Scores of people attended a protest meeting against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act at Delhi University’s Arts Faculty on Thursday amid heavy police presence.
Those ones who addressed the crowd, included social activist Medha Patkar, Tushar Gandhi, retired judge Kolse Patil, lawyer Karuna Nundy and journalist Arfa Khanum Sherwani. With protesters, braving a spell of rain and continuing to raise slogans, speakers here lauded student protesters for their demonstrations, calling it a “people’s movement” and a fight to “save the Constitution”.
“Your movement would define the future,” said Mr. Patil, who attacked the Prime Minister, Home Minister and the RSS and Sangh Parivar. He urged students to read Golwalkar’s works and to read author Rana Ayub’s ‘Gujrat Files’ to learn about the Gujrat riots and believed there was a need for more people to study social sciences and economics as opposed to mathematics and science.
Ms. Nundy, who enumerated various issues with the CAA and the NRC, argued that it would cause troubles for all people in the country without documentation and could lead to “never-ending cycles” of inquiry.
Talking about “rumours” being spread on how the NRC had not been started, she highlighted that the exercise had already been written in to the CAA. “I speak out against this Bill because as a lawyer I took a pledge to protect the Constitution,” said Ms. Nundy who read out the preamble of the Constitution to those present.
Ms. Patkar, who relayed stories from different parts of the country where atrocities had allegedly been committed, asked why the people in Muzaffarnagar, who were not participating in the protests, had their houses raided and were beaten up. She also alleged that there was deployment of “non-uniformed” people along with the police forces in places such Aligarh Muslim University and JNU, to attack students. She called upon the students to continue their fight.
