Meet the gold medalist from Pondy University who boycotted convocation in protest against CAA

By Dilip -
A gold medallist in M Sc Electronic Media, Karthika graduated from Pondicherry University in 2018 and is now working in Kerala. Calling her decision to boycott the prestigious event a ‘purely personal’ one, Karthika says that she cannot stand by discrimination on religious grounds. “I demand the withdrawal of CAA and NRC. The government must understand how strong the sentiment is by seeing people like me, students, foregoing our valuable, hard-earned moments. As an individual, I got a chance to protest in this way. I urge everybody else also to register their protest in any way they can, as individuals," she says earnestly. 
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She says that the widespread protests are a reflection of the deep resentment that the people of India have towards the CAA and NRC. The students of Pondicherry University had also taken out a protest march inside the campus last week in solidarity with the students of JMI and AMU.  “Why should we follow whatever the government says without questioning them? We are not a fascist country, we are a democracy. Our Preamble says so. We don’t need to bow down and take whatever is given at us. If we disagree, we should protest in every way we can,” she emphasises. 

‘I stand with the students’: For AS Arun Kumar, the seven long years he put in, working on his PhD thesis was not as important registering his dissent. “Not just with JMI and AMU students, I also wanted to express solidarity with the lakhs of protesters out on the streets against the CAA and NRC,” he tells TNM. The 34-year-old anthropology scholar defended his PhD thesis in October 2018 and was eagerly awaiting his felicitation. However, he chose to forgo in protest against what’s happening instead. I didn’t want to get my degree from the President of India. He had a choice, an option, to send the bill back to the Parliament. But he did not; instead, he put his sign and made it a law,” he explains...
https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/meet-gold-medalist-pondy-university-who-boycotted-convocation-protest-against-caa-114652

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