the 1995 law enacted by Parliament governing the functioning of the Election Commission, and the amendments made to it in 2023, the three-member Election Commission is required to take its decisions, as far as possible, unanimously and, where unanimity is not possible, by majority.

The Commission’s own decisions of September 26 indirectly make it clear that agendas of previously held meetings were not being provided to the other two Election Commissioners. Does this not amount to a violation of the law? Is Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar Gupta not accountable for such a violation? And can decisions taken without the unanimity or majority required by law be considered legally valid?

Seen in this context, the Commission’s September 26 decisions appear aimed primarily at containing the damage to its institutional credibility after allegations emerged that decisions were being taken unilaterally and in compliance with the Modi government’s directions. They contain no apparent mechanism for examining Gyanesh Kumar’s alleged violations or for remedying the serious consequences created by the SIR process.

That is not all.

The Commission has also failed to answer several crucial questions raised by the other two Election Commissioners and subsequently brought into the public domain by The Indian Express.

Questions left unanswered by the Commission’s “Unanimous Silence”

For instance, under the law, the final authority to decide whether a person should be included in or removed from the electoral roll rests with the local Electoral Registration Officer (ERO). But, as revealed by the other two Election Commissioners, ECINET, which is centrally controlled, was not even recording some of the decisions taken by these EROs.

Similarly, in West Bengal, a staggering 1.4 crore “logical discrepancy” notices were centrally generated without even bringing them to the attention of the local EROs. In Goa, despite the ERO repeatedly directing that 97 electors be included in the rolls—and despite the matter reportedly being brought to the Central Election Commission’s attention seven or eight times—their names were still not included.

These actions raise serious questions of legality, procedural and substantive. Such practices have already resulted in the disenfranchisement of crores of electors.

Yet the Commission’s unanimous statement of September 26 accepts no responsibility for what happened. In the Goa case, it merely says that BLOs will visit the homes of the 97 excluded electors and get the necessary forms filled. But it offers no comparable remedy for those affected in West Bengal.

Second, consider those excluded in West Bengal on the ground of “logical discrepancies.” Decisions concerning 38 lakh cases, after scrutiny of documents by lower-level adjudicatory authorities, have been challenged before tribunals. Of these, 22 lakh appeals were filed by affected electors who had been excluded from the rolls.

But what about the remaining 16 lakh cases in which, inexplicably the ECI has appealed inclusion of all these voters by officers at the district and constituency level? These were cases filed by the Election Commission itself against electors whose claims had been accepted at the lower-level proceedings and whose names had consequently been included in the electoral rolls!

And there is another crucial question: How is it that nearly 90 per cent of the cases filed by the Commission in West Bengal were against Muslims? Most importantly, The Indian Express has reported that neither the West Bengal CEO nor the other two Election Commissioners at the Centre were aware that the Commission itself had initiated these cases before the tribunals.

Yet the Commission’s September 26 statement provides no explanation whatsoever on this issue. Nor does it subject these actions to any review.

If that is so, what do the people gain from the Commission’s newly proclaimed “unanimous” decisions? The more fundamental question is this: Do the unanimous decisions of the three Election Commissioners protect people from the consequences of the SIR exercise—or are the decisions themselves riddled with contradictions?

Let us examine two of the Commission’s most important decisions:

What is the Remedy for States where the SIR has already been completed?

In an attempt to address the differential treatment that the Commission had been extending to VIPs and ordinary electors in cases involving “Logical Discrepancy” notices, the Commission has now decided that BLOs should visit the homes of electors who have received such notices and collect the required documents from them.

This is a welcome decision. But several fundamental questions remain.

a) The problem was never merely the distance between an elector’s home and the government office, or the time and expense involved in making that journey. The much deeper problem is that crores of Dalits, oppressed and marginalised people in this country simply do not possess the documents made mandatory under SIR.

The Commission’s newly declared “unanimous decisions” offer no remedy whatsoever for this fundamental problem.

b) What about electors in West Bengal and other states who have already lost their voting rights because they were not given such an opportunity within the prescribed deadline? Would extending this facility only now not amount to unequal treatment of those electors?

If this discrimination is genuinely to be remedied, should not the final electoral rolls in those states be kept in abeyance and affected electors be given the same opportunity to secure their voting rights?

And should elections already conducted based on such a discriminatory SIR process not also be annulled?

c) The September 26 statement similarly says that special assistance campaigns should be conducted in areas inhabited by the poor, homeless people and workers. But without extending the duration of the process, how can people in Karnataka and the other thirteen states currently undergoing the exercise benefit from this decision?

The Form 6 Trap!

One of the most important questions raised by the other two Election Commissioners concerns Form 6. Form 6 is the prescribed form for enrolment of new electors. Under Sections 22 and 23 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, the relevant requirements concern eligibility for registration, including citizenship, age and ordinary residence.

Under the SIR process, however, not only electors excluded from the existing rolls but even new applicants seeking enrolment have been required to submit, along with Form 6, a separate declaration and one of the 11 documents prescribed under SIR. For electors seeking ‘re-entry’ into the electoral roll following acts of exclusion committed by the ECI, are—in this controversial exercise—being asked to give declarations that they are first time voters, on oath. This declaration, in law is considered a false declaration because voters who have voted in previous polls have no other method provided for re-entry into the electoral roll! New applicants have also been required to establish that their parents were included in the electoral roll prepared during the previous SIR, where applicable. Applications not accompanied by the prescribed supporting documents were not being processed through ECINET.

This raises a fundamental question of legality.

Although the Election Commission is an autonomous constitutional body, its rule-making and electoral procedures operate within the framework of laws enacted by Parliament under Article 327 of the Constitution. Neither the Representation of the People Act, 1950 nor the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 prescribed these SIR-specific requirements for filing Form 6. Nor was the law amended to incorporate these additional conditions.

The contention, therefore, is that imposing such additional SIR-driven requirements through internal, administrative/bureaucratic directions, without corresponding statutory amendments, is legally untenable.

Silent on these contradictions, in the September 26 press note, the Commission has now unanimously offered a different justification. According to the Commission, the requirement under the SIR process to submit a declaration and supporting documents along with Form 6 cannot be considered unlawful because the Supreme Court, in its judgment of May 27, 2026, upheld this procedure.

That is the Commission’s defence.

Is this factually correct? Did the SC judgement rubber stamp the SIR Form 6 process?

The Commission’s claim is half true and half false.

a) The Election Commission introduced the above-mentioned SIR-related changes to Form 6 in July 2026. The Supreme Court delivered its judgment in May 2026. It is therefore incorrect to interpret the judgment as the Supreme Court having approved the amendments to the Form 6 that were introduced only later.

b) However, in paragraphs 152–153 of that judgment, the Supreme Court made it clear that any modifications to Form 6 must bear a rational nexus to the purpose for which SIR is being undertaken. In other words, such modifications can be justified only insofar as they contribute to ensuring the accuracy and integrity of the electoral rolls. The Election Commission, however, has so far provided no such rational justification for these changes.

Therefore, the Commission’s claim that the Form 6 changes already carry the Supreme Court’s approval is not entirely correct. Equally however, the Supreme Court did not categorically say that the Election Commission had no authority to make such modifications either. 

In paragraphs 152–161 of its judgment, the Court accepted the Commission’s justification for the documents, modifications and procedures adopted for implementing the SIR exercise in Bihar. It upheld the Commission’s authority to structure the SIR exercise and sustained the measures adopted in Bihar.

The fresh issue, however, is materially different: the allegation now is that the decision to modify Form 6 was taken unilaterally by the Commission, in violation of the statutory decision-making process.

Has the Commission’s September 26 note rendered the SIR process redundant?

There are, however, elements in the Election Commission’s new unanimous order of September 26 that indirectly render the very logic of SIR questionable, if not self-contradictory.

Neither the opposition parties nor the media appear to have paid sufficient attention to this aspect.

On Form 6, the September 26 order states:

“The declaration attached to Form 6 for SIR has been upheld by the Hon’ble Supreme Court. For non-SIR period, the Forms applicable as per Rules (the Registration of Electors Rules 1960) will be used.”

It further states:

“SIR has already been completed in 20 States/UTs including Bihar and West Bengal. Any person whose name has got left out during SIR or thereafter, and any person including young/ first-time voter, may apply to the concerned ERO, for inclusion of their names in the electoral rolls under the process of continuous updation. Chief Election Officers (CEOs) have been directed to facilitate the same. The CEOs, DEOs, EROs will immediately launch a special drive for enrolment of these electors.”

This has three important implications:

1) The additional documents and mapping requirements imposed along with Form 6 under SIR apply only during the SIR period.

2) During the non-SIR period—that is, after the SIR exercise ends—the ordinary requirements under the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 will once again apply.

3) Even in the 20 States and Union Territories where SIR has already been completed, people whose names were excluded from the final SIR rolls, as well as new electors, can seek enrolment again through the ordinary “process of continuous updation.”

What is the “Process of Continuous Updation”?

According to the Election Commission’s Manual on Electoral Rolls, 2023, continuous updation is the regular statutory process through which applications for inclusion, deletion, correction and related changes in electoral rolls are dealt with using Forms 6, 7 and 8 under the Representation of the People Act, 1950 and the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960.

What documents are required under this process?

They are not the special SIR documents.

Under the ordinary enrolment framework, an applicant makes the prescribed declaration and provides the applicable proof of age and ordinary residence. Documents ordinarily available to people—including Aadhaar and other prescribed or acceptable documents relating to age and residence—can be used in accordance with the applicable rules and Form 6 requirements.

And such enrolment can take place during the non-SIR period.

As already noted, the Commission’s September 26 decision itself says that during the non-SIR period, the forms prescribed under the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 will apply.

This produces an extraordinary situation, a duality:

A person excluded from the electoral roll during SIR can, after SIR ends, seek to return to the electoral roll through the ordinary continuous-updation process—without being subjected to the same SIR-specific documentary regime.

If that is so, what purpose does SIR serve? Does the Commission’s own unanimous order not expose a fundamental contradiction at the heart of the entire SIR exercise?

If electors who fail to satisfy the special SIR requirements can subsequently seek enrolment through the ordinary statutory process, why subject them to the more onerous SIR process in the first place?

And that leads to an even more serious question:

Was the SIR introduced in selected states, with its heavier documentary requirements, without adequately considering these contradictions and its disparate impact on particular communities?

And what happens now to the 13 crore electors who have already been excluded?

Ten People’s Demands:

Therefore, even in the wake of the Election Commission’s new order, a powerful movement must be built around these ten people’s demands to defend the Indian Republic from the Modi establishment.

1) SIR must be scrapped with immediate effect.

2) CEC Gyanesh Kumar, accused of acting as ‘an agent of the executive’, must resign.

3) The Supreme Court must invoke Article 142 of the Constitution and initiate proceedings against CEC Gyanesh Kumar over allegations of betrayal of the constitutional order.

4) All decisions and processes undertaken by the Election Commission during Gyanesh Kumar’s tenure must be subjected to public scrutiny.

5) All elections conducted under the leadership of Gyanesh Kumar must be annulled.

6) The 2023 law governing the appointment of Election Commissioners—which gives the Union government a decisive role in their appointment and provides legal protection for acts performed in official capacity—must be repealed.

7) The Election Commission and the electoral process must be democratised.

8) The Sangh Parivar and the BJP, which continue to defend the Election Commission and the Modi government despite these alleged anti-people actions, must face a nationwide political boycott.

9) The Opposition parties must unanimously boycott elections conducted based on SIR and launch a complete non-cooperation movement against the Modi–RSS government.

10) For these demands to be realised, a massive nationwide people’s movement of the deprived and disenfranchised must be built.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the author’s personal views, and do not necessarily represent the views of Sabrangindia.

Related:

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We were disheartened to see media outlets amplify his post without context or critique, so we have unpacked his argument in depth here. His post is merely an illustrative case. In our time in so-called elite institutions, we have seen many professors share similar attitudes, and this analysis draws on that lived experience of the system as much as on his words. With this critique of a public argument, we hope to prompt reflection on the individual and institutional biases that harm students from marginalised groups in elite institutions.

I am disturbed to see Prof. Suryanarayana Doola being vilified over the recent controversy at IIT Bombay. I know Surya personally. He is one of the finest faculty members I have known in the IIT system, and a gentleman of the highest integrity. Whatever concerns have been raised… pic.twitter.com/PwlAWQWvW9

— V. Ramgopal Rao, Ph.D. (@ramgopal_rao) September 23, 2026

This post is veiled but vile. It is hard to spot unless one recognises casteism not merely in visceral acts but as structural and systemic, deeply embedded in elite institutions as much as in society at large. The post invokes casteist prejudices within the reader without saying the quiet part aloud, leaving room for deniability. The argument leans on this prejudice so heavily that it doesn’t even bother hiding its own contradictions. 

He says “With students coming through an intensive coaching culture, and classrooms bringing together students whose JEE Advanced ranks range from single digits to five digits (in the same class -for example CSE in IIT Delhi), we now have highly heterogeneous classrooms across the IIT system. Language also further adds to the challenge.

The question to ask therefore is, with such heterogeneity, can we expect every student to learn at the same pace?”

He invokes two kinds of heterogeneity, ability and background, and seamlessly equates them, which is itself casteist. He further laments that a teacher cannot teach effectively to such a heterogenous class properly. 

What heterogeneity in ability could he possibly be referring to at IITs, which are defined above all, by their exclusivity? IIT intake is about 1% of those who appear for the JEE, and JEE aspirants themselves are only about a tenth of those who sit the Class 12 boards. 

The question to ask, therefore, is this: what does it say about your competence as a teacher if you cannot cater to the brightest 1% of the country, by your own institute’s standard? Why shouldn’t we question the merit of a teacher who makes excuses about supposed heterogeneity in the country’s most exclusive and selective classrooms?

JEE Advanced is scored out of 360 marks, yet those few hundred points are stretched into ranks running into the tens of thousands. A difference of a handful of marks, often within the margin of error of any exam, can separate ranks by hundreds or thousands of places. 

As Pierre Bourdieu argued, competitive exams do not measure pre-existing differences in ability so much as manufacture them, forcing a largely undifferentiated pool into an ordinal hierarchy where marginal, often arbitrary gaps in marks are treated as real, stable differences in ‘ability’.

The heterogeneity in ability that the professor describes is not a fact, but an artifact manufactured by the ranking system. When educators talk about ability solely in terms of these ranks, as if they were an absolute, hierarchical measure of ability across the cohort, this serves a narrative that justifies discrimination and shields educators from scrutiny.

He claims, “We now have highly heterogenous classrooms across the IIT system.” What does he mean by “now”? Does he mean after the implementation of reservations? He never says so outright, but he implies it to any reader who already carries that prejudice.

He says “There is nothing wrong with opening the doors of our best institutions to students from different backgrounds. The question is whether we have addressed this heterogeneity in our teaching-learning methods.”

This statement, by itself, is a valid goal if the question is an invitation to introspect whether the pedagogy in IIT classrooms is sensitive to the diversity of students in it. 

However, he follows it up with, “A faculty member cannot pitch every class at several levels at once. Move too slowly, and some students lose interest. Move too quickly, and others are left behind.”, where he is talking about heterogeneity in learning achievement levels or ability. 

He seamlessly jumps from heterogeneity in (caste) backgrounds to heterogeneity in ability, equating the two. This sleight of hand lets him imply, to a prejudiced audience, that students who enter through reservation lack ability, without saying it openly.

He contradicts himself: he says those with lower JEE Advanced ranks cannot learn at the same pace as top rankers yet also claims that even top rankers struggle because coaching trained them for familiar questions and not independent thinking.

If JEE rank is such an accurate arbiter of merit and ranks people by ability so precisely that a difference of a few thousand ranks makes them incompatible in ability to share a classroom, and by those very standards, the toppers are struggling too. 

The top rankers struggle and the bottom rankers struggle, In other words, the ‘less meritorious’ struggle and the ‘more meritorious’ struggle. Perhaps, then, the problem is not the students. Perhaps it is the teaching.

If you reject that explanation, the alternative is that the JEE selection system itself is biased toward coachability rather than independent thinking, so much so that even top rankers struggle once they enter college. The skills required to win a filtering system are not directly relevant to college, nor is rank an absolute arbiter of merit. That would mean the system was never a ‘pure selector’ of ability whose function is ‘compromised’ by reservation; it did not select for merit in the first place. 

Despite this glaring contradiction and the casteism underlying it, people still fail to consider the obvious possibility that the teacher is incompetent, or the system is. This lazy, contradictory narrative stokes anti-reservation prejudice only because a prejudiced reader is blind to the holes in it.

He assumes throughout that the teacher is competent, and that the only real difficulty is the heterogeneity in ability among students. What about the heterogeneity in the ability of teachers? Or is that assumed not to exist, because of the lack of heterogeneity in the backgrounds of IIT faculty, by his logic? 

In reality, many professors at elite institutes like IITs are not selected for their ability to teach, but for their research record. Many take pride in identifying primarily as researchers and openly detest teaching. Not every good researcher is a good teacher. But because teaching is systematically undervalued, the hierarchy between research and teaching lets the system excuse its own failure to prioritise teaching skills in the selection and appointment of these faculty. Teaching skill includes sensitivity to students, something fundamentally incompatible with the meritocratic logic that reduces them to their ranks. 

Hence, unless these issues are addressed, extending the programme from four to five years only prolongs students’ time under a system that fails them.

Notably, Prof. Rao, who now defends a colleague accused of casteism by a deceased student’s parents, chaired the 2020 committee that recommended IITs be exempt from reservation in faculty recruitment.

“A public campaign against an individual serves no one” he says. Except, that’s precisely what IIT Bombay and the media did to Sahil, and he shows no comparable concern for that trial of a student who can no longer defend himself.

Any real solution to the crisis of student deaths in elite institutions like IITs must begin with confronting and dismantling the prejudices that kill. Diversifying the faculty by effectively implementing reservation norms is one concrete way forward. It further requires faculty and institutions to introspect on their biases and unlearn them, with a commitment to equality, and to recognise that equality is not at odds with excellence but a condition of it. 

(Authors: Sulochana R is a research scholar in Science Education in Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, TIFR Mumbai; Pranav Jeevan P holds a PhD in Artificial Intelligence from IIT Bombay. He has earlier studied quantum computing in IIT Madras and Robotics at IIT Kanpur.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the author’s personal views, and do not necessarily represent the views of Sabrangindia.

Related:

Three years after Darshan Solanki, Sahil Wakode’s death shows IIT Bombay still has no answer on caste, power and student deaths

Mumbai Dharna for Darshan Solanki makes calls for law against caste discrimination

The Normalisation of Suicide at IITs: Institutional blindness and failure

A Long Battle, A Swift Stay: The Fight for Equitable Campuses

The Anatomy of Humiliation: Defining caste violence in the Constitutional era

Another student lost to suicide at IIT-Delhi

The post Unpacking a Coded Defence: What an IIT Professor’s post reveals about attitudes in elite institutions appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The demands were raised at a press conference held at the Guwahati Press Club on September 25, following the Nagarik Abhibartan (Citizens’ Convention) organised on September 20 at Lakshiram Baruah Sadan, Guwahati. The press conference was addressed by Harkumar Goswami, Dr. Ghanashyam Nath, Prof. Taizuddin Ahmed and Manoram Gogoi on behalf of the convention convenors.

At the September 20 convention, the Forum had opposed the implementation of SIR in Assam and called for the completion of the pending National Register of Citizens (NRC). The convention had taken the position that the 2014 voter list should be treated as the base or “freeze” for completing the NRC.

The concerns raised at the convention have assumed renewed significance following an investigation published by The Indian Express on September 23, which reported that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had formally recorded objections at least 14 times over ten months to decisions and orders issued in the name of the Election Commission. The objections reportedly concerned matters including voter registration and deletion, changes to Form 6 and the management and centralisation of the electoral database. The investigation also reported that the two Commissioners had described certain changes as “unauthorised” and “illegal”.

The Election Commission, however, has maintained that decisions relating to SIR and other matters were taken with the approval of all three Election Commissioners and described the reported differences as part of the institutional deliberative process.

Against this backdrop, the Forum has said that the contents of the objections recorded by the two Election Commissioners, the action taken on them and the way the issues were resolved must be made public. “This is not a question of any individual or any political party. This is a question of every citizen’s right to vote and the credibility of Indian democracy,” the Forum said.

The organisation placed four demands before the authorities:

• Scrap the SIR process and restore genuine voters’ names: The entire SIR process must be scrapped and all genuine voters whose names have been deleted because of the exercise must be restored to the electoral rolls.

• Stop the process of disenfranchisement and guarantee an effective right of appeal: No voter should be deleted from the electoral roll without a transparent, fair and effective opportunity to challenge the proposed deletion. The Forum has demanded that no election be conducted based on a process that, in its view, risks excluding eligible voters from the electoral rolls.

• Ensure transparency and accountability within the Election Commission: The Forum has called for complete transparency in the Election Commission’s internal decision-making process. It has demanded independent audits and scrutiny wherever there are large-scale deletions of voter names, along with individual and institutional accountability wherever the rights of genuine voters are infringed.

The Forum has also demanded the removal of the Chief Election Commissioner through due process if he does not resign voluntarily, citing what it describes as concerns over the credibility of the Commission arising from the SIR process and allegations of voter exclusion.

• Restructure the Election Commission to strengthen its independence and transparency: The Forum has demanded restructuring of the Election Commission to make it a more independent, transparent and democratic institution. It has called for the Chief Justice of India to be included in the body responsible for selecting Election Commissioners, arguing that the selection process should not rest solely with holders of political office such as the Prime Minister.

The Forum has further proposed that, after a selection body identifies credible candidates, Election Commissioners should ultimately be elected by the general electorate to strengthen their democratic legitimacy and public confidence.

The Forum said the right to vote cannot be reduced to the presence of a citizen’s name on an electoral roll. It described voting as a fundamental means through which citizens participate in the democratic process and said that ensuring that eligible citizens are not deprived of this right in the name of electoral-roll revision is a constitutional responsibility of the Election Commission and the State.

‘What we said on September 20 was proved by the Indian Express on September 23’

Speaking at the press conference, Harkumar Goswami linked the Forum’s concerns over SIR to the issues discussed at the September 20 Nagarik Abhibartan. “What we said at the Nagarik Abhibartan on 20th September was proved by the Indian Express on 23rd September!” Goswami said.

He said the statewide citizens’ convention had been organised in Guwahati at the call of 150 distinguished citizens of Assam and in cooperation with the Forum for Social Harmony, with discussions covering land, eviction, destruction of nature, workers’ rights, economic inequality and citizenship.

Goswami said the convention had adopted two significant resolutions: that the incomplete NRC in Assam should be completed using the 2014 voter list as the base or “freeze”, and that the SIR process being undertaken across the country should be strongly opposed. “Our apprehension and opposition on the 20th [of September] was exposed before the entire country by the front-page news of the Indian Express on 23rd September. Today, the whole of India has understood how dangerous SIR is,” he said.

Prof. Taizuddin Ahmed said the concerns surrounding citizenship verification in Assam could not be viewed in isolation from the proposed nationwide electoral-roll revision. “Atrocities have been going on in Assam for many years in the name of citizenship. We know this very well because we are from Assam. Now, there is a conspiracy to do the same thing across India through SIR. Therefore, the time has come for the democratic people of the entire country to resist it in a democratic and peaceful manner,” he said.

Dr. Ghanashyam Nath said the Forum would continue to press for the four demands. “Our four-point demand must be met; otherwise, we will consider our next course of action,” he said.

The Forum has appealed to democratic citizens, social organisations and concerned groups in Assam and across the country to strengthen the demand for protection of voting rights and electoral democracy through a peaceful and democratic citizens’ movement.

Related:

Assam: ‘No to SIR!’ Complete the pending NRC! 

SIR Phase 3: 1.58 crore names deleted from draft rolls across 12 States and UTs

Supreme Court issues notice on plea for time-bound reverification of Assam NRC over “large-scale errors”

Assam FT deems Assam NRC to be final NRC

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