Spontaneous demonstrations broke out on Monday December 16 at several universities in the Indian capital. Students but also many inhabitants of New Delhi gathered in particular at the bottom of the India Gate, emblematic monument, to contest the recent law on citizenship, deemed discriminatory for the 200 million Muslims in the country.
Concretely, the legislation adopted last week by the Parliament facilitates the granting of Indian citizenship to refugees from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, but on the condition that they are not Muslim.
Several officials from the historic opposition party, the Congress Party, which was largely beaten by Hindu nationalists at the polls in the spring, made the trip. Among them, Priyanka Gandhi who sat silently among the demonstrators for almost two hours in order to show her support for this movement launched by students, and which until now has been mainly concentrated in the northeast of India.
The demonstrators met by our correspondents also denounce the police violence of the last days, while the wave of protest has now spread across the country. New demonstrations have already been announced in the coming days, despite calls for calm by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
>> Watch the Observers: Indian police ransack two mosques after protests at Muslim university
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