India's Citizenship Law Protests Reveal Deeper Anger by Country's Students

NEW DELHI -- Thousands of students from across India have come together to protest a new law that they say is unconstitutional and marginalizes the country's substantial Muslim population. The ongoing protests will go down in history as one of the most powerful student-led protests since the country obtained independence from the United Kingdom in 1947.

The scale of the protests, which so far has claimed more than 20 lives, has expanded beyond students, with other young adults, members of the Muslim community, civil society, political parties and even Ramachandra Guha, biographer of the late Mohandas Gandhi, joining in.

Some of the largest demonstrations were held last week across at least a dozen cities, including small ones such as Chandigarh, Ahmedabad, Mangaluru and Shillong.

"Anybody who gives a damn about where this country is going, is protesting," says Shreyasi Rao, a 20-year-old student from FLAME, a liberal education university in Pune.

Experts say the students' anger is fueled by a deeper frustration over the lack of jobs and a slowing economy, which run contrary to the election promises made by the national government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. India's economy grew at its weakest pace in six years for the July-September quarter, at 4.5%. The chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, said recently that it will "significantly" cut its growth estimate for India. India's unemployment rate stood at the highest in 45 years, in the fiscal year ended 2018.

That rising frustration also poses one of the first challenges to Modi, whose party won a landslide re-election last spring. India is one of the youngest countries in the world, with half of its 1.3 billion people below the age of 25.

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India's young adults are "getting increasingly disillusioned with the Modi government's policies that have created social strife instead of pushing for a developmental agenda," says Satish Misra, senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, an independent think tank.

Student Opposition Spreads Across Country

Students from more than 50 universities or colleges have marched, participated in campus sit-ins and protested in other ways to support the ongoing movement. Students at leading Western universities, including Harvard, Yale, Cambridge and Oxford University have also staged mini protests, or issued statements in solidarity with students in India.

"What is new this time that it's happening everywhere simultaneously," says Shubhda Chaudhary, assistant professor at Indraprastha College for Women in Delhi.

Students had been protesting the citizenship law for several days, but their activism escalated after the events of Dec. 15, when students say police used force to clamp down on student protests in two universities that have a large proportion of Muslim students -- Delhi's Jamia Millia Islamia University, and Aligarh Muslim University in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. Jamia Millia students say that the police entered the university's library and beat them up with sticks so badly that they had to be hospitalized. Police say violence outside the campus led them to the crackdown.

"Across religions, across communities people are coming out and registering their protest," says Arjun Sengupta, an assistant professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, in Hyderabad in south India.

Law a Challenge to Secular India, Critics Say

The trigger for the protests is the Citizenship Amendment Act, which grants citizenship to refugees on the basis of religion, to people belonging to six religions including Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists. The law does not mention Muslims.

Analysts say the government's next step is to implement the National Register of Citizens, a process intended to throw out "illegal immigrants," according to Home Minister Amit Shah. Individuals will be required to show documents to prove their citizenship. However, millions of poor people in India don't have documents to show their place of birth or origin. The fear is that if they are Muslims, with no documents, they might be deemed illegal even if they have lived in India all their lives.

Modi said at a Dec. 22 rally that the citizenship act is meant to help the persecuted, and Muslims have no reason to worry. The citizenship act "does not affect any citizen of India of any religion," Modi said on his official Twitter account.

But analysts say the new law and the register are aimed to expunge Muslims from the country, who number around 200 million.

"They are dividing the country on the basis of religion," says Saba Iqbal, a 25-year-old doctor in Delhi. "It's about equality."

Historic Role of Students in Social Movements

Today's demonstrations are the latest expression of student-led protests involved with major movements. In 1974, student protests in the state of Bihar against corruption was led by Gandhian socialist Jayaprakash Narayan, who propelled it into a nationwide movement. The Bihar Movement, as it came to be called, pushed then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to declare an emergency in 1975 that suspended citizens' basic civil liberties. The movement ultimately led to the downfall of Gandhi's government.

Another prominent student-led protest was in the early 1990s, when students united to oppose the Mandal Commission report, which proposed to address caste discrimination. Some students set themselves on fire in protest. The ruling government, led by V.P. Singh, fell shortly thereafter.

In 2016, student leader Kanhaiya Kumar was termed "anti-national" by the Modi government for allegedly raising some slogans at a rally against the execution of a Kashmiri separatist, drawing support from students elsewhere. But the protests this time are notable for their widespread nationwide and international reach, analysts say.

In recent years, protests by students at India's universities have mainly focused on issues immediately relevant to their studies or fellow students. Activist students have used social media, including WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook, to galvanize support from far and wide.

Government, Students at an Impasse

Today, Modi enjoys widespread support within India. His supporters believe that the protests are orchestrated and don't accurately represent public opinion. The government has been firm on not changing its stance on the new law.

To clamp down on the protests, the government in several states has imposed a British colonial-era law that restricts gatherings of people in public. Internet services have been temporarily shut in many areas, including the capital, and the police have preemptively detained thousands of protesters.

The crackdowns have further incensed students, who say they are being robbed of their fundamental right to protest peacefully. "How is this constitutional?" says Rukmini Banerjee, a 20-year-old student from Delhi's Ambedkar University.

Whether the protests will force meaningful change is unknown. Some observers are hopeful.

"Student uprisings have throughout the world, over the past several decades, played a major role, against dictatorial regimes of various kinds as with wannabe dictatorships, as the regime we have in India, in Delhi at the moment," says Sumantra Bose, a professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He said he isn't surprised by the recent protests because a backlash has long been brewing among those who reject the present government's attempts to make India a Hindu-nation.

"This could go down as a turning point in the rise of the Hindu nationalist movement to hegemonic dominance."

Shefali Anand is a New Delhi-based journalist who has reported for The Wall Street Journal and The Indian Express newspaper. You can follow her on Twitter here.