Tales Of My Soul

“Our reason for the protest is simple -- we believe that the Citizenship Amendment Bill and the NRC are unconstitutional. The protest was initiated by the Jamia Teachers Association and was then handed over to us to take forward. On the very first day, 49 students, including me, were detained by the Police. I was literally dragged by 5 Policemen into the van and then kicked inside it. All the other students began demanding our release, so the cops had no choice but to let us go, 5 hours later. Even then, they blackmailed us saying that if the protest didn’t stop, they’d file cases against all of us. But we didn’t let that stop us. 

On the 2nd day, the neighboring communities got involved. That’s when the disorganization began -- as students, we wouldn’t control such a large crowd, especially when the local leaders got involved. They got mixed up in a street fight. The media began spreading wrong information saying that the students were clashing with the Police. This isn’t true and not even possible -- we were protesting from inside the campus, and the local communities were outside our campus walls. We only wanted a peaceful protest, but yesterday, the local communities stopped listening to us and moved ahead. That’s when the Police attacked them -- the cops themselves burned the cars outside and blamed it on us. 

They barged into our campus and hostel -- there was no protest happening in the reading room, the toilet, the mess, the canteen. Yet, the Police dragged the students out, who were just trying to study. People have literally jumped out from the first-floor windows in order to escape. A friend of mine broke both his hands. What’s worse is that there were some people in plain clothes, wearing Police helmets, beating students -- they were definitely not the Police, and were very violent. It was as if they didn’t have any shred of humanity left in them. 

After 8 PM, it calmed down a bit, and the Police gave us 10 minutes to clear the premises. They’re behaving as if we’re terrorists or anti-nationalists -- we’re not! This is not Kashmir! We’re just students! This morning, our teachers had a meeting with every single student at Jamia and told us that we’re not alone -- they too would protest with us. We were informed a while ago, that after 6 PM, the Police would once again be marching onto our campus. But we’re not going to give up -- we’re not just doing this for Muslims, we’re doing this for every single minority community in our country; we’re doing this for India. For 1.3 billion citizens, who’s religion is… Indian.”