‘We, the People’, a day-long civic gathering here in the city on Friday against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC), witnessed the coming together of student leaders from universities across the country.
The students, who shared the experiences of the ongoing struggles in their respective universities, enlivened the proceedings with an extended version of the ‘azadi’ sloganeering, with the percussionists and the crowd joining them with matching energy.
Chandankumar from Jamia Milia Islamia University questioned why the Narendra Modi government was wasting crores of taxpayers’ money on pointless exercises like the NRC.
Dolan Samanta of Jawaharlal Nehru University said PM Modi was right in saying troublemakers could be identified from their clothes. She said the protesters believed in debate and discussion, while the State responded with violence. Aktharisa Ansari from Jamia said the intensity of the attack from the police, inside the university library and on the campus, showed the aim was not just to disperse, but to injure and create a war zone-like situation.
Amutha Jayadeep of JNU paid tributes to Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula who committed suicide three years ago on the same day.
“The current movement began from Guwahati University. Now, questions are being asked from every university. The women of Shaheen Bagh have been on a self-disciplined sit-in protest for about a month, without anyone leading them,” she said.
