CAA: Jakob Lindenthal On Being Misled, Grilled And Expelled From India
In September this year, Mr Modi went to the USA and shouted Abki baar Trump sarkar at a rally; but at home, a German student is asked to leave the country for holding up a poster. Here is his blow-by-blow account of his interaction with an Indian official
who grilled him about immigration, freedom of speech and his friends at IIT
Madras
Atithi devo bhava, a Sanskrit phrase that means a guest is equal
to God, is bandied about with a great deal of exuberance in India. But on
23 December a 24-year-old German exchange student was not only expelled from the country after he attended a protest against the Citizenship
Amendment Act (CAA),
but he was given eight hours to pack his belongings and leave. “It was totally
untransparent,” said Jakob Lindenthal in a recent conversation with HuffPost
India. “Looking back, it was an experience that I will pass on to
people who have to deal with authoritarian institutions wherever it may be in
the world.” Lindenthal, who grew
up in Bavaria and studies physics at the Dresden University of
Technology, came to the Indian
Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras in July 2019. At a protest
in Chennai on
19 December, he held up a sign that read, “1933-1945, We Have Been
There.”
“What I was trying to
say is that between 1933 and 1945, when Europe was destroyed, there was not a
long way to go,” he said. “In 1933, it was not visible that all this would
happen in the next 12 years. I feel that Indian democracy is at a critical
point where there are lots of dangers to it.” Almost a month after
his ordeal, Lindenthal spoke to HuffPost India about the sign
he held up at the protest, the hour-long session in which he was grilled by an
Indian official, the questions she asked him, and why foreigners expect so
much more from India and its government....
