Thousands of Muslims chanted “Remove Modi!” after Friday prayers at New Delhi’s Jama Masjid mosque, calling for the removal of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi over a citizenship law that makes immigration easier for non-Muslims.
Massive protests continued across India despite a police ban on such activities, leading to street battles that left six people dead and dozens injured.
Reuters reported the fatalities occurred in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most crowded state and the scene of numerous confrontations between Hindus and Muslims. According to the chief of police, none of the deaths were caused by police firearms.
Police in New Delhi brought out a water cannon to disperse a crowd of 6,000 demonstrators blocking access to a major commercial area.
“A Reuters witness saw a smouldering car that had been torched outside the Daryaganj police station, and shoes strewn across a street as dozens of policemen in riot gear kept watch,” the report added, without explaining that shoes were lying all over the place because angry Muslim demonstrators have a habit of throwing them at the police. Shoe-throwing is often employed as a means of expressing contempt in Islam.
The crowds threw stones at several other protest locations, and the police responded with tear gas. Violent incidents were reported across 13 districts by the police, including firebomb attacks on vehicles and protesters swinging sticks. Denunciations of police violence were added to criticism of the citizenship law at many demonstrations.
“The protests began last week at predominantly Muslim universities and communities, and have spread across the country and now include a broad section of the Indian public,” the Associated Press noted on Friday.
That broad section of displeased Indians includes a substantial body of Hindu conservatives within Modi’s BJP party, who are criticizing the new law from the other partisan direction: they fear extending easier access to citizenship to every group except Muslims will encourage a flood of non-Muslim immigrants into India, which is already having difficulty funding public services for its immense population.
Prime Minister Modi is not the only target of the demonstrators’ fury. Heated criticism has also been directed against India’s interior minister, Amit Shah, a prime mover behind the citizenship bill and the official who has most frequently linked it to the National Register of Citizens, which is India’s effort to identify illegal immigrants.
Shah’s tendency to connect the two initiatives has fueled concerns that the Citizenship Amendment Act will become an instrument to deport large numbers of Muslims currently living in India, an allegation Modi strenuously denies.
Shah’s Home Ministry issued a new statement on Friday, insisting that no Indian citizen will be “unduly harassed or put to inconvenience” by intrusive demands for documentation. This is unlikely to placate Modi’s critics, including foreign media, which is treating the citizenship law as a clear example of “bigotry” and “Islamophobia.”
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