It’s noon and chants of azadi — freedom — rent the Park Circus ground in the heart of Kolkata, with protesters seeking freedom from the set of acronyms easily recognised across the country today: CAA, NRC and NPR.
The protesters are all Muslim women — most of them homemakers living in and around the Park Circus area — who have been camping here for 10 days now, taking turns to keep the sit-in round the clock. From time to time they also shout slogans like “Hindustan zindabad” and “Hindu-Muslim bhai-bhai.”
“As you can see, many of the women are wearing purdah — they are the kind who hardly step out of their homes. It is heartening to see them come out openly in protest against the CAA,” said Shampa Sirin, one of the activists egging on the protesters with slogans.
“I have seen countless protest marches and meetings but have never seen a more determined lot. In the past 10 days many of them have even learned how to raise slogans,” Ms. Sirin said.
Banners and posters bearing pictures and quotes of Rabindranath Tagore, Maulana Azad, Mahatma Gandhi, B.R. Ambedkar and Subhas Chandra Bose hang at the site. Volunteers go around distributing biscuits and water, and their recipients include policemen keeping an eye on the protesters.
NRC fear
Even though the sit-in is primarily against the CAA, or Citizenship (Amendment) Act, what the protesters actually fear is an Assam-like National Register of Citizens (NRC) being replicated in the rest of the country. “Who stays, who goes — who knows,” says Afroja Khatun, who teaches Bengali at the Surendra College for Women and who has to the venue to “show solidarity” with the protesters.
Golam Haider, an elderly man watching the women raise slogans, says: “Today it is CAA, tomorrow they will bring in NRC and NPR and start asking us for documents to prove our identity. We cannot trust the BJP. Narendra Modi says one thing, Amit Shah says something else.”
Park Circus-resident Noor Jehan, who is 58 and a homemaker, says: “Kolkata has seen so many upheavals, people have been forced to change homes, how do you expect them to retain all documents? From where will I dig out the birth certificate of death certificate of my grandfather?”
