#cab protests

17 December 2019 

You may have heard that over the past few days, the Delhi police have tear-gassed and lathi-charged students for protesting the Citizenship Amendment Bill. The CAB is an unspeakably cruel bill devoid of any logic, that will threaten the rights and lives of Muslim immigrants, Indian Muslims, along with millions of poor, landless people without the records to prove they are Indian citizens. The BJP is that much closer to realising its Hindutva vision of One State, One Religion. 

(What is the CAB? Why should I care? What is the state of protests? Go through this resource list) 

I’m directing this post at people who live outside of India, since that seems to be the vast majority of the people I interact with on tumblr (if you reside in India are currently unsure what to do and who to talk to, please DM me. Let’s get you to your nearest protest). I know you’re feeling impotent and I can’t change that but I can confirm things that help: 

1/ Spread information, and counter misinformation. We currently lead the world in Internet shutdowns, have been maintaining the longest-running internet shutdown in any democracy in the world in Kashmir (one day of protests in Delhi University led to so much carnage; this has been status quo for Kashmir for >3 months in maybe the most heavily militarised region in the world). Internet shutdowns remain in Assam, Meghalaya, Bengal, and Uttar Pradesh. I don’t know what’s going to happen and I don’t know if its even possible to shut down internet for 1.2 bn people but I have a queasy sense of the lengths this govt. will go to, and they are extreme....all of this is to say that it matters that information is spread fast and widely in a way that gives an unsanitised sense of what is happening on ground 

And yes, it’s basic, but it helps us more than it doesn’t. It helps when John Cusack and Harvard Students publish statements of solidarity that get air time; it helps when people from across the ocean say: I see you, and this is wrong. It helps an ordinary student on the ground, at least a little, from going crazy and thinking these atrocities are invisible 

Check for daily updates from student organising pages like Pinjra Tod and Collective Delhi, student organisers like Umar Khalid and Kawalpreet Kaur, and from news orgs like The Wire, Scroll 

Read longer reportage at sites like Caravan Magazine 

Counter misinformation using Altnews.in

2/ Indians who reside outside of India: talk to your family and be persistent. Between Tulsi Gabbard and Howdy Modi! and pro-CAB rallies near UK parliament and Vote-for-Modi flash mobs in European cities, it’s clearer than ever that the affluent and powerful Hindu-majority Indian diaspora have tied their fate with the BJP and RSS. They help polish the govt.’s image internationally and support them financially. Short of the government nationalising Reliance industries, there may be nothing to convince your parents and aunts and uncles that the Modi regime is fascist....except a war of attrition, waged by you. Talk to your family members 1:1. Read headlines to your mom and dad every day. Send news articles and screenshots to your family Whatsapp group. Be incessant, be annoying, keep at it. Aim to make your family blanch at the mention of BJP and disassociate from Hindutva like Sonal Shah had to.

Something’s got to give, right? I read a story on Facebook the other day about a Hindutva mom who had a change of heart when she saw that the brutalised Jamia Islamia University protesters were the same age as her son. If your family loves you, I’d say it’s incumbent on you to leverage that. If you get one concession from your aunt that this isn’t normal, it matters. If you can make your dad feel an unwanted uncomfortable twinge in his belly when he sees police firing shells at unarmed screaming students, it matters. 

okay, i want to talk about something important. let me start off with the fact that i'm not an American and i live in India. so basically, i am asian, brown and also a Muslim.

this in no means is saying that i do not support BLM, i do, i support the protesters and their cause. yes, i signed all the petitions.

i want to use this as a platform to talk about a similar thing that happened in India during November, 2019 - March, 2020, when lakhs of people took to the streets of India (all over the country) to protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) being passed by the government. according to which, the government will be discriminating us based on our religion and strip people off their citizenship. yes, you heard that right. so we took to the streets to protest and the police brutality was through the roof. not only did they beat up civilians on the roads but also raided national level universities to beat up the students for protesting against the government. we live in a democracy, it is well within our democratic rights to raise questions and protest. the government is directly responsible to us, the prime minister's office. (its in our constitution, the president is not answerable to the people but the PM is.)

i study law at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU). on the night of 15th December, 2019, police forcefully entered our main gates (they've no jurisdiction inside the gate btw) and beat up students protesting peacefully on the road. 24 consecutive expired poisonous tear gas shells which maimed a student, lathicharge (beating with the police batons), shot with rubber bullets, you name it we went through it. they raided the hostels, and beat up the kids who weren't even part of the protest. they kept hurling abuses at the students and also kept saying "jo log kashmiri hai, un madarchodo ko maro pehle" (the people who look like kashmiri, beat up those mfs first). yes, that's verbatim btw, i'm not exaggerating.

i can go on and on about that night really, so instead you can read what happened in AMU here. i also have the original investigation report by the committee that is mentioned on that site. 

other universities faced similar and worse atrocities. you can read how brutally Jamia Milia Islamia (JMI) students were beaten up, here and how local goons who feel that Hinduism is threatened but the presence of Muslims in the country entered another national university, Jawaharlal Nehru University and beat the students up with metal rods, you can read about it here.

and yes, none of the perpetrators of these attacks are arrested. even if they were, they are out on bail now.

we boycotted classes for months but got ZERO justice, instead, now under the guise of lockdown, the government has been arresting the leaders of the protests. lmao, you know the first the government did when lockdown started? they cleaned the graffiti off the walls of the universities which the protesters had made. they cleaned off fucking graffiti which were just quotes by historical figures in the spirits of dissent while the doctors kept begging them for PPE. the government clearly have their priorities set straight. 

the women of the country took to shaheen bagh (Delhi) when the students were attacked and sat there in protest for 101 days. even in cold temperatures of below 1°C. mums with their one month old babies sat there, old ladies as old as 80+ sat there too. literate, illiterate both the groups of people sat there and they meant to sit there indefinitely but because of lockdown that wasn't possible and they had to vacate the place. oh, even they were attacked (more than once) by a guy carrying a gun who was ready to shoot at the protesters while the police WATCHED. they fucking stood there and watched. a guy advanced towards the attacker with his hands raised saying “let’s talk calmly” and that fucking privileged jackass shot the protester in the hand. all the while, the police just watched. you can read about it here. (he said "only Hindus will have their way in this country.")

a 4 months pregnant PhD student of Jawaharlal National University has been jailed without any justification. her case is still not being heard before the court and she's being denied basic human rights, living in a prison during a fucking pandemic. an excerpt from the Print, "Zargar, a 27-year-old M.Phil. student from Jamia, is over three months pregnant, and was arrested by the Delhi Police’s special cell on 10 April. She was later denied bail and, on 21 April, charged under the stringent Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). She was associated with the Jamia Coordination Committee (JCC), and was part of the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protests organised by university students in December and January. She was arrested for allegedly leading the anti-CAA protest at Jaffrabad metro station in February."

this is nothing, most of the Muslim people arrested during this protest haven't been released or are simply forgotten. lawyers were not allowed in the police station to bail them or being allowed to talk to them. most lawyers in the country signed up their numbers and other contacting details on the Internet with their locations so that if someone was arrested, they could call them up and the lawyers would bail them out (free of cost).

this discriminating and draconian bill not only affects the muslims but also the people on the lower rungs of the social ladder. i don't believe in caste. i do not agree with the system but it existed widely at a time when i wasn't even born, so there's not much i can do about that. but right now the government is bringing up the caste again, people who are Vaishyas and Shudras will also be stripped off their citizenship while being sent to detention camps. yes, India is already stocked up with their detention centers. so yes, i wasn't there at that time but i am here right now and i refuse to be okay with the government discriminating against us based on caste and religion.

lmao i totally forgot to mention the riot that broke out in February, 2020 which resulted in a recorded deaths (murder) of 53 civilians (mostly Muslims). that's the recorded death count but according to various people who were present in Delhi at the time and witnessed the riots happening, they claim the missing persons report (unreported) is in thousands. and over hundreds were killed. you can read more about the February 2020 Delhi Riots here.

there's so many more incidents that happened, and all the government has done is: NOTHING.

our current PM is the prime suspect of the Gujrat Riots 2002, which was a pogram led by him and it killed over thousands of muslims who lived in gujrat.  

i didn't write this here to ask you for help, no, instead i want you guys to read this and remember this. don't forget our voices, because we're all together in this fight and the others to come. forgive but please don't forget.

Women of Seelampur begin an indefinite sit-in inspired by Shaheen Bagh. Source.

Link here: just need ~USD 100 more, or INR 7000! 

"Citing the harassment of minorities in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan, the Indian parliament recently amended its citizenship law, offering citizenship rights to Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Parsi and Jain communities migrating from these countries.

The law, however, excluded Muslims, triggering mass protests across the country.

“Pakistan’s Hindu community unanimously rejects this bill, which is tantamount to dividing India on communal lines,” Raja Asar Manglani, patron of the Pakistan Hindu Council, told Anadolu Agency.

“This is a unanimous message from Pakistan’s entire Hindu community to Indian Prime Minister [Narendra] Modi. A true Hindu will never support this legislation,” he said. (...) Pakistan’s tiny Sikh community has also denounced the controversial law.

“Not only Pakistani Sikhs but the entire Sikh community in the world, including those in India, also condemn this move,” said Gopal Singh, leader of the Baba Guru Nanak.

Kaagaz Hum Nahi Dhikhaayenge! (We refuse to show our papers!): Shaheen Bagh struggle against CAA and NRC completes ten days!

The indefinite sit-in, primarily led by women, in Shaheen Bagh locality of Okhla, Delhi, that had started spontaneously after the brutal police crackdown on the students of neighbouring Jamia Milia Islamia University on 15th December, completes ten days on Wednesday. Hundreds of women, taking turns, sit through day and night every day, blocking the NH 24 which connects Delhi and Noida, to protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act, the proposed National Register of Citizens, and the state repression being unleashed against anti-CAA protestors across the country.

Despite immense pressure from many quarters including from the police, the protestors are resolute in continuing the sit-in until the CAA is withdrawn. Neither is the harsh winter stopping them from resisting this black law, which along with NRC would affect the poor Muslim women the severest. Amidst poems, songs and slogans like ‘Inquilaab Zindabaad!’, the protestors are determined to fight the evil designs of Modi-Shah of transforming this country into a Hindu Rashtra. Referring to the absurdity of being asked to show papers to prove their right to live in this country, hundreds of protestors shout out loud and clear: ‘Kaagaz Hum Nahi Dhikhaayenge!’, sending a clear message that the mass movement that has erupted this month against CAA across the country will be a fight until the finish against the fascist forces.