CAA — NRC Protest at Gateway of India, Mumbai
In January 2020, the Gateway of India, Mumbai was the site of a protest against the attack on JNU students by armed goons and also over the contentious Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) and the NRC-NPR project.
What is CAA?
According to the CAA, Hindu, Christian, Buddhist, Jain, Sikh and Parsi migrants who have entered India illegally-that is, without a visa-on or before December 31, 2014 from the Muslim-majority countries of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh and have stayed in the country for five years, are eligible to apply for Indian citizenship.
What is the NRC?
The NRC is fundamentally a list of people who are legal Indian citizens. It contains demographic data on everyone who meets the requirements for Indian citizenship under the Citizenship Act of 1955. The record was first created following the 1951 Indian Census, and it hasn’t been updated since.
Only the state of Assam’s database has been maintained for the state of Assam. However, Home Minister Amit Shah declared during a parliamentary session in 2019 that the register would be extended to the entire country.
The protesters resolved not to show any documents (during the NPR exercise or elsewhere), claiming that they had been Indian citizens for all of recorded history.
They demanded to overturn the new citizenship law.
