Hundreds of students, activists and citizens gathered at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar on saturday, under the banner of Delhi based activist collective United Against Hate (UAH) to oppose the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB).
Protesters carried placards with slogans such as ‘Reject CAB! Boycott NRC!’ and ‘Muslim Lives Matter’.
“We will do a Civil Disobedience against this discriminatory laws,” Nadeem Khan from UAH said in his opening address at demonstration.
“BJP led government is being brazenly majoritarian. They are also Muslim haters and they don’t try to hide it anymore. We have been elected in the parliament to safeguard the constitution and we will fight it back,” Congress leader and Kishanganj MP Mohammad Jawed says.
“CAB sabotages the fundamental secular character of India,” Swaraj India Abhiyan chief and political psephologist Yogendra Yadav told the protesters.
Students from various universities, including JNU, Jamia Millia Islamia and the Aligarh Muslim University joined the protest.
“Our fight against NRC/CAB does not end today. It is rather the beginning of a long fight,” Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union councilor and Fraternity Movement leader Afreen Fathima said.
AISA president N.Sai Balaji criticized the religious based citizenship bill and called it as a dream of Hindu nationalist leaders including Golwalkar and Savarkar.
“The Muslims who stayed back during Partition are the real patriots and no one can drive them away from the country,” Manmohan Gama from Samajwadi Party warned the government.
