ADVERTISEMENT

India Protests Turn Deadly as Government Crackdown Deepens

Five people died in protests in the state of Uttar Pradesh on Friday, the Press Trust of India reported.

India Protests Turn Deadly as Government Crackdown Deepens
Smoke rises out of a burning vehicle during a protest against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act in Muzaffarnagar. (Source: PTI)

(Bloomberg) -- India’s government doubled down on efforts to stem growing nationwide anger against a new religion-based citizenship law with continued curfew-like curbs in many areas and wider mobile internet shutdowns.

Five people died in protests in the state of Uttar Pradesh on Friday, the Press Trust of India reported, while political groups aligned with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party staged counter protests in favor of the controversial law. It comes a day after thousands defied the ban on public demonstrations and risked arrest to take a stand against the law.

India Protests Turn Deadly as Government Crackdown Deepens

Protests continued Friday despite restrictions imposed in parts of the capital, the tech hub Bengaluru and across Uttar Pradesh, which with a population of around 200 million is about the size of Brazil. More than 1,200 people including opposition leaders were detained in the capital New Delhi on Thursday, while the Minister of Home Affairs Amit Shah called for a meeting on Thursday evening to review the security situation.

Markets shrugged off the demonstrations, with stocks headed for yet another record close Friday, while the Indian rupee was little changed. Sovereign Indian bonds rallied after the central bank announced buying longer bonds and selling shorter-maturity notes.

‘Social Division’

“The fear is that the twin moves of the citizenship act and the NRC could foster more social division and alienation from a common ‘Indian’ identity,” said Milan Vaishnav, director and senior fellow, South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “I am skeptical that the protests will force a rethink on the part of the government.”

Internet connections were cut in parts of the capital on Thursday with two major service providers confirming on Twitter that the block was implemented “as per instructions from the government.” On Friday there were cuts in several parts of Uttar Pradesh, including capital Lucknow.

India Protests Turn Deadly as Government Crackdown Deepens

India recorded the world’s highest number of internet shutdowns, according to the Delhi-based Software Freedom Law Center. The longest shutdown has been recorded in Kashmir, the country’s only Muslim-majority territory, where the block has been in place since August when the government scrapped the state’s decades-old autonomy.

The government has shown no signs of backing down on the contentious law passed on Dec. 11 that’s seen as discriminating against Muslims, but the unrest poses the biggest challenge for Modi in his six-year reign.

The large-scale eruption of protests comes amid the slowest economic growth in more than six years, rising unemployment and a growing unease fueled by a series of surprise decisions. Modi and Shah scrapped seven-decades of autonomy in Kashmir and announced plans for a nationwide citizens registry or NRC that would require people to prove their citizenship. This new law has raised fears about damage to India’s traditional secular ethos enshrined in its Constitution that treats all religions equally.

Anger Grows

The new law is seen as a precursor to a nationwide citizens register to weed out illegal migrants. Demonstrations first began in the eastern state of Assam where there are fears the new law will allow an influx of migrants from neighboring Bangladesh. Some 1.9 million people in Assam -- many of them Muslims -- risk losing their Indian citizenship after the state enforced the citizens register in August.

“Many of my friends are Muslims, they’re telling me they don’t feel safe in their own homes,” said Sneha Christuraj, 25, who was one of thousands who turned out at the protest in Mumbai, the country’s financial capital. “No one should feel like that.”

Film stars and writers joined marches across a dozen Indian cities and towns against the Citizenship Amendment Act that bars undocumented Muslims from neighboring Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan from seeking citizenship while allowing in migrants from other religions. Fears that it may be used to disenfranchise Indian Muslims were driven by the government’s plans for national citizens register.

Not far from the Parliament in Delhi on Thursday, a crowd of about 800 students and citizens sang songs and chanted slogans against Modi and his Home Minister Amit Shah. Srishti Parihar, a 19-year-old student at Delhi’s Miranda House college, said she was angry. “We will stand with each other and sink with each other, “ she said. “I will convert to Islam if that’s what it takes to protect fellow Muslim citizens.”

The chief minister of Uttar Pradesh Yogi Adityanath said the state would take “revenge” by seizing properties and auctioning them to recover damages from protesters who took part in violence.

--With assistance from Abhijit Roy Chowdhury, Shruti Srivastava and Kartik Goyal.

To contact the reporters on this story: Archana Chaudhary in New Delhi at achaudhary2@bloomberg.net;Ronojoy Mazumdar in Mumbai at rmazumdar7@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ruth Pollard at rpollard2@bloomberg.net, Muneeza Naqvi

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.