Mohd Aasif | Clarion India
NEW DELHI — A rally under the banner of Young India against CAA, NRC and NPR — from Ramleela Maidan to Jantar Mantar — was prevented by police and hundreds of protesters were detained on Tuesday. The march was later turned into a public meeting after protesters were requested to reach Jantar Mantar directly to avoid a confrontation with cops.
“Sikh participants from Punjab were detained at Ramlila Maidan while buses from North Campus of Delhi University were stopped and drivers taken to the Maurice Nagar police station. Busloads of protesters from Inderlok and Hamdard locality were detained by cops to disrupt the gathering even at Jantar Mantar,” said activist N. Sai Balaji. He gave an account of how their gathering was sought to be disrupted by cops cancelling a permission they had given for the march, at the last minute.
Criticising the police administration, social activist Umar Khalid said, “People accused of inciting violence are roaming free. But there is no police permission to hold a march for peace, harmony and justice, and participants are detained.” Referring to the pro-CAA march of the saffron brigade a couple of days ago, he said, “You will get permission to gather if you shout slogans like ‘shoot the traitors’ in front of a police station.”
Speakers at the meeting raised their concern over the curtailments of democratic freedom on the one side, and police showing favoritism on the other. Kannan Gopinathan, who resigned from his civil service job in a protest against the CAA, says that the government has systematically built up a narrative to curb the voices of the people from all walks of life.
“Dissenting students are labeled members of the ‘tukde-tukde gang’, educated activists from cities and towns as ‘Urban Naxals’, Muslims are labelled as Jihadi, terrorists or Pakistani and a secular Hindu is labelled as anti-national,” said Gopinathan.
Chandrashekhar Azad seconded the idea that the democracy in India has just reduced to namesake. “We cannot say or do anything against the authorities,
then where is the democracy,” he asks rhetorically.
The rally was against the state-sponsored communal attack on anti-CAA protesters of North-Eastern Delhi. The riots have left a couple of hundredsinjured and over 40 people dead. The organisers have assured that anti-CAA movement and relief work for the riot-affected people will be carried out hand-in-hand. Also, the incident has heightened the urge for a roll-back of the contentious law.
The gathering was also addressed by one of the dadis of Shaheen Bagh.
