India’s Supreme Court delays hearing petitions against citizenship bill widely slated as anti-Muslim
Indians holds placards during a protest against a new citizenship law outside Gandhi Ashram in Ahmadabad, India on December 17, 2019.
The new law applies to Hindus, Christians and other religious minorities who are in India illegally but can demonstrate religious persecution in Muslim-majority Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan. It does not apply to Muslims.Critics say that the new law is part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist-led government's agenda to marginalise India's 200 million Muslims and that it goes against the spirit of the country's secular constitution.
Nearly 2 million people in Assam were excluded from the list, about half Hindu and half Muslim, and have been asked to prove their citizenship or else be considered foreign. India is building a detention centre for some of the tens of thousands of people the courts are expected to ultimately determine have entered illegally.
On Sunday, marches by students at New Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia University and Aligarh Muslim University in Uttar Pradesh descended into chaos when police fired tear gas and beat unarmed protesters with wooden sticks.The police response to the protests has drawn widespread condemnation. It has also sparked a broader movement against the Citizenship Amendment Act.
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