“What is happening in the country is wrong,” Shabana, a 21-year-old student at Jamia Millia Islamia University, said through the veil covering her face. Jamia Millia is a major public university in the capital where a large number of Muslims study. “They can’t suppress our voices.”
Shabana, who would only provide her first name, said she had been moved to act after some of her friends had been injured when police stormed the Jamia campus to break up a protest involving hundreds of students last weekend. The protests, some of the most widespread in India in recent years, erupted on Dec 11 after Parliament passed the controversial law, which protesters say is an attack on India’s secular foundations.
In the past, women have played a prominent role in many Indian protests, including those that broke out following the brutal rape of a young woman on a Delhi bus in 2012. Shumaila, a 24-year-old PhD scholar at the Jamia university, said that many women from around the surrounding neighbourhood had also come out in solidarity with the students.