The recent passage of the Citizenship Amendment Act, combined with murmurs about the National Register of Citizens (NRC) has left many in India agitated.
Protests continue in various parts of the country, and even though the recent focus is on the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) violence, the CAA-NRC find a mention is most agitations at present.
Politician and former JNU student leader Shehla Rashid has been a vocal critic in recent times. Earlier, at the end of December 2019, she had made the news after putting together a 'manual for allies' via a Twitter thread.
"Don't make the CAA movement about yourself, your party, your privileged idea of India or Hindu goodness," she had written.
Now, on 9th January, Rashid took to Twitter to take a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
An image captioned "sorry Modi ji", was posted by her. The image said, "Sorry Modi ji. My document burned in Gujrat 2002. Sorry (sic)."
In 2002, Narendra Modi had been the Chief Minister of Gujarat. At that time, the burning of two coaches of the Sabarmati Express train near Godhra railway station, which killed 59 'karsevaks', had sparked riots in the state and beyond. The 2002 riots saw over 1,000 people, mostly of the minority community killed.
This is not the only controversial comment made by Rashid recently.
In December 2019, she had defended the Jamia protesters and said that they had elected a 'mass murderer'.
"They didn't apologize for electing a mass murderer. We don't have to apologize for saying, "God willing" and "God is great". This is not a cocktail party; this is resistance," she had written on Twitter.
Earlier, Shehla Rashid had been booked for sedition over her tweets alleging that the armed forces "tortured" civilians and "ransacked" houses in the Valley after Jammu and Kashmir's special status was revoked. She was granted relief from arrest later by Delhi Court.
The Gujarat 2002 reminder from Rashid drew a mixed bag of reactions on Twitter, with most people criticising her comment.
Take a look at the highlights:
(With inputs from agencies)
