ABSTRACT
This chapter examines activism in response to recent legislation in India that discriminates against Muslims in access to Indian citizenship. It discusses why the Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019 provoked some of the biggest protests India has experienced in decades. It situates this law within a wider set of government measures and the majoritarian worldview of India’s current government. It then examines sit-ins against this law by women in Delhi and the state’s response to these protests, through an intersectional lens. It shows how the class, religion, and gender of the protesters served to make their protest particularly striking, but also provided majoritarian actors a pretext for violent repression. Drawing upon social movement scholarship as well as literature on sacralised politics, it considers how India’s Hindu majoritarian government constrains and punishes dissent.
