Don’t suppress dissent: Evicted lawyer

NEW DELHI: A day after 27-year-old lawyer from Kerala, Surya Rajappan, and her roommate were evicted from their rented flat in Lajpat Nagar for protesting against CAA and NRC during Union home minister Amit Shah’s door-to-door campaign, the former argued in favour of letting “voices of dissent to be heard loud and clear”.
The two women had displayed anti-CAA-NRC banners from the balcony of their flat when Shah was in the area on an election campaign on Sunday.Asserting that they were only exercising their “constitutional and democratic right to peacefully protest”, Rajappan said in a statement on Wednesday: “As a common citizen, this was the perfect opportunity for me to register my dissent in front of the home minister himself. I sincerely believe that had I failed to do so, I would have failed my own conscience.”
Speaking to TOI, Rajappan said, “Our intention was not to malign a party...but being evicted for holding a political view is wrong and should not become the norm.” She added that “fence-sitters” need to speak out because this was the time to fight for the “idea of India” and not any political ideology.
She said the intent of their peaceful protest was to assert that not every onlooker to Shah’s pro-CAA parade was in support of it. “My flatmate and I displayed a home-made handcrafted banner bearing the words ‘Shame’, ‘CAA’ (crossed out), ‘NRC’ (crossed out), ‘Jai Hind’, ‘Azaadi’ and ‘#NotInMyName’. A conscious decision was made on our part to ensure that there were no derogatory, rhetoric words or phrases directed against or towards Shah, or any other members of the ruling dispensation,” the statement added.
The lawyer said that those participating in the rally were enraged and “visibly agitated” when they noticed their protests and “verbally harassed and intimidated” them. Some of them first made derogatory and misogynistic remarks and, then, forced their way up the stairs that led to their residence. Rajappa said she did not anticipate such a strong and violent reaction to a peaceful protest, and, fearing for their lives, they locked themselves inside their house while the “mob” violently banged at their door, until the police intervened.
She also said that her landlord, who was part of the angry crowd, bolted and locked the common entrance, which led to the stairway of their apartment, forcing the duo to call friends for help. The women, she said, were locked inside for nearly four hours until her father was allowed to enter the premises along with a police officer.
When TOI reached out to the landlord, he first refused to identify himself and later claimed he had handed over a notice to the tenants since, their “act” had caused “problems for the others”. Requesting anonymity, he also claimed that he would have told them to leave immediately, but gave them a notice since they were women. “I don't want to speak about it further,” he said. Rajappan’s neighbours said the women had acted “irresponsibly”, as a result of which they drew people’s ire.