Grand Tamasha

On January 10, the newly passed Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) officially came into force. The act provides for an expedited pathway to citizenship for illegal migrants from a number of non-Muslim faiths hailing from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan and who seek refuge in India. The act has prompted intense protests across cities and towns in India. The act dovetails with another one of the Modi government’s priorities, the creation of a national register of citizens (NRC) that aims to weed out illegal migrants from India’s citizenship rolls. To talk about the bill, the street protests, and the ruling BJP’s larger objectives, on a recent trip to New Delhi, Milan sat down with Supriya Sharma, the executive editor of Scroll.in, in this first episode of the third season of Grand Tamasha. Scroll is one of India’s leading online news organization and its reporters have been at the forefront when it comes to covering the popular resistance to both the CAA and the NRC. Supriya has extensively covered the prote