Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has appealed for calm as protests escalate against a new citizenship law that critics have slammed as anti-Muslim and part of a “Hindu-first” agenda being pushed by his Bharatiya Janata Party.
College students in cities like Mumbai, Chennai and Bengaluru took to the streets Monday, a day after police forced their way onto the campus of a prestigious university in the capital, New Delhi, and fired tea gas shells, injuring dozens of students.
Opposition party leaders staged protests in several states while tensions ran high in the country’s northeast that has been engulfed with angry demonstrations due to worries that the new law will allow tens of thousands of Hindu immigrants to settle in the region.
The new law will fast track Indian citizenship for religious minorities such as Hindus, Sikhs and Christians who faced religious persecution in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, but exclude Muslims.
The government denies any religious bias, saying that Muslims have been left out because they are not minorities in these Islamic countries. Opponents of the new law, the Citizenship Amendment Act, fear it will weaken the secular foundations of the world’s largest democracy by introducing religion as a factor for citizenship.
Calling the violent protests against the citizenship act deeply distressing, Modi called on the country to maintain peace, unity and brotherhood. "I want to unequivocally assure my fellow Indians that CAA does not affect any citizen of India of any religion. No Indian has anything to worry regarding this Act. This Act is only for those who have faced years of persecution outside and have no other place to go except India," he tweeted.
The prime minister blamed opposition parties for inciting violence against the new measure while Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad criticized the Congress Party for stoking “communal fires.”
Anger flared across the universities after police stormed Jamia Millia Islamia University to chase protesters who had set fire to buses and motorcycles on the street outside the campus. Students say they were not part of the mob that vandalized the vehicles.
"They broke into our library, they were beating a lot of students, many have got injured, many were detained,” Rahul Kapoor, a research scholar at the university, told VOA.
Hussain, who asked to be referred to only by his first name, told VOA that his brother was studying for his final exams in the Jamia library when police entered firing tear gas shells and beat him over the head with their batons.
“I was outside of the campus behind the Mosque and I was seeing that many people were coming from inside the campus so I texted my brother to come outside. Then he came outside but the police were there and they beat him again," Hussain said.
His brother is now recovering at home with five stitches in his head, after spending the night between police custody and a local hospital, Hussain said.
Videos of students taking cover under desks as police entered the library have circulated widely on social media. The university’s vice chancellor has questioned how police entered the campus without permission.
Delhi police spokesman MS Randhawa denied allegations of excessive force. "Police exercised utmost restraint. There was no firing and we have used minimum force," he said at a news conference.
Students of Jamia Millia Islamia University resumed their protests on Monday, marching outside the campus and in central Delhi.
In Lucknow, police locked university gates to stop students from coming out to protest, prompting some of them to hurl stones at officers. Local television footage also showed officers hitting students with sticks.
Protests also raged in eastern states such as Assam, Tripura and West Bengal, where anger against the new law centers not on its exclusionary nature but on local communities fearing they will be swamped by Hindu immigrants from Bangladesh.
In Assam, the All Assam Students Union led a silent protest in the state capital, Guwahati. Fears run deep here that the new law will offer a path to citizenship to Hindus who were recently identified among 2 million “stateless” residents. The state, which borders Bangladesh, has long led a movement against illegal immigrants and says it does not want them to settle in their state regardless of their religion.
The protests in Assam have claimed six lives so far and led to the postponement of a meeting that had been planned for last week in its capital, Guwahati, between Modi and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Political commentators have said the government must take note of the rising anger against the new law. The Times of India newspaper said in an editorial the government “miscalculated the intensity of the blowback” against the law that is being criticized for unconstitutionally equating citizenship with religion and discriminating against Muslims.
VOA's Esha Sarai contributed to this report.
