Students from South Asian Student Associations of every Ivy League University (including Yale, Harvard, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia, Dartmouth, Cornell, and Brown) signed an open letter condemning the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) recently passed by the Modi government.
South Asian students at these universities have unequivocally condemned the Bharatiya Janata Party’s hardline treatment of Indian Muslims and expressed solidarity with the civil disobedience protests in India. They hope to pressure the Indian government to withdraw the CAA and raise attention to international outrage over this story.
The letter was written by Shreeya Singh, a Yale junior who is currently the Co-Political Chair of Yale’s South Asian Society.
The letter demands that “the American House of Representatives immediately pass House Resolution 745, urging the Republic of India to end restrictions on communications in Jammu and Kashmir and preserve religious freedom for all residents,” and for Congress to condemn the Modi government. It has been sent to representatives in the House.
South Asian organizations at these universities have also pledged to join a protest against Hindu nationalism during Holi 2020. The campaign, #HoliAgainstHindtuva, is being organized by Shreeya Singh along with her Co-Political Chair Lakshmi Amin, Ziad Ahmed, a member of Yale’s Muslim Student Association, and ambassadors across 12 campuses.
The #HoliAgainstHindutva campaign will be a peaceful protest that will celebrate the diversity of India and continue the international movement against the Modi government’s treatment of Muslims.
More information about the Holi protest can be found at: https://www.holiagainsthindutva.com/open-letter. Read the full letter below.
AN OPEN LETTER
To the Congress of the United States of America
On December 11th, the world’s largest democracy passed the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), an illegal and unconstitutional law aimed at excluding Muslims from Indian citizenship. By dividing Indians into Muslims and non-Muslims, the bill explicitly enshrines religious discrimination into law.
Ever since Narendra Modi was elected prime minister in 2014, he and the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have championed a hardline and revisionist brand of Hindu nationalism, known as Hindutva. Hindutva aims to erase India’s diverse myriad of cultures and faiths, redefining the country into a Hindu civilization and promoting violent and exclusionary attitudes toward Muslims. BJP leaders have normalized inflammatory and dehumanizing language, such as the BJP current Home Minister describing Muslims as “termites.” The BJP’s parent organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), is a Hindu extremist group that drew inspiration from fascism since its founding in 1925.
The Citizenship Amendment Bill is just the latest of India’s many steps to marginalize its population of 200 million Muslims. The government has imposed 70 years of systematic erosion of autonomy being topped by the communication blockade in Kashmir, and recently released the National Registry of Citizens (NRC), which will strip hundreds of thousands of Muslims in Assam of their citizenship. Those who are not listed on the registry can be put in mass detention camps and made stateless persons. Meanwhile, rates of violent hate crimes against Muslims, such as mass mob lynchings, have increased exponentially across India after 2014.
The goal of this letter is to amplify the civil disobedience movement persisting across India. We stand in solidarity with those who have faced the brunt of horrific state brutality and police violence, particularly the student protesters at Jamia and Aligarh Muslim University. We aim to maintain international pressure on the Modi government and amplify the voices of the protestors risking their lives on the real front-lines—not to lead a movement that isn’t ours. Particularly, as those in the diaspora or unaffected by the implications of the NRC and CAA, we believe that it is our responsibility to stand behind those who are fighting for secularism and democracy. As the Modi government refuses to pay heed to the brave movement in India, we hope that international pressure will help tip the scales in the protesters’ favor.
We, concerned students:
- Condemn Hindutva ideology and the Modi government’s fascist and exclusionary treatment of Indian Muslims.
- Stand in solidarity with the brave civil disobedience movement in India and condemn the horrific police brutality against protesters.
- Call for the Indian government’s immediate withdrawal of the Citizenship Amendment Act and the National Registry of Citizens.
- Ask the American House of Representatives to immediately pass House Resolution 745, urging the Republic of India to end restrictions on communications in Jammu and Kashmir and preserve religious freedom for all residents.
- Call on the US Congress to formally express disapproval through targeted sanctions on Modi government officials until the CAA and NRC are repealed, and urge the United Nations to pass a resolution condemning India’s undemocratic treatment of Muslims and continued police brutality.
We believe that the fight for equal treatment for India’s Muslims is also fundamentally a fight for India’s foundational values of secularism and democracy. This is a fight for the future, which must be led by those who will inherit the future. Therefore, we invite American universities and youth organizations to mark #HoliAgainstHindutva in March of 2020. Holi is the traditional Indian festival of colors, which celebrates the country’s vibrant diversity and culture in a spirit of inclusiveness. This Holi, join us in celebrating India’s colorful democracy and protesting the Modi government’s undemocratic treatment of Muslims.
Written by Yale South Asian Society Political Chair, Shreeya Singh
Edited by Yale Muslim Student Association Member, Ziad Ahmed
Edited by Princeton University Student, Kamya Yadav
Signed by:
Yale College South Asian Society
Yale University South Asian Graduate and Professional Association
Yale College Muslim Students Association
Yale University Muslim Law Students’ Association
Board of the Yale University South Asian Law Students Association
Members of Harvard College US-India Initiative
Members of Harvard College South Asian Association
Columbia University South Asian Law Students Association
University of Pennsylvania South Asia Society Board
Radical South Asian Collective at the University of Pennsylvania
The Muslim Student Association at the University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania Christian Association
Cornell University South Asian Law Students Association
Members of Princeton University’s Hindu Society
Brown University South Asian Students Association
Brown University Muslim Students Association
Dartmouth College Muslim Students Association Al-Nur
American University South Asian Association
American University Muslim Students Association
Georgetown South Asian Society
Claremont College South Asian Students Association
Claremont College Committee for South Asian Voices
Tufts University, Fletcher Progressive Initiative
Bard College at Simon’s Rock South Asian Students Association
Members of Stanford South Asian Society
High School Democrats of America: Muslim Caucus
She’s the First at the University of Minnesota
Berkeley Law School’s South Asian Law Student Association
*Organizations preceded by “members of” have not signed unanimously*