In the immediate aftermath of the horrific display of majoritarian violence in Delhi last month in which Muslims were the primary targets, ...
In the immediate aftermath of the horrific display of majoritarian violence in Delhi last month in which Muslims were the primary targets, oddly enough it is judicial conduct that has come to occupy centre stage.
The question before the court (and importantly before every one of us in this country) is: Do we stand by the people protesting against the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act and their right to protest? Do we stand with those who have suffered enormously this past fortnight in Delhi, before that in Uttar Pradesh, and before that in Assam – all on account of this one law that threatens to dispossess us?
The CAA introduces religious denomination as a basis for granting citizenship status to non-Muslim migrants from neighbouring Islamic countries alone. As scholar Mahmood Mamdani has argued, this exposes “the CAA [as] a demonic rather than a benign legislation” that refuses to acknowledge Muslims as anything other than as perpetrators of violence: “The official discourse thus seeks to present Muslims as a politically and morally legitimate target for persecution by a government-mobilised majority”.
The CAA and its implementing arm, the National Register of Citizens, sparked widespread protests in which Muslim women came out on the streets in unprecedented fashion. Inspired...
