Singer Zubeen Garg.
Credit: DH File Photo
Guwahati: Popular singer Zubeen Garg said the people of Assam would never accept the Citizenship (Amendment) Act or CAA, and protests against it should continue but without any bloodshed.
He said he will continue opposing it on various forums, and also urged for concerted efforts in winning the legal battle to get the Act scrapped.
In a Facebook post on Tuesday, Garg said he has been opposing the Act right from 2017, when it was a bill, and he remains firm on his stand.
He said that while protesting against CAA was necessary, there were various ways to do so.
Noting that the state has seen many deaths during many such movements, be it the Assam Agitation or the 2019 anti-CAA demonstrations when five youths died, he said that no more deaths should be allowed to happen due to protests.
"I will continue protesting against CAA in my own ways. On stage or on social media -- wherever, however I can," Garg, considered a youth icon in the state, said.
He claimed that the government was trying to "impose" the CAA, but the people of the state would never accept it.
He asserted that there was no room for any Hindu-Muslim divide in Assam, and only the people of Assam and India would stay here, not from anywhere else.
Mentioning the petition in the Supreme Court, he said all should come together to fight the legal battle and repose faith in the judiciary.
Besides Garg, noted personalities in different fields had come out against the law during the peak of the anti-CAA movement in 2019. They had shared the stage with leaders of different social organisations, penning songs and poems to register their opposition.
Later, many of them joined different political parties, including the BJP and the Congress.
The CAA seeks to provide Indian citizenship to Hindus, Jains, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Parsis who entered India on or before December 31, 2014 from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan after five years of residence here.