India is witnessing protests since the Parliament approved the Citizen Amendment Bill (CAB) on December 11. Though initially confined to Assam, the protests are now spreading in other parts of the country. As more and more people, groups and communities are joining, the problem is now growing towards a national crisis. Besides common people, the large scale participation of students in the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) has led to the closure of three universities in the country. The protest is also fast spreading in other campuses, regions and states.

Also Read: Sentiment Analysis on Jamia Protest: Social media decries violent protests and police brutality in same vein

VisionRI attempted to decipher the public mood on CAB Protest by conducting sentiment analysis through a scientifically proven methodology. In this exercise, 7,500 tweets posted on #CitizenAmendmentBill2019 from 12-16 December were analyzed. The conclusions provide significant input to understand the public sentiment on CAB which has now become CAA after the consent of the President on December 12, 2019.

'Shame' and 'Illegal' overwhelmingly used for CAB

Twitter users overwhelmingly used two words – 'shame' and 'illegal' - to express their sentiments on the CAB. The word 'shame' was used by maximum Twitter users in expressing negative sentiment and disgust on the Bill. Besides, the word 'shame' was the second-highest in expressing fear. The word 'illegal' is topmost word used to express anger while its 2nd in expressing sadness and disgust, 3rd on negative sentiment, and 5th in expressing fear. The Twitter users also find the law as 'unconstitutional' which is 5th among the top 10 words used to express the negative sentiment.

The analysis reveals a very strong sentiment among the public against the official position of the Government of India that the bill was in complete conformity to the provisions of the Constitution. This huge difference of opinion between the government and masses seems a primary reason behind the ongoing nationwide unrest on the issue of CAB.

It also shows the failure of the government agencies in addressing the concerns of the common citizens, socio-political groups and communities on the proposed law. From day one, the government has failed to convince the opposition political parties as well as masses on legality and constitutional validity of the CAB, both inside and outside of the Parliament.

Surprisingly, the word 'government' is not figured among the top ten words used to show trust. Besides, the word 'government' does not have a place in the top ten words used to express positivity, joy and anticipation or hope. Out of the ten sentiments – anger, anticipation, disgust, fear, joy, negative, positive, sadness, surprise and trust – the word 'government' has been ranked on top for creating fear in the society. People are also anguished on the way the court seems to make an arm's distance on the issue. The word 'court' has been used on 3rd rank in expressing anger, 6th on anticipation and 8th to express fear.

No place for 'Violence'

Though Twitter users strongly support the cause of protestors, they have overwhelmingly denounced violence.

The word 'violence' has been ranked 1st among the top ten words used to express sadness in the period of study. The other words used to express sadness in descending order are – 'illegal', 'vote', 'problem', 'reject', 'injured', 'hate', 'case', 'persecution' and 'refugee'. Besides, the word 'violence' has appeared 2nd in top ten words used to express negative sentiment on the CAB. It is also 3rd highest used word in expressing fear by Twitter users.

Another parallel word 'violent' has also been used to express five sentiments – anger, anticipation, sadness, disgust and fear. It shows, though people support the cause, they disapprove violence.

In another indication of high sentiment toward peaceful protests, the words 'peaceful' and 'peace' were used in expressing four sentiments. The expectations for peaceful protests are very high as the word 'peaceful' came on 3rd while 'peace' came on 10th in expressing the sentiment of anticipation. Besides, the word 'peaceful' has also been used at 5th rank in expressing positives and on 7th rank in expressing sentiments of joy and trust.

Vote bank politics behind the problem

In the sentiment analysis, the Twitter users were of the strong opinion that the current issue of CAB has its roots in vote politics. It is evident from the fact that the word 'vote' has been used to express an opinion on five sentiments – surprise, joy, sadness, anger, and negative. The word 'vote' has been ranked 2nd in expressing surprise, 3rd on joy and sadness, 4th on anger and 7th on negativity. This clearly indicates that a large number of the population feels the 'vote politics' as the main driving force behind the CAB.

This vote politics could be of immediate political interest due to the ensuing Jharkhand Assembly Elections and upcoming Delhi Assembly Elections or may be of long term vote bank politics for General Election in 2024. The legal experts also believe that the CAA coupled with the NRC (National Register of Citizens) is likely to help the government in striking off several names from the voters' list. It indicates that the vote politics on this issue is likely to continue for long.

However, the Twitter users have expressed a very high degree of faith and hope in 'secular' credentials of India and the court. Besides, the word 'democracy' came on 4th rank in expressing positive sentiments by Twitter users.

METHODOLOGY

The sentimental analysis is based on the data extracted from Twitter hashtag #CitizenAmendmentBill2019 from 12-16 December, 2019. In this exercise, 7,500 tweets were extracted from Twitter using API (application programming interface). The tweets were subjected through three methods of natural language processing – BING lexicon, NRC lexicon and AFINN lexicon – for sentiment analysis.

Research Team: J.P. Singh, Editor-in-Chief, Neeraj Singh Mehta, Technical Lead, Esham Chatterjee, Assistant Manager - Economic Studies and Planning, Siddheshwar Shukla, Associate Editor, and Senior Sub-Editors, Parag Narang and Subhro Prakash Ghosh.

Disclaimer: The conclusions drawn in the sentiment analysis are subject to technological limitations of data extraction and methodology(ies) used for data processing. This study is based on analysis of tweets only and the retweets were not taken into account. All the available precautions have been made to maintain the objectivity of the research and its presentation in a scientific fashion.