During India's ODI match against Australia in Mumbai's Wankhede Stadium, a group of approximately 50 students from Mumbai protested against the amended Citizenship Act, the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the National Population Register (NPR) on Tuesday, 14 January.
The students were seen wearing white t-shirts, imprinted with ‘NO CAA, NO NRC and NO NPR’.
The students said, “We, the students of Mumbai, are at the Wankhede Stadium, at India vs Australia match for peacefully showing our message, depicting no NPR, no NRC and no CAA, we won’t do anything apart from silently showing our message written on the t-shirts”.
The students also cited BCCI rules that say messages except commercial ones can be conveyed to spectators.
“Mumbai students, who are also the majority of cricket lovers in a stadium game, decided to take their CAA protest to the game they love and enjoy. The nature of the constitutional crisis the CAA poses demands bigger and larger audiences, something like an India-Australia cricket match offers. It was essential that the audiences and cricket lovers, world over, know what kind of human rights crisis India is facing,” said Fahad Ahmad, former General Secretary of Students’ Union and a PhD student at TISS was quoted in a press release as saying.
Narrating the sequence of events, Fahad told The Quint that at 3:20 pm, they opened their T-shirts and raised slogans such as "jeetega bhai jeetega, India jeetega,” which continued for around 20 minutes.
“Some of us went in front and formed "No NRC" which is when the modi bhakts started taking objections, security came and asked us to leave. We refused. Then they asked to cover T-shirts which we did, but left buttons open,” he added.
He said that they were neither evicted nor escorted out and that everything happened “peacefully.”
“For once, we firmly believe sports and politics cannot be separate. Who knows, we may not be able to watch cricket the way we do once NRC and CAA comes into effect in India.”Fahad Ahmad, General Secretary, Students’ Union, TISS
The protest was organised by Mumbai Against CAA, a student group that has been agitating against the CAA, NPR and NRC demanding it be repealed.
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