Musician Rahul Rajkhowa Is Back With A Message About The Citizenship Act

Ever since the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2019 was passed by Parliament, all hell has broken loose. And with good reason. The Bill sought to provide citizenship to immigrants from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh. It includes provisions for people from every minority religion: Christians, Parsis, Buddhists, Jains, and Sikhs. Conspicuously missing from the list are Muslims, a 200 million-strong population. The United Nations condemned the move as “fundamentally discriminatory“.

10 months ago, protests against the National Registry of Citizens were mounting. In tandem with the Citizenship Bill, people had deemed it the perfect plot to further marginalise a community on religious lines. 10 months ago, 25-year-old rapper Rahul Rajkhowa sat down in front of his camera to rap about it.

10 months later, the raw emotions of Rahul’s rap song are alive on the streets as students refuse to wind down their protest against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019. Earlier this week, reports of police thrashing students in Jamia Islamia Milia University in Delhi, and Aligarh Muslim University in Uttar Pradesh. Simply for raising their voice against the newly-passed Act. The horrific attacks on students has sparked a national dialogue on unfeeling and incompetent authorities, and Rahul is no stranger to these challenges. In 2016, he took on the Vice Chancellor of JNU in a rap video, following a series of similar atrocities in the campus as well as when a Muslim student was disappeared from campus.

In case you needed to refuel the fire in your fight against, press play and give Rahul Rajkhowa’s song a listen.