The city walked in solidarity with Manipur on Monday.
Rallies and demonstrations led by students, rights activists, trade union members and politicians condemned the series of assaults on women in the northeastern state.
The protesters accused the BJP government, in the state and the Centre, of engineering a sectarian conflict. Women are being used as pawns in power games, they said.
Over 100 protesters met at the Gariahat tram depot in the afternoon and walked 4km till Manipur Bhawan in Rowland Row, where they submitted a memorandum addressed to the Manipur governor.
They shouted slogans and held up posters. “Rise against communal violence incitedby the BJP-RSS,” read one poster.
“The ethnic conflict in Manipur is engineered. Nothing more, nothing less. The state is behind these clashes. The dominant community is being incited so that it turns into a mob,” said Jhelum Roy, one of the organisers.
She alleged that the BJP government’s main objective is to drive away the original inhabitants of the hills in Manipur to “plunder the natural resources and sell them to private corporations”.
Nisha Goswami, another participant, said “every woman in the country felt violated after seeing the video from Manipur”.
She was referring to the sexual assault of two women in Manipur on May 4, a video of which was circulated on July 19 and caused nationwide outrage.
The video shows a mob parading two women (purportedly from the Kuki community in Manipur) nakedand molesting them. The incident in Thoubal district happened a day after clashes broke out between Meiteis and Kukis.
“We the undersigned, like every woman of this country, are shocked that it took ahorrendous video ofunbelievable brutality... for the slumbering chief minister of Manipur to act and the Prime Minister of Indiato speak,” said the memorandum.
Mayor Firhad Hakim speaks at a rally organised by Trinamul near Rabindra Sadan on Monday to protest the Manipur violence. Pradip Sanyal
A protest march by Presidency University students on College Street on Monday evening. Sanat Kr Sinha
Also on Monday, hundreds of Presidency University students held a protest march on College Street.
Torch rallies with banners reading “Stop atrocities against the women in Manipur” and “Prime Minister Must Answer” marked the protest.
A skit was held under the portico of the main building, portraying the horror that they said the women in the country have been facing over the past few years.
“The Manipur incident shows how unsafe women are in this country,” said Barishan Ray, an undergraduate student.
Anandarupa Dhar, another student, said: “Students through protest movements are building resistance so such barbaric incidents could be prevented”.
A protest rally by Trinamul, led by mayor Firhad Hakim, walked from Hazra to Rabindra Sadan.
The Left Front organised a demonstration at Moulaliin solidarity with thepeople of Manipur and demanded the resignation of N. Biren Singh, the chief minister of the northeastern state.