Sharjeel Imam is a computer scientist and scholar of modern history speaking and writing about the most pressing issues of our time – the place of minorities in majoritarian democracies; monopoly of the leftist narrative on the sensitisation of the masses; silencing of opposition voices in history writing; integrity of nation states which hold their claimed territories using brute military force; and role of traditional communal solidarities, particularly Islam, in anti-imperial and anti-colonial struggles today. He offers a direction to the youth of this country as few other people do. He has written articles that don’t just give high-sounding views but construct an alternative viewpoint from which the fight against oppressive corporate-statism can be waged. Sharjeel is immensely useful to the struggles of minorities all over the world and, if he’s allowed to live, he will contribute to these battles in a lasting manner.

In early January, Sharjeel gave a speech at Aligarh Muslim University where he denounced the Citizenship Amendment Act and the National Register of Citizens. A video of his speech was uploaded to YouTube on January 17. Six days later, he was charged with sedition and, subsequently, arrested from Bihar’s Jehanabad. Since then, many articles and posts have appeared about Sharjeel that have overshadowed what he himself has written. Now, a Google search for “Sharjeel Imam” does not return his own work, but articles about him.

Sharjeel is an anti-national according to the BJP. The party’s position is clear: Sharjeel is an enemy of India and must be treated as such. It is the position of the left-liberals that needs to be unpacked for its ignorance and hypocrisy. Sharjeel clearly says anybody who believes in the so-called integrity of the extant Indian state and its constitution is his enemy. The BJP acts like an enemy, calls itself an enemy. The left-liberals worship at the altar of the Indian nation state but don’t have the decency to accept themselves as enemies. There’s a map of India at Shaheen Bagh which includes all of Kashmir, even the regions occupied by Pakistan and China. Yet, the protest’s organisers would not accept they’re enemies of Kashmiris, who have rejected this jingoistic fantasy.

The position that the left-liberals have adopted with regard to Sharjeel is this: we don’t agree with him but he should not be charged with sedition. In place of sedition, these are the charges they level against him:

Sharjeel asks non-Muslims to stand with Muslims on their terms. That’s communalism.

Sharjeel’s speech helps the BJP because “the time is not right”. It’s political stupidity.

The left-liberals, who appear to have not heard the speech or understood it, miss the lip-smacking irony that these were the exact charges laid against the Barelvi ulema by the Congress and its supporters, the Deobandi Ulema, before Independence. Sharjeel reminds us that the unpardonable sin of the Barelvis was to oppose the Congress. Today, the unpardonable sin of Sharjeel is the same, opposing the left-liberals. Only if he supports the left-liberals against the BJP will they recognise the validity of his position. Otherwise, he will be silenced and sidelined in favour of Muslims who are more favourable to the left-liberal variety of Hindu nationalism. As Sharjeel notes, the Deobandi-Barelvi debate among Indian Muslims is still raging. Despite the best efforts of the Congress and the Left parties, Indian Muslims have not accepted the Deobandis as their sole forefathers; they have kept alive the Barelvi tradition by opposing the Hindu left-liberal appropriation of Islam.

We will use two articles and a Facebook post, written in the week after Sharjeel’s arrest, as a representative sample of the shallowness and intellectual dishonesty of the left-liberal position. One of the writers is a Brahmin social justice warrior. The second is a Muslim journalist who believes in the secular and socialist idea of India. The third is a Brahmin contemporary artist. One is Gandhian, one leftist, and one liberal.