Police entered on Tuesday the Madras University campus where about 80 students were holding a protest against violence at Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) and Aligarh Muslim University and the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), as demonstrations continued in some educational campuses for a second day.
Student bodies in different universities also called for a nationwide protest across campuses on Thursday.
The students at Hyderabad’s Maulana Azad Urdu University continued to protest for a second day with faculty members joining them. The students also boycotted exams and locked the university gates to prevent the police from entering
In the evening, students of Osmania University held a candle light march to mark their dissent. “We are here for secularism and support to students from JMI and AMU,” said one of the student at the march.
At Mumbai’s Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), students boycotted classes. “The atrocities haven’t ended against our fellow students in other universities and to make matters worse, network logjam has suppressed voices as well,” said a student.
After a series of silent protests at IIT-Bombay, students are planning an event on campus on Wednesday. “There’ll be a sit-in protest gathering on campus where important texts will be read from the Constitution,” said a student representative for the Ambedkar Periyar Phule Study Circle (APPSC), in IIT-B.
Several students staged a protest in Bengaluru . Two students were detained by the police for staging a protest at the Town Hall without permission. “We are not doing anything illegal. Peaceful protests are our constitutional right,” said a student.
Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union president Aishe Ghosh said the protest should not be restricted to AMU, JMI and JNU and called for bigger and peaceful protest across educational institutions on December 19.
“I appeal to everyone not to make this a protest concerning JNU, AMU and Jamia. It suits the government to restrict the dissent to these three universities and create Islamophobia,” Ghosh said.
A HRD ministry official, however, said that the situation in 42 central universities in the country, except JMI and AMU, was peaceful and examinations are being held as scheduled. The reports of violence came only from two universities, JMI and AMU, said the official, who was not willing to be named.
The student demonstrations was backed by a number of Bollywood actors as Mohammad Zeeshan Ayyub, Parineeti Chopra, Sidharth Malhotra, veteran screenwriter Javed Akhtar, among others.
“Today they are making villains out of Muslims. Even if you do remove them, do you think they will not make any new villains? They will keep making more villains…,” Ayyub said at a gathering in New Delhi.
At several places such as Meerut in Uttar Pradesh and Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) members marched in support of the CAA. “We have been hearing a lot about various protests against the CAA ever since it was passed in the Parliament. We want to demonstrate that we understand how important this law is,” said Hans Chaudhary, a member of the Meerut district of the ABVP.
The amended citizenship act seeks to grant Indian citizenship to refugees from Hindu, Christian, Sikh, Buddhist and Parsi communities fleeing religious persecution from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh and who entered India on or before December 31, 2014.
