Anti-CAA protesters in Kolkata, who have been staging a sit-in at the Park Circus Maidan for over 50 days now, on Wednesday said they were taking extra precautions after the violence in Delhi to make sure no one made speeches that was even remotely inflammatory.
“What has happened in Delhi is shameful, they are simply killing humanity. But I am not scared. If I was scared I wouldn’t have started this protest in the first place. Our protest is not political or against any community, but against a law that divides people on communal lines,” Asmat Jamil, the housewife who began the protest on January 7 along with other women in the neighbourhood, told The Hindu.
‘Bengal isn’t Delhi’
“We are making sure no one here makes a speech that is even remotely provocative. We were already cautious about it, we are now being extra cautious. What helps is that this is Bengal and not Delhi, where the police is openly biased. Here, even the West Bengal government is against CAA,” Ms. Jamil said.
The protesters in Kolkata are eager to drive home that a parallel should not be drawn between Park Circus Maidan and Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh, where the ongoing protest has hit the traffic. “Here, we are making sure that the traffic and normal life is not affected by our protest. We even changed the positions of the loudspeakers so that children studying for their exams are not disturbed,” said Debu Shaw, one of the volunteers at the venue.
“Every participant is now a volunteer, whose job is to watch out for potential mischief-makers and caution speakers against provocative speeches. We are also keeping an eye on new faces walking into the venue,” said Mr. Shaw, a hardware engineer.
Ms. Jamil said: “We want to keep this protest peaceful. We simply cannot afford anything going wrong or else the whole purpose will be defeated. The fight is to turn India into Mahatma Gandhi’s India, to rid the society of hatred. We are not going to stop until we have achieved this.”
