Inspired By Shaheen Bagh, Hundreds Of Women Stage Protests In Mumbai Against CAA, NRC
Hundreds of women have been sitting on a road in south Mumbai's Nagpada area since the January 26 night against the CAA-NRC-NPR regime, apparently drawing inspiration from New Delhi's Shaheen Bagh protest.
Inspired by the women of Shaheen Bagh in Delhi who have been protesting the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), National Register of Citizens (NRC) and National Population Register (NPR) for more than a month now, women of Mumbai are also staging a similar protest.
A group of Muslim women, including household helps and students, in Mumbai have started an indefinite protest against CAA. They have vowed to not leave the protest site until the government withdraws the contentious act. The group, which has around 60-70 people and later swelled to over 100, started gathering on the road on Sunday evening.
Most of them are residents of Muslim-dominated Madanpura, Jhoola Maidan, Apripada, and Mumbai Central areas.
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They have so far not withdrawn their agitation despite senior officers of the Mumbai Police urging them to do so, an official said on Monday morning.
¡°The government is just doing what it feels like. They have detained Bhim Army chief Chandrashekhar Azad when he was protesting against the act. The women in Uttar Pradesh are not being allowed to protest, this is completely unconstitutional,¡± Fatima Khan, a law student who is leading the protesters, told Hindustan Times.
Protesters are headstrong about the agitation and want Shaheen Bagh-like protests across the country.
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They are reaching out to more people to join the protest through social media. The women protesters could be seen holding placards with slogans like ¡°We stand against CAA, NRC, NPR¡±, ¡°They tried to divide us¡± and ¡°Respect My Existence or Expect My Resistance¡± written on them.
Slogans hailing Hindu-Muslim unity and brotherhood were also raised.
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At Shaheen Bagh, close to 500 women have been protesting 24x7 against the citizenship act and the proposed NRC for the past 40 days. They have said the protest will only stop once the legislation is withdrawn.
The Citizenship Amendment Act seeks to grant citizenship to Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Parsis, Buddhists and Christians fleeing religious persecution from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh and who came to India on or before December 31, 2014. It omits Muslims from the list of refugees.
