The architecture of separation

New India has come upon us at such a rapid pace that it is important to step back occasionally and assess where we have arrived.

On August 28 last year, the BJP in Assam on its website published a note under this headline: 'State BJP welcomes new Government regulations on land sale and purchase between different religions’.

The note said that for 'land sale and purchase between two different religions, an application will first have to be submitted to the office of the Circle Officer… the Circle Officer will forward it to the Deputy Commissioner. The District Commissioner will then forward the application to the Revenue Department of the State Government… after which the file will be sent to the Special Branch of Assam Police.’

After this, the file will go the district commissioner, who will then take the final decision regarding permission. Why is the mother of democracy doing this? To understand this, we have to go to Gujarat, the font of such laws.

Poor people forced to live clubbed together is what we know as a 'slum'. An ethnic group forcibly relegated to certain neighbourhoods is a 'ghetto'. The former have no means to go elsewhere. The latter have no choice even if they have the means.

Apartheid means separateness and refers to the policy of South Africa of forcing Black Africans into ghettos. They could only live in fixed spaces by law. When segregation in the United States was legally ended in the 1960s, the government passed laws that sought to integrate races, such as the Fair Housing Act. It prevented discrimination in the buying and selling of properties which was keeping the races separate.

All across Gujarat, in all major cities and in several towns, the government has done the opposite. Muslims are deliberately forced into ghettos through a law known as the Disturbed Areas Act, which requires citizens in particular parts of cities to seek permission from the government before selling property or changing tenants, and filters them by religion.

The law was initially meant to be temporary and for protection during communal violence, of those vulnerable to forced eviction or liable to be coerced into eviction. But Gujarat under the BJP has used the law — renewing and extending it across the state — to keep Muslims out of neighbourhoods other than traditionally Muslim ones. And it criminalises attempts to integrate, permanently separating Muslims from Hindus.

The law says that if the state government feels that the intensity and duration of a riot is such that an area is ‘disturbed’, it isolates the area under the Act for a specified period. When satisfied that the area has ‘ceased to be disturbed’, the government can rescind the notification and buying and selling properties can go back to being unregulated.

What has happened instead is that — 35 years after the law was introduced and 18 years after the 2002 riots — the law remains active even in cities when there is no violence. And it is being expanded through the addition of more geographical areas and placing more restrictions on Muslims and creating more hurdles to their leaving their ghettos.

In 2009, the then Modi government amended the Act to give discretionary powers to the collector to hold an inquiry suo motu and take possession of property under the Act.

In July 2019, another change was introduced. Previously, property sellers had to apply for permission to transfer property and register their consent on affidavit. Now, it would not matter even if the sale was with free consent, and fair value was paid to the owner. The collector could stop a sale if he felt — at his discretion — that there was any ‘disturbance in demographic equilibrium’ or ‘improper clustering of persons of a community’ or ‘likelihood of polarisation’, if the transfer took place.

The collector could reject an application for the legal transfer of a property after an assessment on these grounds. Punishment for transferring property without clearance was raised to six years in jail (it was six months when the law was first introduced).

The new law also allowed the state government to form a ‘Monitoring and Advisory Committee’ to keep a check on the demographic structure in neighbourhoods. This committee would advise the collectors on whether or not sales could be permitted.

Laws criminalising the possession of beef first came to India in 2015, in Maharashtra and then Haryana. Laws banning interfaith marriage started in 2018, beginning with Uttarakhand. Laws criminalising Muslim divorce came in 2019 as did the exclusion of Muslims under the Citizenship Amendment Act. The list goes on and, as in Assam, there will be more ways in which this nation will harass and target its minorities.

We have various terms by which the changes we are going through are described. Some say 'New India' and some say 'Gujarat Model'. The interesting thing is that there is no available description or definition of what these terms mean. What is the Gujarat Model intended to achieve and what does New India finally look like?

We are meant to understand viscerally what they stand for. It is only by examining the actions of the State that we can appreciate the structure and consider what it is. And after that, we have to ask ourselves: is this what we stand for and is this how we want the world to see us?

Views are personal. More of Aakar Patel’s writing here