Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/engineers.against
Introduction:
Engineers Against Injustice (EAI) is a group based out of Bangalore that intends to act as a platform for engineers and scientists to raise their voice against injustice and stand in solidarity with those facing oppression, starting with the issue revolving around the implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) & National Register for Citizens (NRC) in the country. The group’s founders include recently graduated alumni: Nabarun Gogoi, Sishir Mohammed, Saransh Arora, Durjai Sethi, Rajat Khandelwal, and Pulkit Agarwal, among others. The group has actively organized protests in Bangalore, and the English Press Club reached out to them to understand their philosophy and goals.
1. How was the ‘Engineers Against Injustice’ group founded? (Personal motivations too, please)
It all started with a disquiet pervading our minds in the wake of the Citizenship Amendment Act’s introduction. Many of us felt isolated, surrounded by the indifference and ignorance that often plagues corporate workspaces. We were individuals confined to arm-chair activism on social media with no responses to our calls for mobilization. We did not expect to feel so utterly powerless, and it was a shock to many of us that the prized liberty we held onto in this country was a facade.
But you don’t belong to the “directly affected” group, do you choose to believe it’s not your fight, ergo it’s not a battle worth fighting? But when you’re targeted next, whom will you turn to, to stand alongside you? We decided to build an organization around engineers (or broadly people in STEM), considering that this is where we could personally contribute the most. The same anxiety and fear that we felt was experienced by others, and there were many in our vicinity who need support. A uni-dimensional education and upbringing has rendered many in our community passive and we have masked our cynicism and self-interest in the garb of pragmatism. The underlying frustration with the present is what brought us together. It has been the driving motivation for all our present and past efforts and will continue to be an eternal flame that lights our future endeavours.
2. What are the specific short-term and long-term goals of the group?
The short-term goal of the group is to provide a platform and a channel for engineers to express dissent against injustice, show solidarity with those oppressed, counter disinformation being propagated in society, and establish positive discourse. Our primary objective is to mobilize the community of engineers that has been politically dormant and appears apathetic from a distance. We honestly and fiercely believe that if logical minds are incited rationally and appealed to sincerely enough, we might just find them in a protest the very next day.
In a bid to consolidate vote-banks, the narrative has been warped to portray a polarized binary society, where you are either pro or anti-establishment. We believe there is space for nuance. Extremists on both sides don’t represent the masses. However, they do possess the power to influence and mobilize the dormant, neutral majority. This majority is the exact reservoir of potential that we intend to tap by reaching out to them, making them aware, and helping them engage further in discourse.
The long-term goal is to become a larger entity that acts as a credible national front to help engineers voice their concerns. If need be, Engineers Against Injustice (EAI) can organize into a non-profit. The engineering community has been found severely lacking when it comes to activism regarding the socio-economic issues of our country. We want EAI to act as a springboard that enables engineers to play their part in the causes of the people, no matter which political party is in power.
However, our top priority at present is to encourage enough individuals to go out and protest. We may have started with engineers, but our group now has individuals from an eclectic range of backgrounds. All we really want is more people showing up as active citizens to protect the integrity and freedom of every individual.
3. What goes into organizing a protest? (Logistics)
Before we go on to describe how a protest is initiated, we would like to delve into the more important matter of why one should protest. In the democratic framework present in this country, protesting is one of the more popular ways of showcasing dissent. Radical motives and actions will always be struck down as anti-national and have momentary effects, but a steady candle braving the tumultuous winds is the very fundamental idea with which our freedom struggle ran its course. And hence, we believe in the same framework of peacefully organizing gatherings for people to express solidarity with the opposition to present issues. Such gatherings retain the sense of freedom that we have grown up with, to express our views even in times of conflict without fear of judgement from external sources, though protests today are facing far from ideal conditions with radical elements trying their best to break down movements ideologically and physically. Once successfully executed, a protest helps form a community of like-minded individuals who find common ground amid their diversities of background and identity, to mobilize and organize themselves in order to move towards a common objective, which in this case is the opposition of draconian laws and authoritarian powers.
A protest can be divided into the following:
Ideation:
First, one needs to have clarity about the reasons for protesting. From there, one can move towards finding a relevant concept for the protest which attracts the participation of the masses. For our protests, we have gravitated towards art as a tool for resistance.
For us, art is not an end in itself … but it is an opportunity for the true perception and criticism of the times we live in.
Hugo Ball
Logistics:
During planning, getting permission from the police is the most important step. This is necessary because it is the police’s responsibility to balance the rights of protesters and other citizens. Their duty to protect people and property from the threat of harm or injury defines the policing dilemma in relation to public protest. In a democratic society, planning and action at every level must be kept in mind, particularly when radical involvement might attempt a disruption of an otherwise peaceful gathering. Apart from this, procuring flags, banners, and a sound setup is a relatively easy task. Some student groups also run crowdfunding campaigns to cover their expenses.
Publicity:
Spreading the message about the event through social media and chat groups is required for getting a crowd. Getting influential people to share your events helps. We were happy to realize that a number of engineers who showed up for our events came out for a protest for the first time.
Management:
During the protest, the main objective remains similar to organizing any other event with a mass audience, wherein we try to make sure that the flow of the event is cohesive and in line with the overall theme of the protest. We try to maximize audience participation with sloganeering in between speeches and are committed to conducting our events in a non-disruptive and non-violent manner.
4. What do you think stops people from actively participating in political discussions? (Personal struggles and why you think it’s important to protest)
“It’s not my fight.”
“I’m apolitical.”
“How does it matter?”
All of us must have been greeted by these responses. It’s possible that at some point, most of us would have responded similarly. But “what changed”, you ask?
9th December 2019.
The first reading of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) took place in the Lok Sabha. With the looming threat of the NRC, accompanied by the inflammatory speeches by leaders leading up to the passage of the bill, each one of us was handed a personal battle to wage. 201 million Muslims had to fight claims of anti-nationalism, 35 million Assamese along with all of North-East India had to fight for their demography, and 130 million Adivasis had to fight the state of statelessness.
Apart from apathy, there are other factors that hinder folk from actively participating in political discussions. Your family’s views also affect your views. Your upbringing affects many of your decisions, including the decision to be politically active. It takes effort to exit this state of inertia; a step that most people shy away from taking.
Talking about political climates in colleges, we’d like to start with BITS Pilani, alma mater to some of us in EAI. The election scene, revolving around the posts of General Secretary and President in BITS, differs from most colleges—such as the ones in Delhi University—in terms of candidates not being affiliated to a political party, and thus not having a long-term goal or philosophy. The endgame is limited to the impact incumbents can have over the span of 12 months, and the area of influence extends to the small town of Pilani at most. Thus, while students in some colleges contest elections charged with national political overtones, Pilani remains majorly blissfully indifferent to the wider political scenario.
This indifference is also compounded by Pilani’s remote location. Furthermore, the sense of privilege that a majority on campus have enjoyed throughout their lives does overflow into their college as well as adult lives—and this includes the absence of opinion regarding political matters.
We urge you, dear reader, to think about how many times you’ve picked up a newspaper, flicked through a news channel, or subscribed to an online news source. Fear of confrontation and shying away from conflict is a major deterrent to people voicing or even forming opinions. You can enjoy an apolitical stance now, but realize that being apolitical is a political statement as well.
5. Are you connected to other protest groups? Do you plan to use these connections to scale into something bigger?
We are associated with the umbrella organization named Hum Bharat Ke Log (We The People of India), which has been instrumental in organizing protests throughout the country. Connections such as this help garner support for organizing a protest and provide required counsel in matters regarding how the movement should proceed. They also help us increase our support base, which, to reiterate, isn’t exclusive to engineers. We are also working in tandem with student representatives from a number of universities across the country. Though we do want to continue to be an identity that engineers in the country can subscribe to, we are open to all individuals who would like to support us. None of the organizers in our team currently have any political affiliations or ambitions.
6. How do you reach out to people? (Protest successes)
The first challenge is to garner attention from a group of people who have not been paying much heed to political affairs. Here, the state-sanctioned violence and antipathy from the government towards victims had people’s attention. We used this attention to drive home the fact that not only is the violence abhorrent but the policies the government espouses are unconstitutional and undemocratic. To get a conversation going, we used social media to initiate discussions and hopefully awaken people’s consciences, so that they wouldn’t simply go back to their lives assuming everything was alright—merely because a couple of days had passed by without any violence.
Organizing protests was the next logical step, with people mobilizing to express their solidarity against the divisive policies of this authoritarian regime. People came together to protest in the most creative ways and were determined to be heard. The social interactions between protestors then led to stronger turnouts in subsequent protests. People who became involved in any capacity, promoted the movement to their own social circle, prompting curiosity and participation—which kept the movement going.
Organizing and participating in these protests, and even speaking up in family groups or sharing posts against the unjust excesses of this government, has been taxing: logistically, physically, mentally and emotionally. Many have braved physical violence, and everyone has faced some anxiety from their desire to avoid conflict with people they cared about, as well as for their own safety. Therefore, reaching out and encouraging people to take on these challenges and risks has not been straightforward.
However, it was really as simple as all of us coming together to ensure that our country lives up to the epithets it has proudly borne since Independence: those of a sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic.
7. Message to BITSians?
We BITSians are fortunate to belong to a very well-educated section of the populace, but sadly our systems have been remiss in teaching us why to care about the fabric of the society we live in—let alone how to fix it. But if there’s one thing BITSians are known for, it’s resourcefulness, so let us commit ourselves to figuring out what we can do and how to go about it. As engineers, we have a certain degree of privilege and power in society—both socially and economically. The pop culture currency passes through our hands; our attendance and viewership make things “cool” and “in”. So, if we do it first, we can make caring “cool”, make political discourse a part of casual conversations, encourage young people to take stock of our current predicament, and demand some real answers—but first, we must shake off this cloak of apathy.
The sense of majority that people hold so closely is an idea that lies at the mercy of a few ‘rulers’ who rouse public anger to suit their political ends. This sense of majority, and the underlying sense of security, is fragile. This is evident in the actions of the ruling party—having earlier cast doubt on the loyalties of Indian Muslims, the party has now demonized protesting students for their “anti-nationalism”. In such a time of grave social anxiety, frivolous casual Islamophobic remarks have now turned into full-blown hate speech and are threatening the very social fabric of our country.
Today, you are a bystander to the government action against the people ‘you can identify from their clothes’. Tomorrow it could be your place of worship being laid to ruins, and your culture deemed unpatriotic by those in power.
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.