The Teacher of Delhi University approximately 250 in number, has issued a statement deploring the “authoritarian and undemocratic” repression of peaceful protests and the amendment of the Citizenship Act, which is terming it contradictory to the fundamental secular principles for citizenship set out by the Constitution of India.
The signatories has extended solidarity with the academia of various universities, who had faced the brunt of police in the last few days. According to Hindustan Times, the statement read that it attacked the current dispensation, arguing that it used “all kinds of power to crush the basic rights of people to peacefully protest and question unjust laws.”
The teachers wrote, the closing off of the metro stations, roads, blocking the mobile networks, mass detention of citizens, increasing number of FIRs, preventive detentions, “heckling of protesters”, and attack on public property by police during raids were a blatant misuse of State power. Further added that various “coercive police action is nothing short of sinister.”
The teachers took a strong objection to the CAA. By making an arbitrary choice of selecting Muslim majority in the neighbouring nations and creating “a false narrative of only the Muslim-majority nations as a den of persecution of the minorities, which apparently should be avenged by de-legitimising the citizenship of the Muslim minority of India vis-a-vis NRC.”
The statement also attacked the National Registry of Citizens (NRC) stating that by trying to push it, the “communal and anti-poor orientation of the regime” was reflected.
Lastly it stated that “it also pointed out at the impact of the amendment on the “ethnic fault-line in the north-eastern States and the long-standing extensive exploitation of the resources of the Northeast by corporates and ruling elites in return for limited growth and development in the region.”
The statement also read “These undeniable realities of CAA and NRC are for all to see. No amount of suppression and coercive measures can conceal that the very idea of an inclusive and democratic India is under attack.”
