Women at Mumbra protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act, NRC and NPR
A group of street artists who have made some drawings at Delhi's Jamia Nagar and Shaheen Bagh, where protests against the amended citizenship law have been going on for months, have created similar drawings at another protest site in Mumbai.
Several women have been protesting against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act or CAA in Mumbra, on the outskirts of Mumbai, for at least two weeks now. Some of the women from Mumbai had gone to Shaheen Bagh. They decided to start their own protest in Mumbra after they returned from the national capital.
"Nobody can lead this type of protest. Everybody is doing it. The credit for the effort goes to everybody," a woman told NDTV at Mumbra.
"People should know, what is NRC, what is CAA... We are talking to scholars, they are giving lectures. Many knowledge-based programmes are being held to inform people about these issues," the woman said.
"There are around 600-800 women protesting here," another woman said.
The artists who painted slogans on the streets of Shaheen Bagh and Jamia Nagar have joined the protesting women in Mumbai and made drawings on the theme of their protest.
In one of the paintings on a road in Mumbra, the artists have written, "Constitution is in danger". Similar drawings are found on a stretch in Shaheen Bagh, where the protesters have set up a camp and dug in.
"The responsibility of an artist is to spread message through art. We are from Artists Rise for India group. We have done work at Shaheen Bagh also," said an artist who painted at Mumbra.
Questions have been raised over security at Shaheen Bagh after two men, in a span of days, pulled out a gun and fired. A student of Jamia Millia Islamia University was injured in the first incident.
The Citizenship (Amendment) Act for the first time makes religion the test of citizenship in India. The government says it will help minorities from three Muslim-dominated countries to get citizenship if they fled to India before 2015 because of religious persecution. Critics say it is designed to discriminate against Muslims and violates the secular principles of the constitution.