Chennai's peaceful rangoli protesters slam aggression by policemen

The Chennai police on Sunday (December 29) saw a different design when seven people came out to draw rangolis in tony Besant Nagar. Rounded up, detained and subsequently released, the police personnel couldn’t take the writing on the road by these peaceful protesters. Their anti-Citizenship Amendment Act motif had got the men in khaki peeved. Gayathri Khandhadai, Madan, Arthi Sundar, Kalyani Sankara and Pragathi along with two lawyers, Yogeshwaran and T Mohan, were arrested for unlawful assembly.

“Protests need not be through blood and sweat alone. Expression of dissent through art is also a form of protest. Since it is Margazhi season and ‘kolam’ (rangoli) is synonymous with it, which also happens to be our cultural identity, we decided to do it this way,” says Gayathri, a lawyer who was among those detained and released.

Also read | German student at IIT-M asked to leave India for taking part in CAA protests

A police posse, led by an assistant commissioner, arrived at 7:45 am to stop the ‘protests’, which began at 7:30 am. As the group started working on the rangoli, cops told them to clear the main road as ‘it may obstruct traffic.’ The group then moved to an inner road.

The cops followed them to the streets and rounded them up even as they completed eight rangolis. They were then taken to a community hall nearby. Two lawyers, who tried to help the protesters, were also detained. The rangolis had the words, ‘Revoke CAA’ and ‘No to CAA, NRC, NPR’ written alongside.

Deputy Commissioner of Police P Pakalavan told The Federal that the lawyers were arrested as they were involved in protest. “We had all the authority to detain them as they had not taken permission for it. They were detained under preventive sections. We will register a case against them,” he said.

Also read | India asks Norwegian woman to leave for taking part in anti-CAA stir

“If the AIADMK government tells us to protest in some obscure corner of the city behind the Cooum River where no one will see, we won’t. People can protest wherever they want, as long as we don’t block traffic and vandalise public property. They picked us up and shoved us into the bus, calling it an unlawful assembly,” said Gayathri.

Sundar, one of the protesters, is shocked, “It’s crazy. We were not even sloganeering. We were just sitting and drawing rangolis on the side of the road with chalk and rice powder and they just came and picked us up. What started as a very simple thing spiralled into an absolute, pointless aggression by the state for no reason. They are afraid at even the smallest act of dissent and they deserve to be afraid.”

The protest, is now viral as #Kolam and #KolamProtests in social media. Kolam is the name given to traditional rangoli in Tamil Nadu. In the state, kolam or rangoli is done on the front porch of the house using rice flour, chalk or chalk powder.

“We are really living in a police state and that is exactly what this is,” says Gayathri, who is coordinating the next protest.

அலங்கோல அதிமுக அரசின் அராஜகம் நாளுக்கு நாள் அதிகரிக்கிறது.

சென்னை பெசண்ட் நகரில் #CAA வுக்கு கோலம் வரைந்து தங்கள் எதிர்ப்பை வெளிப்படுத்திய,
6 பேரை அரசியலமைப்புச் சட்டம் வழங்கிய அடிப்படை உரிமைகளைக்கூட அனுமதிக்காத இந்தத் தரங்கெட்ட எடப்பாடி அரசின் காவல்துறை கைது செய்துள்ளது. pic.twitter.com/Ran4FE5r2V

— M.K.Stalin (@mkstalin) December 29, 2019

Leader of the Opposition MK Stalin tweeted in support of the protests. Giving a short account of the incident, he said the government was curtailing the fundamental rights of the people and ‘anarchy was on the rise’ each day.