'There is a design of fundamentalists that the north east must become an Islamic country.'
'There's no going back on this protest till the CAA is repealed and the government assures of dropping the NRC proposal'
This is New India, where our heroes and heroines are vilified and jailed by a State intent on damaging its own people, asserts Aakar Patel.
'Modi-Shah have understood the risks their cynical mixing of domestic political motivations with strategic national interests was soon going to become counterproductive asserts Shekhar Gupta.
'Umar is being targeted because he is emerging as educated, knowledgeable leader of the Muslim community and, unlike popular perceptions that many harbour about Muslims, took to peaceful means to protest against the NRC and CAA.' 'They (the State) are scared of educated Muslim leadership.'
'The JD-U has become an ideology-less accessory to the BJP,' says Ambassador Pavan Varma, who has been expelled from the JD-U.
No proof, no document, no biometric will be needed under it as NPR will be conducted through self-certification, said the minister.
Slogans like 'Jiyo aur jeene do (live and let live)', '#No CAA, #No NRC', 'Mera desh, mera samvidhan (My country, my Constitution)' were painted on the road.
'The right wing has worked for 70-80 years at the grass roots before it burst onto social media.' 'Social media is an extension of its formidable work in society.' 'If you think you can fight them on social media, forget it. You can't.'
'Under Justice Gogoi's tenure, the Supreme Court has gone from an institution that was at least formally committed to the protection of individual rights as its primary task, to an institution that speaks the language of the executive, and has become indistinguishable from the executive,' warns Gautam Bhatia.
'The loose use of words like foreigner or Bangladeshis obscures the fact that the post-Partition migration to Assam has been of both Hindus and Muslims.'
'The government's job is to enable people to live together, not tear them apart.' 'It is supposed to create spaces to work, live and survive -- this country is struggling and this government is saying you have no right of being.' 'It wants to declare human beings illegal. It is the most bizarre nonsense in the world.'
Kerala, Punjab and Rajasthan are the other three states to pass a resolution opposing the contentious legislation, reports Archis Mohan.
For two-and-half weeks, as Kanhaiya Kumar's Jan Gan Man Yatra opposing the CAA-NPR-NRC makes its way through Bihar, it has come under sustained violent attack. Archana Masih/Rediff.com discovers that the yatris, who include teenagers wanting to save the Constitution and the Nation, are unfazed by the threats and loathing.
The Delhi high court on Tuesday refused to grant bail to former Jawaharlal Nehru University student Umar Khalid in a Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) case related to alleged conspiracy behind the riots here in February 2020.
The filmmaker, at the forefront of the criticism against the amended citizenship act, assured the students that he and many others stood behind the students in their long fight.
The NSA allows preventive detention of an individual for months if the authorities feel that the individual is a threat to the national security, and law and order. The anti-CAA/NRC protesters have been siting at Delhi's Shaheen Bagh for over a month.
The citizens urged the central government to look into the ongoing protests with all seriousness and safeguard the democratic institutions of the country, and take stern action against those people behind them.
The black bands were worn as a mark of protest against the alleged attack on the Constitution of India with the passage of the amended citizenship act by the government, leaders said.
Kapil Mishra had been invited because he was an "anti-corruption crusader", one 'IIT B for Bharat' organiser said. But in his half hour-long speech, Mishra didn't mention corruption. His entire focus was on the long "battle" Hindus had fought for their identity.
'India's reputation is not and cannot be dependent on the whimsical opinions of some obscure foreign advisory committee packed with Hindu-phobic acolytes,' declares Vivek Gumaste.
His mother is, however, undeterred and determined to participate in the protests, saying it is 'for the future of my children'.
If we have already excluded Muslims from political office by default, and if we are already harassing them daily through laws, like Nazi Germany did and like Pakistan did, then why do we need a Hindu Rashtra or a change from the present set of laws? argues Aakar Patel.
'They have to be seen as being responsive to the employment woes and economic stagnation afflicting many young people.'
The rot is is not limited to Chitra Ramkrishna and the yogi, observed Debashis Basu.
'He won't be able to migrate; he must survive in that environment.' 'He will go back after the election to becoming invisible.'
Tharoor said that if the "omission" was inadvertent, "a correction would be reassuring".
According to a National Crime Records Bureau report, a total of 356 cases of sedition -- as defined under section 124A of the IPC -- were registered and 548 people arrested between 2015 and 2020, out of which only six were convicted.
It is going to be a rough and brutal 2020 for India as its government pushes on with its ideological agenda, and the citizens do whatever they can to protect themselves, notes Aakar Patel.
They have been accused of asking anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protesters to go to 'any extreme', spreading discontent in the community by calling CAA/National Register of Citizens anti-Muslim, and organise demonstrations to 'malign the image of the Government of India'.
Amidst raging protests across the country against the Citizenship Amendment Act, Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Friday accused the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance government of showing "utter disregard" for people's voices and using brute force to suppress dissent that was "unacceptable" in a democracy. Condemning the government's action, she expressed Congress's solidarity with students and citizens in their just struggle.
Several protests -- some peaceful, some violent -- erupted across India on Monday against the police crackdown in Jamia Millia Islamia and the controversial citizenship law as students and political leaders took to the streets, even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi called these protests "deeply distressing" and appealed for peace.
Its passage in the Lok Sabha is all but certain due to the massive majority the Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies have, and the Union government is confident of its passage in the Rajya Sabha as well with the support of several non-aligned regional parties which have often joined the treasury benches in the past.
"The very fact that Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru believed that democracy has made revolution superfluous after independence and how it meant the complete opposite of a bloodless change," it said.
'They are targeting us because we respect the law of the land, don't indulge in illegal or unlawful activities, are educated and literate enough to articulate the acts of injustice against us (the Muslim community).'
AIMIM's West Bengal unit leader Anwar Pasha along with some of his colleagues joined the Trinamool Congress, claiming that the Asaduddin Owaisi-led party was only acting as a polariser of votes to help the BJP.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has approached the Supreme Court seeking to intervene in the hearing on the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, saying there was a need to take into account the "international human rights law, norms and standards" in the proceedings.
Opposition parties, though resigned to the fact that they lack the numbers to defeat or stall the bill in the two Houses, have decided upon different tactics that they would employ to highlight their reasons for opposing it.
'China was a relationship from which Mr Modi had expected the most it seems.' 'It showed in a string of summits, and somewhat breathless celebration of Xi Jinping.' 'It was hasty and simplistic,' observes Shekhar Gupta.
"Maharashtra has got nothing to do with Kashmir? Soldiers from Buldhana sacrificed their lives for the protection of Kashmir. Opposition doesn't feel national issues are important," he said.
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