For years, Sharjeel Imam was discussed in sections of India’s liberal discourse primarily through the prism of the anti-CAA protests, minority rights and the government’s response to dissent. But his own words from 2019–20 raise a question, did the larger debate over civil liberties try to hide his Islamism?
In January 2020, Imam delivered a speech at Aligarh Muslim University in which he spoke about cutting off Assam and the Northeast from the rest of India by blocking the narrow Siliguri Corridor, known as the Chicken’s Neck. He proposed that organised crowds could isolate the region by blocking roads and railway tracks and disrupting supplies.
These were not merely abstract arguments about constitutional reform or peaceful protest. The idea of deliberately severing a strategically vital connection between the Northeast and the rest of the country was an extraordinarily serious proposition. A Delhi court, while framing charges in 2022, observed that the speeches appeared to challenge India’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. Imam’s counsel disputed the prosecution’s interpretation of his words, of course, he did.
The contradiction becomes clearer when one considers how the Shaheen Bagh movement was widely presented. For many liberals, it became a symbol of peaceful resistance, constitutional rights and opposition to the Citizenship Amendment Act. Sharjeel Imam was associated with the movement’s organising circles before his controversial remarks became public knowledge.
Peaceful opposition to government policy is a legitimate democratic right, but one should know that Indian government has no tolerance for those who threaten India’s soverignity, and that is why Sharjeel Imam rots in a jail.
Further question is whether the defence of dissent was extended so indiscriminately that statements about disrupting the Northeast’s connection with the rest of India received less scrutiny than they deserved.
There is an important distinction between defending someone’s legal rights and endorsing their political ideas. A person accused of a crime remains entitled to due process. But that principle does not require commentators to minimise or excuse the substance of troubling statements.
Did liberals get fooled? Obviously. His remarks expose the dangers of allowing political sympathies to overshadow uncomfortable evidence.
The real test of liberalism is consistency. If the right to protest deserves protection, so does the right to question a protest leader’s stated objectives. If constitutional values matter, territorial integrity and the safety of citizens cannot become secondary considerations simply because the person making controversial remarks opposes a government one dislikes.
Sharjeel Imam fooled liberals into toeing his line when, at his heart, he was always aching for a further division of India and the establishment of another Islamist country.
