Four years after death, anti-caa protesters pay tribute to Vemula
MUMBAI: Protests against the oppression of the marginalised and the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) came together on Friday, when the city saw people gather in Dadar and Byculla.
Four years after Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula committed suicide following caste-based harassment at the University of Hyderabad, approximately 100 city students and activists marched to Chaityabhoomi in Dadar. They had come together to remember Vemula, and raise their voices against violence against students and the CAA.
A protester said, “These new rules [CAA] are discriminatory to many tribal communities. Without proper documents, even these communities will have no proof of their citizenship in the country.”
At Agripada in Byculla, a massive crowd gathered at the Young Men’s Christian Association ground on Friday evening. Organised by Mumbai Citizens’ Forum, with over 20 organisations from south Mumbai under its umbrella, the protest was led by women from Muslim, minority and marginalised communities, and registered its dissent to CAA and the National Register of Citizens (NRC).
Speaking at the protest, Nationalist Congress Party’s Supriya Sule said, “The Maharashtra government will not let anything unfair happen in the state.” Students from New
Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia, Jawaharlal Nehru University; Aligarh Muslim University (AMU); Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Siddharth College and Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT-B) in Mumbai also attended the protest and some of them spoke to the crowd that grew to at least 2,000 by late Friday evening.
Srijan Chawla, 22, a student of Jamia Millia Islamia, said, “I have come from Delhi to speak at the protest. I have never been more aware of my religion than I am now, since the government started talking about CAA. I have come to show solidarity with all protestors.”
In addition to speeches, there were street plays, poetry readings, and patriotic songs. Sania Mariam, 26, a student of IIT-B said, “We are here to show solidarity with each other and with people in the entire country who are facing violence due to our protests against CAA and NRC.”