CITIZENSHIP LAW THE FINAL STRAW FOR MANY

Many Indians are rising after long feeling powerless against policies that marginalise Muslims

MUMBAI-BASED copywriter Sarah Syed says she was long alarmed by the Hindu nationalist direction of India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but felt powerless to stop it — until now.

Like many others taking part in the current wave of protests, the final straw was Modi’s new citizenship law and then the images of students being tear-gassed when they demonstrated against it.

“It’s not as if one didn’t know things were not right. But for many of us, politics was just too depressing to think about,” said Syed, a Muslim married to a Catholic.

“Now though it feels criminal to sit out the protests and say nothing,” the 27-year-old said.

The law, which offers fast-track citizenship to non-Muslim nationals from three neighbouring countries, is the latest policy by Modi’s government that critics accuse of marginalising Muslims in the Hindu-majority nation.

In his nearly six years in power, Modi’s party has renamed places with Islamic-origin names, rewritten history textbooks to diminish or discredit the role of Muslim leaders and stripped the Muslimdominated region of Kashmir of its special autonomy.

Modi had insisted the legislation would have no impact on Indian Muslims, but his party’s 2019 election pledge to conduct a nationwide survey to identify illegal immigrants raised fears among Muslims of becoming stateless, with no fast-track naturalisation option available to them.

Mumbai-based lawyer Momin Musaddique, who has been providing free legal advice to people worried about the implications of the law, said years of pent-up anxiety among Muslims had finally found an outlet in the protests rippling across the country.

“People have been afraid for so long of this government’s Hindu nationalist agenda that they now feel like they have nothing left to fear. Now that their very survival in India is under threat, they have no option but to protest.”

In addition to Muslims, the demonstrations have galvanised large sections of Indian society, from secular Hindus and other minorities to intellectuals and opposition politicians.

Historian Zoya Hasan, from Jawaharlal Nehru University here, said the protests represented “the biggest challenge to the Modi government in the last six years”.

Several local governments in opposition-ruled states, such as Kerala and West Bengal, had said they would not conduct surveys for the national citizens’ register, responding to the public mood and undermining the prime minister’s authority.

Although the protests began as a fight against the citizenship law, many demonstrators were now seeking a rollback of the government’s push to remake officially secular India as a Hindu nation, said Hasan.

Nevertheless, she added, the unrest was unlikely to derail Modi’s Hindu nationalist campaign and risk alienating his base that propelled him to a landslide reelection victory in May.

“The government may take a step back as a result of the protests, but they are not going to move away from their core agenda.”

For first-time protester Syed, participating in the demonstrations left her with “goosebumps” as she described her elation at seeing people from different communities come together.

“I used to feel so helpless, like there was nothing I could do to change the way things were in this country. The government’s strategy has been all smoke and mirrors. Now we have woken up.”