The authors rightly start with the genesis of the riots which they trace to the concerted, organized and deliberate infiltration of anti Indian propaganda into a purely domestic matter which has been hanging fire since 1947. The Partition in 1947, hasty, brutal, ill conceived and anarchic was imposed on India by Jawaharlal Nehru and Mountbatten. In the violence that followed Jawaharlal Nehru's Tryst with Destiny, at least 3 to 4 million Hindus and Sikhs were killed and many more displaced. The Prime Minister of Pakistan and of India agreed in the famous Liaqat-Nehru Pact to repatriate indigenous people still left in Pakistan. This became necessary as the Islamic Republic of Pakistan was created exclusvely for Moslems while India true to its liberal ethos did not insist on an exchange of Population. Unfortunately over the years the indigenous people of India left behid in the "belly of the beast" have had enormous suffering imposed on them. Forced conversion, abduction of young women and girls, discrimination in employment, violence directed at community leaders, lack of edcational opportunities and the consequent ghettoization of the indigenous communities consisting largely of Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhist, Jain and Christian. Even Christians, recognized as People of the Book, have been systematically persecuted under the draconian Anti Blasphemy Laws. Right from the time of Nehru the issue of granting relief to the indigenous people has been hanging fire and the BJP had promised the CAA not only in the 2014 Eletion Manifesto but also in 2019. In December 2019 the CAA was passed and in January 2020 it became Law after securing the assent of the President of India.
Deliberate concentrated and sustained propaganda was set afoot to incite Muslims all over India. The CAA was not designed to take the Citizenship away form Indian Muslims and though the educated ones were aware of this fact they deliberately colluded with ant Indian elements to propagate the view that Indian muslims would lose their Citizenship. Also the legal requirement of a verified National Population Register (NPR) which will be initiated soon was invoked as an assault of Mslems being equal citizens of India. Unfortunately Moslem Identity Poltics which had its origin in the Khilafat Agitatin of 1921 and led to the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan has not been countered effectively by the pabulum called Secularism. And since the time of Nehru successive Congress and non Congress regimes have incited Moslem Identity assertion and its accompanying baggage of victimhood to shepherd them into a reliable votng block, the infamous Vote Bank that political reporters speak of.
Against this background, the victory of the BJP twice in a row deeply affected the interests and offered a serious challenge to the self image of its so called intellectual elites who have lorded over the Academia, Media and the Entertainment world. The CAA provided just the pretext for a show of strength, the aar paar ki ladai as the leader f the Congress Party, Sonia Gandhi put it. A fight to end all fights would be a rough translation. The students of the Left leaning JNU, Moslem universities like JMI and AMU were mobilized and funds from Western countries and from the Middle East were pumped in to set the Riots in motion. For months from December 2019 Shaheen Bagh a predominantly Moslem area was virtually a no go zone much like the "liberated zones" of USA taken over by the Black Lives Matter agitators. Te Government of India showed enormous patience and did little to have the squatters evicted and in the Shaheen Bagh and many felt that the Gvernment of India has suddenly goe soft on the agitators. After the visit of President Trup was confirmed, the agitators started ramping up the agittion and scaling it up to draw the attention of the international/White Media.
The image reproduced on the left is an iconic image of the Shaheen Bagh Agitation. It shows a man firing at the police and there are several such images. In pursuit of one such violent gang the Delhi Police in a hot chase entered the seat of the agittion, the Jamia Milia Islamia University as the rioters had taken refuge there. And a pliant media was ready at hand to project that as an asssault on an "educational institution" and "ppor inncent students". Short heavily edited videos were circulated on the Social Media Platforms, particularly Telegram and WhattsApp to incite more violence. All these facts are ably brought out in the book.
The Delhi Riots were a terrible disaster that visited Delhi and on a smaller scale it had all the hallmarks of the 1984 anti Sikh Pogram organized by the Congress party under Rajiv Gandhi. There was considerable planning for violence, the core constituency was radicalized, weapons and arms gathered and the Foreigh Media was kept briefed about the events from the perspective of the rioters
This book is valuable contribution and it is a pity that a white male orgnizer of literary events who grandly calls himself a "historian" used the colour of his skin, white privilege, to ensure that this piece of credible documentation lies burried forever. It is a sign of the times that he did not succeed.
