New Delhi
Students have protested in cities across India as part of a massive wave of intensifying violent unrest over a divisive bill granting citizenship to some non-Muslims who entered the country illegally.
Barricades and buses were set alight, and on Monday the Jamia Millia Islamia University in Delhi remained closed and nearby schools and offices in south Delhi were shut due to the damage.
Students marching at Aligarh Muslim University in Uttar Pradesh on Sunday were met with a similar level of brutality, with anti-riot police reportedly firing teargas into crowds protesting peacefully and arresting dozens of students.
By Monday the protests had spread to university campuses in the cities of Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chandigargh and Kolkata, while in Lucknow students pelted police with stones after they fired teargas at demonstrators.
“Violence against peacefully protesting students cannot under any circumstance be justified. Allegations that the police brutally beat up and sexually harassed students in Jamia Millia Islamia University must be investigated,” Amnesty India said in a statement. Critics of the citizenship amendment bill, which was signed into law on Thursday, say it openly discriminates against Muslims. Under the legislation, tens of thousands of Hindu, Christian, Jain, Buddhist and Sikh migrants from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan will be allowed to claim Indian citizenship. The same will not apply for Muslims.
Rahul Gandhi, the former head of the opposition Congress party, tweeted on Monday that the law and a mooted nationwide register of citizens also seen as anti-Muslim were “weapons of mass polarisation unleashed by fascists”.
