Demonstrators defied troops and a curfew
after the bill, which would make it easier for some non-Muslim migrants to
become citizens, was approved in Parliament.
By
Suhasini Raj and Maria Abi-Habib
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Demonstrators throwing
stones toward security personnel during protests in Guwahati,
a city in the Indian
state of Assam, on Thursday. CreditBiju Boro/Agence
France-Presse — Getty
Images
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NEW
DELHI — Tens of thousands of
protesters rioted in three states across India’s northeast, some defying a
government curfew and military deployment to demonstrate against the passage of
the contentious Citizenship Amendment Bill, which will grant citizenship to
thousands of migrants on religious grounds.
By Thursday night, the government had shut
down the internet, deployed hundreds of troops, imposed a curfew in Assam state
and banned groups of more than four people from assembling in neighboring
Meghalaya state.
The police shot and killed two protesters in
Assam whom they accused of defying the curfew, and arrested dozens of others
there, The Associated Press reported.
Protesters are angry that the bill will grant
citizenship to thousands of Hindu, Christian, Jain, Buddhist and Sikh migrants
from some neighboring countries where New Delhi says they are religiously
persecuted. Demonstrators say this will flood their hometowns with unwanted
foreigners.
The bill will make it harder for Muslim
migrants to attain Indian citizenship, although many Muslims are also
discriminated against in neighboring countries. Critics fear the bill will be
used to harass Indian Muslims by forcing them to pass a citizenship test and
prove their family’s lineage in the country, while giving a blanket pass to
people of most other religions.
But government officials say the bill is a
humanitarian effort to provide shelter to religiously persecuted minorities.
The bill is expected to be signed into law in the coming days.
The protests first broke out on Wednesday,
after the controversial bill was passed by the upper house of India’s
Parliament, and quickly turned violent. Protesters set two train stations on
fire, clashed with security forces, blocked national highways, burned vehicles
and attacked the home of the highest-ranking government official in Guwahati,
the capital of Assam.
The government’s show of force only seemed to
enrage protesters further, with larger numbers of demonstrators gathering on
Thursday and clashing with security forces.
Protesters in the states of Assam, Meghalaya
and Tripura say the bill will dilute their numbers by naturalizing Hindus from
neighboring Bangladesh who fled to India decades ago, during their country’s
civil war.
Although the three states are majority Hindu,
their residents tend to be more concerned about safeguarding their unique
ethnic makeup and linguistic heritage than about helping coreligionists from
other countries.
Hiren Gohain, a retired professor in
Guwahati, denounced what he called an arbitrary bill by the government that had
little public support, but only sought to reinforce the Indian government’s
quest to unravel India’s secular underpinnings.
“There had been no demand from any quarter in
India for this Citizenship Amendment Bill,” Mr. Gohain said in a telephone
interview. India’s governing party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P., “has
brought the bill to polarize people among communal lines and extinguish the
very national existence and culture of Assam,” he added.
The government shutdown of the internet in
Assam on Wednesday and Thursday secured India’s spot as the country with the
most internet blackouts in the world. India, the world’s largest democracy, was
responsible for 67 percent of the world’s internet shutdowns last year, with
134 incidents, according to Access Now, a digital information advocacy center.
So far this year, India has had 89 internet
blackouts, some lasting months, as in Kashmir, where the internet was shut down
for 133 days after the government stripped the majority Muslim territory of its
autonomy in August.
India’s Ministry of Information and
Broadcasting directed TV channels on Wednesday to refrain from broadcasting
protests or any “anti-national” content, a move critics say is part of
government efforts to stamp out opposition. The order came as the live TV
station for the upper house of Parliament cut out when opposition lawmakers
heckled the home minister, Amit Shah, who is behind the Citizenship Amendment
Bill.
Earlier this year, Prime Minister Narendra
Modi’s government tried to push a similar citizenship bill. But the legislation
stalled after many politicians objected to the religious dimension of the bill
and the possibility that a large number of Hindu Bengalis would be made
citizens, giving them the right to acquire land.
Suhasini Raj has worked for over a decade as
an investigative journalist with Indian and international news outlets. Based
in the New Delhi bureau, she joined The Times in 2014.
Maria Abi-Habib is a South Asia
correspondent, based in Delhi. Before joining The Times in 2017, she was a
roving Middle East correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. @abihabib