[As nationwide demonstrations entered their
fourth week, India’s Muslims — long a fragmented group — organized into a
formidable force against a contentious citizenship law.]
By
Hari Kumar and Maria Abi-Habib
 |
|
Saturday’s
protest in Hyderabad, India, against a new citizenship law reflected a new
unity
among the nation’s historically unorganized Muslims.
Credit
Vinod Babu/Reuters
|
HYDERABAD,
India — At least 100,000
people gathered Saturday in Hyderabad, India’s technology hub, to protest Prime
Minister Narendra Modi and a new law they say will strip the country of its
secular foundations, maintaining steady pressure on the government as
demonstrations entered their fourth week.
The protests have drawn massive crowds across
India, with more than 200,000 people gathering in Kochi city, in the southern
state of Kerala, on New Year’s Day. And in Delhi, hundreds continued to camp
out on a vital stretch of highway that links the capital to its suburbs,
bristling against one of the city’s coldest winters in decades.
While the protests are the biggest threat yet
to Mr. Modi’s tenure in office, they may also be the beginning of a deeper
political and social shift in India. From the start the protests have attracted
Indians across political stripes and creeds. But with India’s Muslims
spearheading the demonstrations this past week, the 200-million strong minority
showed it can organize as a formidable force to check Mr. Modi’s Hindu
nationalist government.
The protests began in December when the
government passed a law that uses religion as a criterion for determining
whether illegal migrants in India can be fast-tracked for citizenship. The
measure favors members of all South Asia’s major religions except Islam,
India’s second largest faith. Muslims worry that the law will be coupled with a
citizenship test and used to strip them of their Indian nationality.
Mr. Modi’s government has said that the
measure is misunderstood and aims only to help religious minorities that are
persecuted in Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Although the government has promised that
Indian citizens, regardless of their religion, will not be affected by the
measure, Muslim and secular Indians remain wary. Many worry that Mr. Modi’s
Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P., plans to disenfranchise Muslims in its quest
to remake India as a homeland for Hindus, who make up about 80 percent of the
population.
On Friday, the government dug in its heels,
with Home Minister Amit Shah vowing at a rally in Jodhpur that “we won’t
backtrack even an inch” on the divisive law, which he masterminded and which
has yet to be enacted.
The governing party, Bharatiya Janata Party,
was initially taken aback by the protests, but has recently mobilized its
supporters in its own large rallies to express support for the citizenship law.
The rally in Jodhpur was the first in that planned government counteroffensive,
with other senior leaders preparing to fan out across India to marshal
loyalists.
In Hyderabad on Saturday, protesters came out
in large numbers despite police restrictions capping the gatherings at 1,000
participants. Organizers said the demonstrations drew 200,000 people, while the
local authorities pegged the number at 100,000. The city’s Muslim community
organized the protests, and volunteers handed out water and Indian flags.
That Muslims continue to organize protests
that turn out such large numbers nearly a month after demonstrations first
began is remarkable, considering the
fragmented nature of the community, among the nation’s poorest and most
illiterate, and its limited political power. Indian Muslims hold slightly less
than 5 percent of parliamentary seats, despite making up 14 percent of the
population.
On Saturday, some protesters held placards
reading, “I am an Indian by choice, not by chance,” a reference to the millions
of Muslims who chose to stay in a secular India during the country’s bloody
1947 partition, when Pakistan was carved out of the subcontinent as a homeland
for Muslims.
Since India gained its independence from
Britain, the country’s Muslims have never protested in such large numbers, said
Farhan Nasir, 27, a doctor who attended the protest in Hyderabad, and is
Muslim. “If you will break us, we will unite. For the first time, Muslims are
protesting on the street in large numbers.”
Dr. Nasir said Muslims felt compelled to
address the governing party’s divisive politics and sectarianism. He added that
the community historically had been so focused on making ends meet that it was
unorganized politically and socially. But that is changing, he said, as they
feel increasingly threatened by Mr. Modi’s government.
“This could be the beginning of a new
politics for Muslims and for India as well,” he said. “This will not fizzle
out; the protest is in a secular direction.”
Some protesters expressed impatience with Mr.
Modi’s sectarian politics, pointing to inflammatory statements he and other
party leaders made ahead of national elections last year even as the country
faced a weakening economy and unemployment at a 45-year high.
“Elections should be fought on the issues of
economy, employment, inflation and not on religion issues,” said Syed Salman
Ahmad, 27, a civil engineer.
The atmosphere at Hyderabad’s demonstration
was festive, with hawkers selling lemonade and snacks, protesters sporting
painted Indian flags on their cheeks and groups of women banding together in
song until the sun set.
Hari Kumar is a reporter in the New Delhi
bureau. He joined The Times in 1997. @HariNYT
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
