AN OPEN LETTER TO PRIME MINISTER MODI
Dear Prime Minister,
I am a twenty two year old second class citizen (in your eyes) of this country I call my home. And here’s something I would like you to know. To begin with, I must admit that typing that ‘dear’ was a three minutes long decision. Sheer formality got the better of me in the end, and I did something neither my conscience nor emotions would have me do, which is to prefix a ‘dear’ to your title. And the reason is rather simple. No one dear to me would have me locked up inside my home, rain tear gas shells in my area, use force to curb peaceful dissent and perpetuate a culture of violence and fear simply because I raised a voice against something so fundamentally discriminatory in nature.
I live in Jamia Nagar, the newly turned war zone. And on Friday, I marked myself safe from your rhetoric which meant exposing myself to your weapons. Your sanctioned lathis, tear gas, stun guns and your MEN! Yes, I was there too. I was there raising a voice like all other students for my right to call this country a home, when your men decided that we longer have that right either. Police brutality reached its zenith here. Students were been beaten up inside Jamia campus. The Police had no qualms over barging into mosques either, to beat up people who were praying. In a harrowing reminder of the many incidents of violence you have successfully co-ordinated with the current home minister, slowly by Sunday our entire area was spilling with screams of students helplessly shouting from inside Jamia Millia Islamia libraries, hostels, reading rooms, and even urinals! I’m sure you came across those videos too, but it wasn’t enough to feed your blood lust. So, you began raining weapons on another institution that is fighting a similar fight, the Aligarh Muslim University. Do not forget that even though the court might have chosen to acquit you, public memory is not as flimsy as those pages of the judgement. Memories are potent and so are our voices. We have not forgotten and we have not forgiven you for Gujrat.
Remember, we’ll rise. And when we do (as we are doing), the sea of collective voices will drown your narrative of hate. How many Jamias and AMUs will you vandalise? The entire country is erupting now. If this is the war you want to wage, so be it. We shall show our resilience too. But, remember tyrants have always been defeated. The British colonizers fell, Napoleon fell, Hitler fell, and Rameses fell too. We shall not let you rise at the expense of the very integrity of our nation.
I sign off by asserting my right to be called an equal citizen of the country, and as an equal citizen I remind you and promise to you that we shall not let your hatred and Islamophobia spill forth and distort the very idea of India. We will fold ourselves into the holes you have drilled in the walls of this democracy till it looks like our home, once again.
Iqra Raza
Jamia Nagar
New Delhi: 25
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๐ขMBK Team | ๐ฐMuslimMirror
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