After the notification of rules under the Citizenship Amendment Act in March 2024, coinciding with the onset of Ramzan, anxieties around citizenship, documentation, and belonging resurfaced across several regions. However, they could not culminate in a full-fledged resistance as they did in December 2019. The pan-India movement had earlier paved the way for the Park Circus sit-in protest against CAA, NRC, and NPR. Former Presidency University professor, Prof. Pradip Basu, from the Department of Political Science, while delivering a speech at Park Circus, even regarded it as the fourth wave of feminism.
In the present moment, however, the concern in West Bengal is no longer limited to citizenship—it is increasingly shaped by electoral verification processes, adjudication, and the risk of disenfranchisement through SIR.
To understand this moment, it is important to recognise the structural connection many observers and activists are drawing between SIR (Special Intensive Revision) and exercises like NRC. While formally distinct, both rely on documentation-heavy verification, shifting the burden of proof onto individuals and opening up the possibility of exclusion through bureaucratic processes. In that sense, what is unfolding is not merely an administrative update of electoral rolls, but a deeper anxiety about who gets counted—and who gets left out.
The Shift from Streets to Spreadsheets: Understanding SIR
At the level of formal politics, opposition to SIR has been visible but uneven. The All India Trinamool Congress, led by Mamata Banerjee, has registered its resistance across multiple levels—political, administrative, and legal. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Left Front have similarly framed the process as potentially exclusionary. However, the Indian National Congress at the state level has remained less visible in sustained mobilisation.
However, this relative absence should not be read as complete inaction. At the national level, leaders of the Indian National Congress, including Rahul Gandhi, have raised concerns around electoral integrity, questioning discrepancies in voting data and the transparency of institutional processes. Yet, the gap between national articulation and state-level mobilisation remains a critical weakness.
This reveals a crucial paradox: opposition exists, but it is not united.
The fragmentation becomes even more evident within civil society. During earlier moments of mass protest, large sections of society had come together visibly and forcefully. In the current moment, resistance to SIR exists, but appears scattered—meetings without mass mobilisation, concern without coordinated action. Civil society has not withdrawn; it has dispersed.
Geography further sharpens this unevenness. Districts such as Murshidabad, Malda, and South Dinajpur have witnessed significant mobilisations, where the perceived risks of exclusion are immediate and tangible. In contrast, Kolkata has seen more limited and symbolic responses. This divergence reflects differing perceptions of vulnerability—those who feel directly affected respond with urgency, while others remain relatively disengaged.
Political Fragmentation and the Vulnerability Gap
The timing of political developments has also shaped public response. Administrative processes unfolding alongside Ramzan, combined with an approaching electoral climate, have influenced both participation and perception. Yet, to reduce the present moment merely to fragmentation would be incomplete.
Over the past 24 hours, a different possibility briefly came into view.
At Jadavpur University, students organised a 24-hour symbolic hunger strike and sit-in protest against the anxieties surrounding electoral verification and potential disenfranchisement. Beginning on 16 March at 2 p.m., the protest continued through the night—amid storm, exhaustion, and uncertainty. The language of resistance was both political and deeply personal: land earned through struggle cannot be taken away through paperwork alone.
This act of protest did not remain confined to just outside the JU campus. Participants from the SIR Birodhi Dharna Mancha at Park Circus, where a sit-in has now entered its fourteenth consecutive day, had earlier travelled to Jadavpur in solidarity, including individuals such as Sajid, Salman, Ieaz, and Mirajul. As the 24-hour sit-in concluded, the solidarity was reciprocated. Students began moving from Jadavpur to Park Circus, joining the ongoing dharna and extending the protest beyond the university space.
Jadavpur to Park Circus: A New Architecture of Solidarity
The composition of the protest itself challenges another persistent assumption. Of the 46 individuals who participated in the symbolic hunger strike, 16 identified as Muslims, while 30 came from non-Muslim backgrounds. In the hours that followed, six more participants joined—again, largely non-Muslim. These numbers, though modest, are politically significant. They complicate the reduction of such protests into a single-community concern and instead point toward a wider, more inclusive anxiety around rights, documentation, and democratic participation.
Conversations at the protest site further reinforced this reality. What emerged was not a narrowly defined or identity-bound mobilisation, but a distinctly cosmopolitan gathering—students from different departments, different faiths, along with those who did not identify with any faith. No single group claimed ownership of the movement.
The attempt to frame such resistance as exclusively Muslim is not only analytically shallow, but also politically convenient. What unfolds on the ground, however, tells a different story—one of shared uncertainty and overlapping concerns that cut across identities.
It is here that the idea of fragmentation must be revisited. Yes, resistance today appears scattered. Yes, political parties have not been able to build a unified front. Yes, civil society struggles to convert awareness into sustained mobilisation. But within these fragments, moments of connection continue to emerge—unexpected, unstructured, yet deeply political.
Democracy is not weakened only by the actions of those in power. It is also weakened when those who oppose it fail to act together, when shared concerns do not translate into collective action.
And yet, the story does not end there.
If fragmentation defines the present, then solidarity offers a glimpse of what remains possible. The movement from Jadavpur to Park Circus may not resolve the crisis immediately, but it signals something vital: that resistance can still travel, that alliances can still be built, and that even in moments of uncertainty, democracy continues to find expression through those willing to stand together.
