It is intriguing that the Delhi police should have argued that Umar Khalid and his co-dissenters had instigated violence in 2019/20 in a corner of Delhi with the ultimate objective of bringing about “regime change” in India. The invocation of “regime change” makes for sexy reading. Those hardened men of the Delhi police, it is pleasing to learn, have not lost the gift for an eye-catching headline. Piyush Pandey would permit himself a smile at the thanedar's attempt at copy-writing.

The old-fashioned litany of presumed misdemeanours and felonies like “destroying communal harmony, instigating the crowd not only to abrogate public order but to instigate them to an extent of armed rebellion” is too familiar (December 6, 1992, for a start) and too boring. But call it “regime change” and it elevates a handful of dissidents into fanciful grand conspirators.

It is still for the lawyers to argue and the judges to decide as to what constitutes “regime change” and whether what Khalid & Company did and did not do in any way added up to a stab at this.

In its common counter affidavit, the Delhi police added an explanatory note: “The international theory developed in past few years have termed these kinds of organised/sponsored protests as “Regime Change Operation(s)”.”

The term “regime change” entered common usage during the so-called “Arab Spring” in the early 2010s, which saw the ouster of established governments in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. It is widely believed that new technologies of communication were imaginatively used by angry citizens in these countries to create new solidarities among the populace to express resistance against repressive regimes.

Unless those who drafted the Delhi police's common counter affidavit were to hold a public seminar on the “international theory” of “regime change”, it should suffice to note that India is governed by constitutional arrangements and that there are no “regimes” and only governments. “Regime” connotes something less than constitutional, and its authority predicated less on law and more on violence and coercion.

If the misdemeanours that the Delhi police has attributed to Khalid and his fellow protesters against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act do add up to an attempt at “regime change”, then, it is possible to catalogue at least three distinct attempts at regime change in independent India.

Also read: Delhi HC Judgment Denying Bail to Umar Khalid, Others Will Stand as a Monument to Infamy

First: When on January 30, 1948 Nathuram Godse assassinated Mahatma Gandhi, it was a dramatic and daring act to remove the tallest embodiment of new India: a democratic and secular order. Godse's crime was part of a larger conspiracy to change the colour of new India into a Hindu country.

As home minister, Sardar Patel had all the leaders and other busybodies of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Hindu Mahasabha rounded up; the RSS was banned. The stern administrator defeated the attempt at “regime change”.

Second: The so-called “Total Revolution” inspired by Jayaprakash Narayan in the mid-1970s and quarter-backed by the RSS's Nanaji Deshmukh. The Indira Gandhi government, for all its disfigured political persona, was a duly elected government, entitled to all the legitimacy of a democratic arrangement; and, yet, here was a leader, however respected and revered, instigating policemen and security personnel to disobedience.

The declared objective of JP's Total Revolution was the removal of a legitimate government. An open call was made for crowds to surround government leaders' offices and residences and shut the capital down till Indira Gandhi capitulated. It is probably no exaggeration to say that the first tool-kit for a “regime change” was finessed in 1975.

Third: The so-called Anna Hazare “movement” against “corruption” in 2010-11. The “boots” on the ground came from the RSS while the inspiration came from abroad. It should be recalled that the Ram Lila Maidan protest site was being cited as our own “Tahrir Square”.

Then, there was Baba Ramdev who pitched his own tent at the Ramlila ground, demanding the return of black money worth trillions stashed away in foreign banks. He literally choked parts of Delhi for a day.

Hazare's movement was a conspiracy against a duly elected government; however, the United Progressive Alliance political leadership was suave enough to defuse the “movement” and defang Hazare by co-option and conciliation. What is relevant is that all the tactics and tricks that Khalid and others are accused of deploying in a corner of Delhi were used by the Hazare crowd openly and in the very heart of the capital city.

When it comes to Khalid, the invocation of a “regime change” charge simply does not make sense. Communal violence and riots have been a recurring leitmotif in India; thousands of dissertations and dozens of judicial commissions of inquiry have dissected the phenomenon. The Indian police force has a lot of experience handling large crowds and dealing with mob violence. ‘No riot can last for more than 24 hours unless the state wants it to continue’, senior police officer V.N. Rai once observed after researching the role of the police during communal violence. It is therefore intriguing that Khalid and others are now deemed to have acquired skills and resources that would have overwhelmed police forces across the land.

The Delhi police's “regime change” song does not make musical sense. “Regime change” could succeed during the Arab Spring against those rulers who lacked the legitimacy of popular consent and who enforced their writ with the help of 'the barrel of a gun'. On the other hand, the Modi government was a legitimately elected government; it was headed by a leader who was basking in popular adulation in the wake of the Balakot strike.

The Modi government was stable, strong and secure, and not in any danger of being rattled by a bunch of angry citizens. It could not possibly be the Delhi police's malicious intent to suggest that the Shah and Shenshah regime was lacking in public acceptability and was so vulnerable that it could be toppled by a handful of sullen young protestors.

In reality, these citizens were insisting on their constitutional right to express opposition to a law they thought was intended to reduce the Muslim community into less than full-fledged citizens. The Muslims were not alone in opposing the CAA. It is too much to put the heavy burden of a “regime change” against a group of citizens protesting a controversial law or policy or decision.

The only possible reason that can be reasonably attributed to the Delhi police's invocation of “regime change” against Khalid and others is the Modi government's open political agenda of putting Muslims in their place. The idea seems to be to make an example of Khalid and co-dissenters and send out a chilling message to the entire Muslim community. The “regime change” red herring is just an ideological battle sought to be fought in judicial by-lanes. Satyamev Jayate.

Harish Khare is a former editor-in-chief of The Tribune.

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