Anti-Citizenship Amendment Protesters Cannot Be Called Traitors: Bombay HC
Even as the Narendra
Modi government has aggressively cracked down on those protesting against
the Citizenship Amendment Act, the Bombay High Court said on
that they could not be considered “traitors”. PTI reported the
Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court as saying, while hearing a petition,
that the petitioner and his companions only want to hold a peaceful agitation
to show their protest.
The court granted the
petitioners permission to sit on an indefinite protest against the CAA in
Maharashtra’s Beed district. A division bench of Justices T V Nalavade and M G
Sewlikar was hearing a petition filed by one Iftekhar Shaikh challenging a
January 31, 2020 order passed by a magistrate and a January 21, 2020 order of
the police refusing them permission to sit on an indefinite protest at Old
Idgah Maidan in Majalgaon in Beed district against the CAA.
“This court wants to
express that such persons cannot be called as traitors, anti-nationals only
because they want to oppose one law. It will be act of protest and only against
the government for the reason of CAA,” the court said in its order. “We must
keep in mind we are a democratic republic country and our Constitution has
given us rule of law and not rule of majority. When such act (CAA) is made,
some people may be of a particular religion like Muslims may feel that it is
against their interest and such act needs to be opposed,” the bench said in its
order.
The court also spoke
of the agitations that helped the country get freedom from the British
rule. “India got freedom due to agitations which were non- violent and
this path of non-violence is followed by the people of this country till date.
We are fortunate that most people of this country still believe in
non-violence,” the bench said. “In the British period, our ancestors fought for
freedom and also for human rights, and due to the philosophy behind the
agitations, we created our Constitution. It can be said that it is unfortunate
but the people are required to agitate against their own government now but
only on that ground the agitation cannot be suppressed,” it added.
This comes even as
BJP-led governments in states have violently cracked down against anti-CAA
protests. In Karnataka’s Bidar district, the police have been
continuously questioning minor students of the Shaheen School for participating
in a play against the CAA. Nikhila Henry found that the management of Shaheen school has struggled to comprehend how a
school assignment could have spiralled into a crime against the nation.
In Uttar Pradesh, the
Yogi Adityanath government has sent out notices to protesters to recover
“damages to public property”. The Allahabad High Court, for now, now has stayed
those notices. Uttar Pradesh is the same state where several Muslims were
killed by the police during protests and did not allow the families to have proper funerals for those who had died.
They also tortured minors in custody.
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