Anger over CAA, police action on JMI spills over to many campuses in India
New Delhi: Anger over the police crackdown in Delhi's Jamia Millia Islamia and at the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act cascaded across many campuses in the country on Monday with politicians and civil society supporting the students to decry what they say is an unconstitutional law.
The morning after violence erupted in the national capital's New Friends Colony, the lines between anger at the police action and the protests over the CAA blurred into a unison of protest -- from Kerala to West Bengal and Telangana to Uttar Pradesh as the day progressed.
While thousands of students took to the streets demanding a probe into the use on Sunday of teargas inside the Jamia university's library as well as police entering the campus without permission from university authorities, politicians also made themselves heard.
UDF and LDF, in a rare show of camaraderie, protested jointly in the Kerala capital.
The Supreme Court took serious note of rioting and destruction of public property during protests against the act and said it must stop immediately.
The apex court, which agreed to hear on Tuesday pleas alleging police atrocities on students holding protests against the act at the Aligarh Muslim University and the Jamia Millia Islamia, said it will not hear this issue in such an atmosphere of violence. "The only thing we want is that the violence must stop," said a bench headed by Chief Justice S A Bobde.
In Lucknow's Nadwa College, students gathered in the hundreds shouting slogans like "Awaz do, hum ek hain" (call us we are all united) as police tried to control the situation. For a brief while, they hurled stones at the police who threw the missiles back over a campus steel gate.
"Some students of the Nadwatul Ulama here tried to protest and hurled stones from inside. They were prevented and no one is allowed to come outside the campus," said Uttar Pradesh Director General of Police O P Singh.
In Hyderabad's Maulana Azad Urdu University, students held a protest march post midnight in solidarity with the Jamia students and demanded that their exams be postponed.
There were angry demonstrations at the Banaras Hindu University (BHU) in Varanasi and at the Jadavpur University in Kolkata with demands that the government take action against police "hooliganism".
"Crackdown is a very small word to be used for what happened in Jamia yesterday. This is clear hooliganism. Videos of policemen smashing bikes and beating students are all over social media. The government must fix accountability for this," said a PHD student from BHU.
Students from three Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) in Kanpur, Madras and Bombay who usually stay away from agitations joined in too as did their counterparts from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru. Students from the Tata Insitute of Social Sciences (TISS) in Mumbai also protested on the streets shouting slogans such as "Shame on Delhi Police".
Students at Central University of Kerala, Kasargod and Pondicherry University boycotted classes.
The first to join the movement against the violence in Jamia were students from AMU where there were clashes with the police late night on Sunday in which at least 60 students were injured.
After the protest, the administration announced closure of the university till January 5 and students have been asked to evacuate the hostels.
As videos from Sunday's violence inside Jamia circulated wildly on social media, many spoke out, including from Hollywood and Bollywood.
Hollywood star John Cusack was one of those who took to Twitter to air his views.
"Reports from Delhi are it was a war zone last night - Fascism is not a joke - we use the word with the understanding it's deadly."
Filmmaker Anurag Kashyap, who had quit the micro-blogging site in August, returned on the microblogging site, saying he cannot stay "silent any longer".
"This government is clearly fascist... and it makes me angry to see voices that can actually make a difference stay quiet.." he tweeted.