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Like many people from India's northeastern
state of Assam, he's angry with the Hindu nationalist
government's new citizenship law making it easier for non-Muslim
migrants from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan who settled
in India prior to 2015 to obtain Indian citizenship.
"I have a voice that resonates with people" Garg told Reuters
next to a makeshift stage at a college in Guwahati. "I will keep
singing in public forums till the government withdraws the law."
He was there with around 40 other leading Assamese figures from
the world of arts, including actors, writers and poets, who had
come together in the state capital to galvanize opposition to
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Citizenship Amendment Act.
"We will be defeated if we don't take to the streets each and
every day," Barsha Rani, an Assamese actor who has worked in
over 30 movies, told Reuters.
In most of the rest of India anger with the law stems from it
being seen as discriminating against Muslims, and from making
religion a criteria for citizenship in a country that has taken
pride in its secular constitution.
In Assam those are secondary considerations. Resentment against
illegal immigrants from Bangladesh has simmered for years in
Assam, one of India’s poorest states, with residents blaming
outsiders, Hindus or Muslims, for stealing their jobs and land.
In August, the state government left nearly 2 million people
living in Assam off a list of citizens, though they can apply
through tribunals provided their documents are in order.
While students have been at the forefront of protests across the
country, and opposition party activists have lent political
muscle, artists and performers have provided inspiration.
Several artists told Reuters that they had painted placards
carried during mass protests, delivering messages against the
government in New Delhi.
Since Modi came to power in 2014 several playwrights,
filmmakers, musicians, and comedians have complained that their
work has been censored or canceled following pressure, sometimes
backed up by physical threats, from Hindu hardline groups
affiliated with Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party.
An artist who goes by the pseudonym Tyler has built a reputation
as "Mumbai's Banksy" for the street art on the walls of the
city's financial district.
"My recent painting on our prime minister was whitewashed within
five days," he said.
Since the protests erupted he has turned his attention to
satirizing the citizenship law, and teaching fellow artists how
to use stencils so that politicized art appears on more streets
in cities across the country.
"During times of unrest a picture speaks a thousand words," he
said.
(Additional reporting Nupur Anand in Mumbai; Writing by Rupam
Jain; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)
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