{"id":314,"date":"2020-02-04T13:20:13","date_gmt":"2020-02-04T12:20:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/projekte.uni-erfurt.de\/maxweberkolleg\/?p=314"},"modified":"2020-02-04T13:20:13","modified_gmt":"2020-02-04T12:20:13","slug":"sanam-roohi-shares-insights-on-the-current-situation-in-india","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/projekte.uni-erfurt.de\/maxweberkolleg\/2020\/02\/04\/sanam-roohi-shares-insights-on-the-current-situation-in-india\/","title":{"rendered":"Sanam Roohi shares insights on the current situation in India"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Solidarity protest at University of\nErfurt<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Against CAA and police brutality on\nprotesting students in India<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Sanam Roohi<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Friday, 20 December 2019 some 40 people\nincluding students of University of Erfurt and Fachhochschule Erfurt, members\nof the Max Weber Kolleg, and other concerned citizens and students from\nThuringia gathered in solidarity with the protestors and students of different\nuniversities and educational institutes who were protesting against the discriminatory\nCitizenship Amendment Act (CAA) 2019 and were met with brutal police violence\non 15 December 2019. Those gathered unequivocally condemned the highhandedness\nof the government of India and this police brutality on protesters, in the\nspirit of solidarity with the students and protestors in India.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why protest CAA?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2019\nwas passed by the two houses of Indian Parliament and became an Act on 12\nDecember 2019. The Act amends the existing Citizenship Act of 1955 to\nexplicitly make \u2018illegal\u2019 migrants from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh belonging\nto Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi, and Christian religions who came to\nIndia prior to 2014 as eligible for Indian citizenship. It ostensibly leaves\nout of its purview persecuted Muslims from these countries, the Rohingyas from\nMyanmar and Tamils from Sri Lanka. The Act is highly discriminatory and\narbitrary at best, violating secular ideals of the Indian constitution. Yet, if\ntaken together with NRC or National Register of Citizen, it will be devastating\nfor the social fabric of the country. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is NRC?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

India\u2019s Home Minister Amit Shah has\nreiterated time and again that the Citizenship Amendment will be followed by\nthe nationwide implementation of NRC by 2024 to throw out \u2018infiltrators\u2019 or\nillegal immigrants. Once adopted, every person living in India will have to\nprove with documents that they are a citizen of the country to have their names\nincluded in this register. If they do not have requisite documents, they will\nbe deemed living illegally and stripped of their citizenship and thrown in\ndetention camps. We learn this from the limited enrolment of NRC in the North\nEast Indian state of Assam between February 2015 and August 2019 after which\nalmost 1.9 million people failed to get their name registered in the NRC and\nmany were put in camps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many poor citizens in India do not have\nproper documents like birth certificate and because many have not finished\nschool, they do not have their school leaving certificates too. Not only will\nNRC be an administrative nightmare for the bureaucracy it will create\nunparalleled fear among Indian citizens. While Hindus too can be excluded from\nthe NRC, the Citizenship amendment act indicates that Hindus will get\ncitizenship even if they are illegal or without documents. But Muslims, unable\nto prove their citizenship will be deemed illegal!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taken together with the anti-Muslim\nsentiments prevalent in India since the ruling right-wing Bharatiya Janata\nParty came to power in 2014 and again in 2019, it has created a lot of fear among\nthe Muslim citizens of the country. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Protests and police brutality<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The passing of the bill to an Act was\nfollowed by widespread protests from Indian citizens who argued that it goes\nagainst the principle of secularism enshrined in the Indian constitution and\nthe Fundamental Rights guaranteed to everyone irrespective of their religion. Students\njoined in the protest at some universities \u2013 prominent among them were Jamia\nMilia Islamia University in Delhi and Aligarh Muslim University in Aligarh,\nUttar Pradesh. On the night of 15 December, the police stormed into these\nuniversity campuses, entered canteens, girls and boys hostels, prayer rooms and\nlibraries and physically assaulted students, including those who were not\nprotesting, to instil fear. Students were flushed out and campuses were vacated\nin the middle of the night, some were arrested and the whereabouts of a few\nAligarh students is unknown. These incidents of police brutality inspired other\nuniversities across India and abroad to join in the protest. Apart from\nattacking university spaces, the police in large parts of central and Western\nUttar Pradesh, Mangalore in Karnataka and Assam opened fire killing more than\n30 people, most of them in the state of Uttar Pradesh within 24 hours between\n20-21 December 2019. The state government also arrested more than a thousand\nprotestors to instil fear. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite police brutality, the protests\nhave not stopped but spread from one city to another in the last one and a half\nmonths. These protests are unprecedented in the history of independent India. It\nis for the first time Muslim women, many of them wearing hijab have come out to\nthe streets to protest in large numbers, joined in sizeable numbers by\nanti-right groups, left organisations, student bodies, lawyers groups, Sikh community\nmembers and ordinary citizens who stand against the CAA and NRC. Shaheenbagh area\nin Delhi has become a symbol of this non-violent resistance of the current\nright-wing government. Women of Shaheenbagh have come out to protest against\nthe CAA and NRC and have shown exemplary spirit in taking care of each other in\nturns as others sit out to protest. Women of other cities like Kolkata and\nMumbai have followed suit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, the government has not only\ncontinued with the CAA, it has also started rolling out NRC in Uttar Pradesh\nand in Karnataka. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Solidarity protest at University of Erfurt Against CAA and police brutality on protesting students in India By Sanam Roohi On Friday, 20 December 2019 some 40 people including students of University of Erfurt and Fachhochschule Erfurt, members of the Max Weber Kolleg, and other concerned citizens and students from Thuringia gathered in solidarity with the … „Sanam Roohi shares insights on the current situation in India“ <\/span>weiterlesen<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[73,1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/projekte.uni-erfurt.de\/maxweberkolleg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/projekte.uni-erfurt.de\/maxweberkolleg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/projekte.uni-erfurt.de\/maxweberkolleg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projekte.uni-erfurt.de\/maxweberkolleg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projekte.uni-erfurt.de\/maxweberkolleg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/projekte.uni-erfurt.de\/maxweberkolleg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":315,"href":"https:\/\/projekte.uni-erfurt.de\/maxweberkolleg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314\/revisions\/315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/projekte.uni-erfurt.de\/maxweberkolleg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projekte.uni-erfurt.de\/maxweberkolleg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projekte.uni-erfurt.de\/maxweberkolleg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}