Government is dumb, says IAS officer who resigned protesting lockdown in Kashmir

At Kolkata someone asked why is the Govt doing like this? Are they fascists?

Well, I think they are just dumb.

At times well-meaning, at times cruel.

But dumb all the time.

Too damn dumb to even know that they are dumb.

It is from this dumbness that we have to save our nation

The forthright tweet by Kannan Gopinathan, who resigned from the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) to protest against the crackdown in Kashmir is creating waves on social media.

Gopinathan has been travelling to states and addressing public meetings to build up awareness about the National register of Citizens, sought to be implemented across the country by the Home Ministry.

NRC is an absurd idea, he maintains, under which the Government is demanding that citizens prove their citizenship with 50-year-old documents. His experience of working in the Government, he said, proved that few among the poor are either aware or have the wherewithal to preserve documents.

He said at a meeting organised by the All India Peoples Front (AIPF) at Kolkata, “ Any move by the government to implement the NRC across the nation should not only be seen as an anti-Muslim move, but also 100 per cent as an anti-poor drive of the BJP-led government.”

The most effective way of opposing the NRC, he said, was to follow the Gandhian way of Non-Cooperation. Citizens should not waste their time and money in collecting documents, he added. “Even if you manage to produce 22 different types of documents, the Government can always ask for the 23rd document that you may not have,” he pointed out.

Gopinathan says it is alarming that people have stopped asking questions and making the Government accountable. The silence is deafening, he maintains.

The former IAS officer is being hounded by the Home Ministry and has been served with a charge sheet after he resigned. “ I am the only person possibly in the world who has been charge sheeted for not applying for an award,” Gopinathan said in response to the MHA holding him guilty for not applying for the PM’s Award.

In a series of tweets, Gopinathan, who was in Bihar earlier this week, spoke of his experience there.

• Discussions in Muzaffarpur was on the impending disaster of CAB & NRC. Why we are overturning the decisions of Constitution makers & going towards a blood/descent based citizenship instead of soil based citizenship. Why should a citizen prove to this Govt that he is a citizen?

• An eventful day at Bhagalpur, with talks at Muslim Minority College & then at Tilka Manjhi Bhagalpur University hostel, a press conference & interviews. Tremendous social awareness level. The silence of those who disagree with the government is becoming deafening.

• At the Patna College event. What a setting for a university & a college. Ganga Kinare. Privileged to have spoken there with quite a few profs & students in the Audience.

• An enlightening 4-day interaction in Bihar. Every place had an illustrious history to share. Of being the proud birthplace of resistance & freedom. One couldn't help but feel a sense of belonging. An apnapan! Sharing some of the media reports.