'Not though the soldier knew'.

Byline: Jawed Naqvi

THE greater the sharpening assault by the delinquent state, the starker is the muddle and the helplessness of the opposition. Models and methods for the state's visceral hatred of India's democracy and even more of its secular promise are widespread.

It's a given that Hindutva borrows much from European fascism, but it has also picked off useful lessons from the slow-motion ethnic cleansing with machetes in Rwanda. From the neighbourhood, the harnessing of the urban lumpen youth to violently pursue the opposition and journalists is possibly lifted from the late Sri Lankan president Premadasa's appeal to the underclass to lynch rivals. The method of killing with burning tyres comes from America's white supremacists, and it was successfully employed to murder countless Sikh civilians in Delhi in 1984. Hindutva has gained enormously from and continues to have much in common with the religious bigotry spawned in Ziaul Haq's Pakistan.

Prime Minister Modi's wilful regime is often compared to Indira Gandhi's emergency. However, there's a big difference. Most of the leaders opposed to Mrs Gandhi were in jail during the 19 months of her dictatorship and were thus helpless. This cannot be said of the current lot, barring perhaps Lalu Yadav, and, of course, the Kashmiri politicians.

There's a bigger difference with 1975 - the stubbornly brave women of Shaheen Bagh and those they have inspired across the country were missing from among Gandhi's adversaries. What remains of the critical media today also is braver and more vocal in its defiance of the errant state. It has suffered the consequences, naturally, which include being battered and abused on the streets by state-backed mobs apart from being officially reviled. On both valiant fronts Ibne Insha's lines seem to describe the reality. 'Haq achcha, per haq ke liye koi aur marey to aur achcha.' (The quest for truth is laudable, but better still if someone else dies for the lofty cause.)

The heroic women of Shaheen Bagh face an uncertain future.

Let's see why. It was International Women's Day recently and true to form glowing tributes gushed forth for the Shaheen Bagh women. They had taken to the streets in December and have not budged against Modi's communally inspired citizenship law. Without any evident strategy or clarity about the next steps though, and with the political opposition in disarray it may add up to enormous quantities of raw energy burning out wastefully.

If the...