NEW DELHI Tens of thousands of protesters rioted in three states across Indias northeast, some defying a government curfew and military deployment to demonstrate against the passage of the contentious Citizenship Amendment Bill, which will grant citizenship to thousands of migrants on religious grounds.
By Thursday night, the government had shut down the internet, deployed hundreds of troops, imposed a curfew in Assam state and banned groups of more than four people from assembling in neighboring Meghalaya state.
The police shot and killed two protesters in Assam whom they accused of defying the curfew, and arrested dozens of others there, The Associated Press reported.
Protesters are angry that the bill will grant citizenship to thousands of Hindu, Christian, Jain, Buddhist and Sikh migrants from some neighboring countries where New Delhi says they are religiously persecuted. Demonstrators say this will flood their hometowns with unwanted foreigners.
The bill will make it harder for Muslim migrants to attain Indian citizenship, although many Muslims are also discriminated against in neighboring countries. Critics fear the bill will be used to harass Indian Muslims by forcing them to pass a citizenship test and prove their familys lineage in the country, while giving a blanket pass to people of most other religions.
But government officials say the bill is a humanitarian effort to provide shelter to religiously persecuted minorities. The bill is expected to be signed into law in the coming days.
The protests first broke out on Wednesday, after the controversial bill was passed by the upper house of Indias Parliament, and quickly turned violent. Protesters set two train stations on fire, clashed with security forces, blocked national highways, burned vehicles and attacked the home of the highest-ranking government official in Guwahati, the capital of Assam.
The governments show of force only seemed to enrage protesters further, with larger numbers of demonstrators gathering on Thursday and clashing with security forces.
Protesters in the states of Assam, Meghalaya and Tripura say the bill will dilute their numbers by naturalizing Hindus from neighboring Bangladesh who fled to India decades ago, during their countrys civil war.
Although the three states are majority Hindu, their residents tend to be more concerned about safeguarding their unique ethnic makeup and linguistic heritage than about helping coreligionists from other countries.
Hiren Gohain, a retired professor in Guwahati, denounced what he called an arbitrary bill by the government that had little public support, but only sought to reinforce the Indian governments quest to unravel Indias secular underpinnings.
There had been no demand from any quarter in India for this Citizenship Amendment Bill, Mr. Gohain said in a telephone interview. Indias governing party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P., has brought the bill to polarize people among communal lines and extinguish the very national existence and culture of Assam, he added.
The government shutdown of the internet in Assam on Wednesday and Thursday secured Indias spot as the country with the most internet blackouts in the world. India, the worlds largest democracy, was responsible for 67 percent of the worlds internet shutdowns last year, with 134 incidents, according to Access Now, a digital information advocacy center.
So far this year, India has had 89 internet blackouts, some lasting months, as in Kashmir, where the internet was shut down for 133 days after the government stripped the majority Muslim territory of its autonomy in August.
Indias Ministry of Information and Broadcasting directed TV channels on Wednesday to refrain from broadcasting protests or any anti-national content, a move critics say is part of government efforts to stamp out opposition. The order came as the live TV station for the upper house of Parliament cut out when opposition lawmakers heckled the home minister, Amit Shah, who is behind the Citizenship Amendment Bill.
Earlier this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modis government tried to push a similar citizenship bill. But the legislation stalled after many politicians objected to the religious dimension of the bill and the possibility that a large number of Hindu Bengalis would be made citizens, giving them the right to acquire land.
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2 Dead in Protests Over Indias Religion-Based Citizenship Bill - The New York Times
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