Protests spread across India over new citizenship law which excludes Muslims

[Recursion]

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/12/15/india/india-protests-assam-delhi-citizenship-intl-hnk/index.html

Deadly protests erupted across India Sunday over a controversial citizenship bill that critics fear could further marginalize the country's minority Muslim community.

Protests broke out at universities across the country, including in Hyderabad, Varanasi, and the capital New Delhi, according to Indian media, while videos showed police firing tear gas at protesters at Aligarh Muslim University in Uttar Pradesh. Ongoing protests in Assam, in India's northeast, turned violent, with at least five people killed, police said.

In Delhi, students began demonstrating at the prestigious Jamia Milia Islamia university early Sunday, with around 2,000 people taking part at the protest's peak. Hundreds of people were injured in the protests, and dozens arrested, as well as significant damage to the campus, said Najma Akhtar, the university's vice chancellor.

Police said the protest turned violent when some students refused to disperse, and set fire to public buses. Police then used tear gas, said senior Delhi police official Chinmoy Biswal. Several students were detained at two police stations, but have since been released.

The protests have produced this image which is already making the meme rounds:

[Hortensis]

1. SO incredibly complex. Are 2000 here and 200 there, etc.,

a lot in a nation of over a billion people? Don't know enough to have a firm opinion, and don't expect to, except that wherever social conservatives get control trouble follows, and far-right Hindu nationalists now control the national government.

Also that India's problems make ours look like quarrels between spoiled brats in comparison.

The excuse seems to be that the nations involved are dominant Muslim, and the law is meant to fast track minorities from those nations to citizenship. Uhuh. Of course there're massive religious and ethic and sociopolitical engineering issues involved.

[Recursion]

3. Imagine you live in Assam

And that you were born between 1971 and 2014. To keep your citizenship, you have to provide a birth certificate as well as proof that your parents were resident in Assam in 1971 (the new requirements are retroactive). Unless you're Hindu, in which case you don't need to provide anything.

It's a voter and benefits suppression scheme that would impress Alabama Republicans.

The BJP "promises" it won't extend these extraordinary measures outside of Kashmir. Well, Kashmir and Assam. Well....

[Hortensis]

4. It sure would. Actually, our RW nationalist government

is doing much the same thing here, just on an "unfortunately" much more limited scale, mining targeted personal records for excuses to deport those people, including stripping citizenship from those who'd earned it.

And Trump promises he only wants to persecute those who are legally vulnerable, not any of the rest of us. Well....

Poor India, though. Scary. Great population growth guarantees eventual tragedies of unprecedented scope, if somehow not there, elsewhere.

[Kablooie]

2. The Muslim extremist's plan is moving along just as planned.

Their goal is for the whole world turn on Muslims so the Muslim communities will all pull together and fight back. A world war that will end the domination of non Muslims and bring on the new caliphate.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

5. Sounds like Susan Sarandon's plan for revolution, which WILL happen if Trump is prez.

Er, wait, no.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

6. So, Muslims are out, Hindus are in, where are the Sikhs?

Or the Christians?

Are they "out"?

[Recursion]

9. Sikhs, Parsees, Buddhists, and Christians from Pakistan are "in"

As are Christians and Buddhists from Bangladesh (and of course Hindus from either). But Muslims from Pakistan and Bangladesh are not being allowed refugee status no matter what their reason for fleeing was, and this is being extended retroactively over the past half-century.

There are about 15 million Hindus and Buddhists in Bangladesh right now, and the new law is basically an open door for them to move to India. The argument is this will create a BJP vote bank in Assam and West Bengal, places where the party has been weaker than in most of the rest of the country.

[malaise]

7. So is that crazy PM and his Hindu goons planning on destroying the Taj Mahal

as well. This planet has gone stark raving mad.

[Recursion]

8. Almost literally: Google "Ayhodhya"

It's not the Taj Mahal, but rather a signficantly older mosque (the Taj Mahal isn't actually all that old; there are dorms at Harvard that are older).

[malaise]

10. The Taj Mahal is one of the most beautiful historical buildings in India

and yes I have been following that madness