Kolkata: Debsmita Choudhury, a student of Jadavpur University, courted national limelight when she tore up a dummy copy of the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) at her convocation in December.
But it wasn’t a one-time show of opposition against a law widely seen as discriminatory. Since September, Choudhury and her friend Rowmya Chandra, both students of international relations, have been trying to understand the National Register of Citizens (NRC), which the BJP has suggested implementing nationally after the CAA to weed out illegal immigrants.
This deep-dive into the subject has yielded a YouTube channel where the two seek to explain the various facets of the NRC – the historical background and impact – to their audience.
“We are working hard to make things better. We are trying to understand our country and its issues. This is the time when we should rise to the occasion and do something for humanity’s sake,” Debasmita, a gold medalist, told ThePrint.
A controversial exercise
The NRC has already been carried out in Assam, where illegal immigration from Muslim-majority Bangladesh has been a burning issue for decades. But the exercise turned out to be controversial, with multitudes of Hindus left out of the final draft.
Nevertheless, the BJP has made NRC a prime pitch in its efforts to make inroads in Bengal.
Debasmita and Rowmya started the YouTube channel after resentment against the NRC allegedly led students to heckle BJP MP and union minister Babul Supriyo while on a visit to Jadavpur University for a function organised by the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP).
Debasmita took a break from her Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) preparations and began researching the subject in depth.
Also read: ‘He didn’t answer CAA-NRC questions’ — why JU students ‘rusticated’ Chancellor Dhankhar
Travelling on their own dime
The channel was initially named ‘Papers Unboxed’. The first post discussed the “historical background of the NRC” with the next one exploring its “aspect of constitutional entanglement”.
The duo then visited Assam, Nagaland and Manipur to work on a project paper on the issue and tried analysing the immediate ramifications of the NRC in the region.
In the absence of any financial support, these students made the trips on their pocket money – it was not an easy decision for Debasmita in particular.
Her father is a retired central government employee, and their family of four sustains itself on his pension.
“It is difficult for us to sustain such work without earning anything and it is even more difficult for unemployed students like us,” Debasmita said.
Through their trip to the northeast, they continued posting content on their YouTube channel.
They met civil servants and the common people to understand the situation, and covered nearly all protests against the CAA in Kolkata and Delhi.
Numbers stayed low until Debasmita’s CAA protest – once she shot to fame with her convocation protest, subscribers shot up by three times to nearly 300. The channel currently hosts 16 videos.
They have since changed the name of their channel to ‘The Dialogue’.
‘In talks with sponsors’
With the positive response, the students started collecting contributions from their friends, and bought a new camera and mic to better their production quality.
Content is edited on the university premises.
Debasmita said they were in talks with “some people who are interested in supporting us”. “But this work we are doing for us, the students,” she added.
Also read: Why Left bastion Jadavpur University has become a battleground between Mamata and BJP