A growing disenchantment is brewing world over towards growing civil rights violations and checks on liberties across the world. States tend to monopolise greater power in reducing the individual to submission through coercion and control, and this forms the chief characteristic of the modern-day state. Thus, we need guarantees and safeguards to ensure the protection and preservation of our group and individual rights for the realization of our liberty, equality, dignity and worth.
As modern-day states have increasingly enriched and enhanced themselves in controlling us through various means and measures possible in the wake of popular mandates and the questions of Nationalism. Security, safety and sovereignty of the country are becoming intertwined. Restricting the assertion and claims of one’s right and liberties could be seen as alarming to the sentiments of the preferred class interests in a given geographical space.
Obedience is what is commanded from you at will, and you ought to wear it as a badge when asked. This is well illustrated in the muder of a black American, George Floyd, in Minnesota, United States, during an arrest for allegedly using a counterfeit bill. Subsequent outrage amongst Americans resulted in them coming out in good numbers, violently protesting against the US system of justice administration.
There were reports of conflicts, confrontations and clashes from states across the US, as in many states, there was an immediate emergency-like situation. The US President went into hiding inside a bunker as the protestors swarmed around the White House in Washington DC.
What was most tragic is that in advanced and industrialized modern states like US, racism is quite prevalent, and they have been unable to do away with it. Contrarily, President Donald Trump swung into action, threatening violence and conducively renewing a pitch for polarization by pitting and hooking one up against the other in curbing the questioning of white hegemony and dominance.
Why I am trying to correlate it with the detention of Safoora Zargar becomes imperative when we remember the many commonalities between George Floyd and Safoora Zargar as they stood up against the odds. Floyd was a native US American who was shot for his fault of his allegiance and belonging to a community and group of Black Americans who live in the downtown as was the perception in the minds of the police officers dealing with him. Safoora Zargar a 27 year old Research Scholar from Jamia Millia Islamia was holed up in Tihar under the draconian UAPA law for merely speaking up against the enactment of CAA Bill passed by the Parliament in December 2019. Amending the procedures of citizenship by seconding the Muslim minorities forming a huge chunk of the population. She was also charged of inflammatory speeches leading to the spread of the violence in Northeast Delhi in February 2020. But on the contrary how come a rights activist be a inimical threat to a state in the assertion of her constitutional rights as a citizen? Hounded, grilled and maligned all attempts were made up against her owing to her identity than her individuality. Battered and bruised Safoora Zargar is a case in point of resistance against the state arbitrariness depriving, despising and disapproving her attitude and orientation by subjugating her to the whims of state order, authority and control. This obduracy on part of state has created a greatest sense of disappointment for those it would seek to empower under the guise of welfare measures and special measures violating the letter and spirit of protecting, promoting and honouring the rights of the individual at any cost. Their are international covenants for dealing with war crime prisoners but when dealing with a pregnant activist Safoora Zargar their are none as though she is an alien from another planet. This question will always keep on arising in our minds until and unless we don,t find answers from within ourselves- internally and maybe externally later