By Shruti Manian

Cries of "azadi!" -  meaning freedom in Hindi and Urdu - echoed from the Low Library steps on 19th December. It was perhaps the coldest day of the semester and still finals week, but even that did not deter almost a hundred students from turning up to protest India’s newly legislated Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).

In the last week, as most students at SIPA have been struggling with finals, many Indian students have also been gripped with horror as our country fights a brutal battle to preserve the democratic and secular values it was founded on. 

Many student orgs at SIPA signed a statement expressing their solidarity with Indians who were protesting the CAA both at home and abroad and condemned the government’s discriminatory policies. Conspicuously missing from the list of signatories was the South Asian Association.

To understand why SAA’s silence on this matter is deeply problematic, it is most important to gain a deeper understanding of what has catalyzed such massive protests in India in the first place. On December 12th, the Indian government, led by the nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), passed the Citizen Amendment Act (CAA). 

The CAA speeds up the citizenship process for Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and Afghani migrants in India who have been in the country prior to 2014. It accepts all Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains, Christians, and Zoroastrians on grounds of religious persecution, while explicitly excluding Muslims.

Even considered on its own the CAA is a discriminatory piece of legislature. But it is particularly ominous in light of its larger legal and political context.

On November 20th, the BJP government announced that the National Register of Citizens (NRC) would be implemented across the country. The process has already begun in northeastern Assam – a state which borders Bangladesh. In Assam, the NRC required residents to provide documentation proving that their ancestors were born in India before the formation of Bangladesh in 1971. Many simply could not meet these onerous requirements, and nearly two million Indians were left off the registry. Unsurprisingly, many Indians are simply too poor, too remote or simply unaware that they need to possess such documents. 

The government has since said that the nation-wide NRC will not be as stringent - although there is still no clarity on which documents will be accepted as citizenship proof.

More troubling is the CAA-NRC nexus. Members of the six religions named in the CAA who are unable to provide the documentation demanded by the NRC will still be allowed to retain citizenship because the CAA will recognize them as refugees who fled religious persecution in Afghanistan, Pakistan or Bangladesh. But Muslims who cannot provide documentation risk being stripped of their citizenship and all accompanying rights. Already, detainment camps for those who don't make the CAA-NRC cut are being built. 

This legislation follows in the fiery trail of many other actions, both legal and political, that this government has introduced to systematically disenfranchise Indian Muslims..

The seeds of the protests were sown in university campuses in New Delhi and have spread far and wide in the days since. In retaliation, the government has taken to adopting draconian measures like curfews, revoking the right to assembly and deploying vicious police force leaving 20 people dead.

Supporting protests and statements have emerged in universities across the world including Harvard, Brown, Oxford and Cambridge. South-Asian student associations from schools worldwide have expressed their solidarity with Indians who are battling for their democratic rights.

The SAA board refused to sign a statement of solidarity circulated by a few concerned Indian students. My repeated emails to the board asking them if and when they planned to release a statement were first met with silence, and then with flimsy excuses of finals and a shameful declaration that the board had an incomplete understanding of the issue to make a statement. 

Of course, every SIPA student had finals and yet almost 22 organisations have managed to be well-informed enough and brave enough to sign the statement of solidarity.

More disappointingly, SAA’s cowardice and silence is in sharp contrast to the thousands of students in India, many of whom are paying a heavy price to fight for the values of secularism and equality enshrined in the Constitution, a document drafted by B.R. Ambedkar, whose bust is ironically located in the International Affairs Building’s Lehman Library.

SAA did eventually release a statement on 18th December, but only to its members and not to the wider SIPA community. Their message supported the University protests, but omitted any mention of marginalized communities or Muslims.

Even though SAA claims to represent all South-Asian voices, in an ironic twist that mirrors the larger geopolitics of the Indian subcontinent, the SAA board is dominated by Indian students. Their silence and claims of ignorance are glib and reflect the Indian government’s refusal to acknowledge peaceful protests as a legitimate and democratic right.

Admittedly, SAA’s silence makes little to no difference in the larger scheme of things. However, as Arundhati Roy writes, “We must make ourselves visible, even when we lose, whatever it is that we lose - land, livelihood or a worldview. We must make it impossible for those in power to pretend that they do not know the costs and consequences of what they do.”

In a pivotal moment, when India is rising to push back against its authoritarian rulers, SAA’s refusal to be part of the movement is a mark of their failure to effectively represent the community they claim to lead. And yet, this week has sparked hope in me that Indians are no longer afraid to stand up for what is right. 

My closest childhood friend who has always been avowedly apolitical was one of the 150,000 who marched in our hometown Mumbai. Mere hours before she was detained by the Delhi police for protesting another friend called out and shut down an older relative on a family whatsapp group for his anti-Muslim rhetoric. My favorite cousin organized a protest at his university in Goa. Many would argue that none of these acts taken alone are particularly significant. But added together with thousands of others, they represent the ideas of equality, secularism and freedom of thought, speech, worship and religion that India was built upon. 

India is rising and those who choose to remain silent are cementing themselves as complicit with the violence and discrimination peddled by this government.