AGENCIES / Santa Clara, CA
More than 200 people gathered in Northern California on December 15 to protest against India’s new controversial citizenship law which is sending shockwaves across that country.
“These fascist forces who are trying to break India on the basis of religion need to be stopped,” Ahsan Khan, president of Indian American Muslim Council, told protestors in Santa Clara, CA. “You have seen how people in India are coming on the streets. It is our duty here to come out in large numbers.”
On Dec. 9, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom warned that the Citizenship Amendment Bill “enshrines a pathway to citizenship for immigrants that specifically excludes Muslims, setting a legal criterion for citizenship based on religion.” After the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) passed CAB on Dec. 11, protests against it are spreading across India. On Dec. 14, hundreds of students in New Delhi were injured after police attempted to disperse largely nonviolent protests.
“CAB is a technique used by the BJP to exterminate minorities,” declared Father Steve Macias at the Santa Clara protest. An Anglican priest, he said, “We represent 30 million-strong in India. The BJP wants one thing — the extermination of Christians.” Referencing the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a paramilitary considered the BJP’s base, he warned, “The RSS and the BJP is behind the killing of men, women, and children in our communities.” He demanded the US government “force sanctions against Modi and India to stop this happening.”
“CAB is only the latest in a line of recent fascist actions in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘New India’,” said Pieter Friedrich, an analyst of South Asian affairs. “The BJP’s next goal is to implement a National Register of Citizens across the whole country. This puts all residents of India in the position of having to prove their citizenship. CAB and NRC combined provide a legal route for the BJP to begin cleansing the land of Muslims — and, ultimately, of all non-Hindus. That’s the goal of the BJP — and the Nazi-inspired RSS paramilitary that controls it.”
Navjot Kaur, who works with persecuted refugees, said, “The world is progressing and India is going backwards. Whatever our forefathers achieved by getting rid of the colonizers, they are bringing everything back.” She compared her experience growing up in Punjab to the current situation in Kashmir. “Everything was banned,” she said. “Reporters, journalism, everything was banned. We as children were trained to just restrict ourselves in the house. Being a seven-year-old, the first political term I learned was ‘curfew’.”