Weekend Reads:

  1. Violence will not help any cause, but remember, it is the state sowing the seeds of disorder with the Citizenship Act and the National Register of Citizens, writes Pratap Bhanu Mehta in the Indian Express.
  2. “As it turns out, the Citizenship Amendment Act is a mere skeleton, whose flesh and blood was left to be dictated by executive action. To decide the membership of a polity through mere executive action is a dangerous path to walk – and one that Indians must be alarmed by,” writes Malavika Prasad in the Hindu.
  3. It is not enough to look at Indian social faultlines through the binary of Hindu-Muslim issues, writes Suraj Yengde in the Indian Express, calling instead for an examination of caste.
  4. “The same cop who threatened to put me in place, again asked me about the ‘Kashmiris’ and said he would tear out all my beard and thrash me if I didn’t answer his questions as per his liking.” The Hindu reporter Omar Rashid writes about how he was picked up, threatened and then released by Uttar Pradesh police.
  5. “This regime is classic Foucault,” writes Shiv Visvanathan in the Telegraph. “It dreams liberation and invents nightmare. It promises citizenship and transforms it into enclosure and Panopticon. It transforms the transparency of democracy into a surveillance State.”
  6. Even as the authorities turn violent against protesters turn out in force around the country, Mihir Sharma argues on NDTV.com that the agitation against the Citizenship Act has already been successful.
  7. “That episode in Pakistan did come to my mind yesterday after I tweeted. I have smashed stumps on the field in Pakistan and did the same off the field in that country, and my intent is being questioned in my own country?” cricket Irfan Pathan writes in the Indian Express about being trolled for his opinions.
  8. Muslims have always been told to remain silent in India, under the presumption that if they demand rights it will backfire. Shivam Vij writes in the Print on why that thinking has changed: “There’s a growing realisation that silence as a political strategy has not helped Indian Muslims prevent polarisation. Given that the BJP won over 50 per cent vote-share in many states in the Lok Sabha election, what is Muslim silence achieving other than its own dehumanisation?”
  9. “As students continue to protest against the CAA across university campuses and face the backlash from the state, what will be much harder to recover will be their sense of belonging to the institutions where they had felt safe to protest so far,” writes Natasha Badhwar in Mint.
  10. “The citizenship bill might still be blocked in the Indian Supreme Court, which begins hearings on it in January. But if it is not, all democratic nations need to speak out against a law, and a national policy, that is patently discriminatory and a threat to India’s democracy,” writes the New York Times editorial board.