Campus and custom have closed ranks to echo the opposition of the Northeast to the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill that seeks to grant nationality rights to persecuted non-Muslim immigrants from India’s neighbourhood.
The students of Cotton University in Guwahati, the oldest such institution in the Northeast, have made use of Saraswati Puja décor to convey their stand on the bill. Large sections of the Northeast fear that if passed, the bill will change the cultural and demographic character of the region forever.
A handmade multi-colour cut-out of the map of the Northeast with “We Oppose Citizenship Amendment Bill, 2016” written on it was a part of the puja decorations here on Sunday.
“On the auspicious occasion of Saraswati Puja, it was our symbolic protest against the bill, which will spell doom for the indigenous people of the Assam and the Northeast,” Pranjal Kalita, the general secretary of Cotton University Students’ Union, told The Telegraph.
He said under no circumstances could they accept the legislation and they were ready to go to any extent to resist it.
Some of the students expressed anguish at the way Prime Minister Narendra Modi backed the bill at a public rally at Changsari on Saturday. The bill was approved in the Lok Sabha on January 8 but it is yet to be passed in the Rajya Sabha.