A slice of a busy south Calcutta road turned into a protest zone against the citizenship tripod on Saturday afternoon.
Banners and posters were painted, poems recited and a street play staged — all on a part of the Jadavpur-bound flank of Raja SC Mullick Road, a stone’s throw from Baghajatin market.
“Imagine a child asking for a biscuit from his/her father. He doesn’t give the child the biscuit. Instead, he lifts the child and puts him on top of a tall cupboard. Now, the child is scared and just wants to come down safely. He has forgotten about the biscuit,” Subhaprasad Nandi Majumdar, one of the speakers, said. “The government is doing the same thing. When you are asking for jobs, your citizenship is being threatened.”
The meeting, and a subsequent rally from Baghajatin to Ranikuthi, was organised by a citizens’ forum called Desher Sarthe Manusher Sathe (For The Country With The People).
A group of people painted a long banner. Partho Chatterjee, a Delhi-based professional painter who has been campaigning in Bengal against the citizenship matrix for the past month, was part of the group.
On Saturday, he painted a temple, mosque and church next to each other. He drew the half bust of a boy, flames engulfing his waist. He wore a green leaf on his head. “The leaf symbolises new life emerging from destruction,” Chatterjee said.
Elocutionist Samita Banerjee recited a poem by the late poet, Mallika Sengupta. “Ishwar, tomar jonno maya hoy… pishach jegechhe…. Tomar nishan tule ghardore diechhe agun,” she recited. A rough translation: God, I feel sorry for you. Demons have risen…. Raising your flag, they are torching homes.
A group of students from Presidency University staged a short play. There was no dialogue, only a background score. The play showed a king imposing a uniform code on his subjects, who ultimately defy and defeat him.
“The play is about breaking authoritarianism, oppression and hierarchy,” Koushani Mukherjee, a second-year student of performing arts, said.
After the cultural programmes got over, the participants marched from Baghajatin to Ranikuthi. They carried banners and posters and raised slogans against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, the National Register of Citizens and the National Population Register.
The area is dotted by families whose previous generations came from Bangladesh.
“This area was built by refugees. The new citizenship exercise threatens to make them refugees again. In the coming days, we will organise more such meetings and awareness campaigns on the CAA-NPR-NRC,” Dilip Majumdar, one of the organisers, said.