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But Muslims have led the opposition to the law. Meanwhile, members of Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party have vilified the protesters, calling them traitors who deserve to be shot and linking them with India’s rival Pakistan. One such leader, Kapil Mishra, helped trigger this week’s violence: He threatened to clear a sit-in conducted by Muslim women, sparking a clash between supporters and opponents of the citizenship law.

The way the police responded to the violence in Delhi points to a troubling conclusion, said Ashutosh Varshney, a political scientist at Brown University who has researched communal clashes in India. “The cops either looked away or participated,” he said. That means there was “state connivance and state culpability — it’s a pogrom,” Varshney said.

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