Historian Irfan Habib on Wednesday said the upsurge of public sentiment against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act reflects a struggle for the “idea of India as a modern state” and added that the police action against protesters has been worse than in colonial times.

People, the octogenarian professor said in an interview to PTI, were getting increasingly concerned over such attempts to crush dissent because the right to protest was the essence of a democratic society.

“This struggle is about India and about the future of democracy,” the eminent historian said.

Police and the Rapid Action Force had cracked down brutally — using lathis and tear gas and allegedly firing explosives camouflaged as tear gas shells — on hundreds of Aligarh Muslim University students protesting at a campus gate on the night of December 15. One PhD student has had his hand amputated and several others were injured.

Hours earlier, the police had barged into Jamia Millia Islamia university in Delhi, rained lathis and fired tear gas. One student has lost his eye and many others were injured.

Across Uttar Pradesh, the police have come down on protesters with a heavy hand, leaving at least 16 dead in the state. In Karnataka, two people died in police firing on December 19.

Habib said even in the colonial times, the British police had not displayed such an inhuman attitude towards protesters as seen in the past few days in several parts of the country.

The historian recalled an incident that had taken place on the AMU campus in 1938. “There had been violent protests at AMU which led to clashes with the police. The superintendent of police was an Englishman and during the protest he was badly beaten by the students; despite this major provocation, he did not allow the police to enter the campus because he realised that the need of the hour was restraint.”

What is happening in India today, he said, is unfortunately just a replica of what had been taking place in neighbouring Pakistan after Partition.

India’s present rulers, he added, know that “religion excites public sentiments” and their political power rests on this narrative.

To see these protests as merely an expression of “Muslim outrage” would be wrong, he said.

“All over the country a large number of Hindus and other communities are participating in this protest,” Habib said, adding it would suit the ruling dispensation “if this protest is viewed merely through the prism of a Hindu-Muslim issue”.

The amended citizenship law essentially seeks to grant citizenship to Hindu, Parsi, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain and Christian migrants who have fled persecution in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, and arrived in the country on or before December 31, 2014. It leaves out Muslims.

Habib said some recent policies introduced by the Narendra Modi government were merely the manifestation of a “long-term project of the Hindutva movement” which rests largely on a policy of “suppressing dissent and protest”.

“These are all components of a major Hindu Rashtra project envisioned in 1937,” he said.

Habib said modern India came to being and flourished because of liberal policies of men like Jawaharlal Nehru, who had a vision of a modern state based on the principles of humanism and a pluralistic society.

Today, he rued, this idea of India, which had madethis country great, was at stake.