The
peaceful indefinite sit-in by Muslim women at Shaheen Bagh has become the
epicentre of nationwide protests against the Citizenship (Amendment)
Act–National Population Register–National Register of Citizens, as the
protestors have brought to the fore a protest performative that is to be
comprehended beyond the physical protest site. As a people’s protest in the
true sense, it contests the state’s excessive urge to define and dominate, and
flags pressing concerns vis-à-vis discrimination in the face of a
consumerism-driven argument of inconvenience. In doing so, the protestors help
us understand resistance as an expression of belonging and citizenship as a
participatory tool, rather than a status granted by the state on the basis of
select documents.
ByIrfanullah
Farooqi
Ever since
the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2019 (CAB 2019) was tabled in Parliament,
there has been a visible unrest in the country. As the bill turned into an act
(Citizenship [Amendment] Act [CAA] 2019) on 12 December 2019, the unrest spread
like wildfire. Seen alongside the lined-up National Population Register (NPR),
a six-month exercise to be conducted between 1 April 2020 and 30 September
2020, and the impending National Register of Citizens (NRC), the CAA is opposed
for its discriminatory and anti-constitutional character. It subscribes to a
disturbingly restricted understanding of minorities, religious persecution, and
India’s neighbourhood.
While
protests, marches, and demonstrations have punctuated the national life of
India for the past few weeks, the peaceful sit-in by women at Shaheen Bagh, New
Delhi has become the epicentre of the nationwide protests against the CAA, NPR,
and NRC. As I write this, Shaheen Bagh, through its unusuallanguage of
resistance and a somewhat unique claim vis-à-vis belonging hasalready inspired
people in several cities to join hands for peaceful indefinite sit-ins. So far,
we have been informed of sit-ins in Kolkata, Gaya, Kanpur, Allahabad, Bengaluru,
and Deoband. InDelhi itself, peaceful sit-ins at Khureji, Seelampur, Turkman
Gate, Kardam Puri, Mustafabad, and Inderlok have registered their presence.
The Site
and the Protestors
Shaheen
Bagh, also called Abul Fazal Enclave Part II, is the southernmost colony of
Okhla. With almost 100% Muslim population, the colony came into being in the
early 1980s. Although it is a part of the larger Jamia Nagar area, it remained
a colony rarely visited by those visiting Jamia Nagar from other areas of
Delhi. For a very long time,Jamia Nagar has been frequented by people from all
over Delhi for food.Hotels, restaurants, and eating joints in Zakir Nagar,
Batla House, Tikona Park, and Abul Fazal Enclave cater to hundreds of non-Jamia
Nagar customers everyday. Shaheen Bagh never figured in that list. However, the
colony shot to prominence with its market along Road 13A (the one that connects
Mathura Road with Kalindi Kunj and is currently blocked by the protestors) with
a significantly long line of factory outlets of major brands offering discount
all year round. So, it was through the sale offers at Nike, Adidas, Monte
Carlo, Woodland, Reebok, and so on that people got to know the place, but
needless to say, not the people.
The people
of Shaheen Bagh have remained somewhere behind the well-lit factory outlets. The
women of Shaheen Bagh were further behind, a little beyond the unknown.
However, with the peaceful sit-in at Shaheen Bagh that has turned into its
second month now, the women of the area have come forward in the most
unanticipated way possible. It started as a humble demonstration against the
Delhi Police beating Jamia Millia Islamia University students on 13 December
2019. However, the brutal crackdown in Jamia that took place on the evening of
15 December 2019 turned the Shaheen Bagh protest into something else. Hundreds
of Muslim women sat on Road 13A that connects Delhi to Noida, and ever since
then, the blockade remains.
Who are
these protestors? Anyone visiting Shaheen Bagh will be able to tell us that
although, as of now, it is a mix of various people who have decided to come
together to register their protest against a discriminatory law, it is the
Muslim women of Shaheen Bagh who stand out at the site. As has been reported in
almost all the write-ups on the Shaheen Bagh protest, most of the women of
Shaheen Bagh who are a part of the sit-in are protesting for the first time in
their lives. In the beginning, this aspect of the movement was exploited
to express a “concern” around protestors not being aware of what they are
protesting about. However, over the weeks, almost everyone is convinced about
the extraordinary ways in which the first-timers invoke new understandings
of resistance and, in doing so, help us understand other facets of power. It is
the first-timers who urge us to attend to the primacy of resistance, that is,
move from resistance to power, rather than the other way around.
A New
Protest Performative
The
gathering at Shaheen Bagh has evoked a new performative of protest, especially for
those whose understanding of protests and demonstrations emerged out of regular
attendance at Jantar Mantar. At Shaheen Bagh, the script of protest is rewritten
simply because the protestor is endowed with a very different vantage point of
belonging. Moreover, when the spectrum has a 90-year-old woman on the one end
and a 20-day-old infant on the other, it is bound to offer us a new grammar of
protest, a new language of resistance.
Unlike
other sites of protest and demonstration, at Shaheen Bagh, one gets to know the
centrality and primacy of “people.” There is a stage that remains occupied all
the time, but it is the audience that is more important. Speakers and
performers come and leave the stage, knowing very well that the actual
performance, a hearteningly interminable one, is before them and not by them.
Through their deep and informed silent presence, the first-timers of Shaheen
Bagh (the oft-repeated reference found in various media reports) have altered
our perspective on the ways in which the stage and the audience adhere to
a certain priority scheme.
The
protest’s performative calls for a new frame of understanding because it is not
restricted to the site. As one gets down at the Shaheen Bagh metro station and
heads towards the protest site, there is a likelihood of being driven to the
site by an auto or e-rickshaw wallah who does not even charge the meagre fair
of ₹10. Owners of showrooms on Road 13A have decided not to take rent from the
rentees for as long as the blockade continues. This amount could very well be
in lakhs. As one reaches the site, one sees people distributing bottles of
water, juice, tea, boiled eggs, fruits, biscuits, biryani, puri sabzi, etc.
Then there are students and activists who are found running initiatives to
inform people through creative art, doing sessions with children on harmony,
peace, and compassionate living, inculcating mindfulness through conversations,
and so on. None of these people are to be found on the stage or in the audience.
However, through these selfless acts that suggest an individual transcending
their own location anddenying that politico-economic structures have the final
say, the people at Shaheen Bagh have made us understand the unique ways of
protesting.
A protest
that goes beyond the immediate visible site of reference suggests deep
connections that exist between resistance and belonging. Muslim women of Shaheen
Bagh have demonstrated an uncommon expression of belonging through their
resistance. People who have joined them so as to extend solidarity have
acknowledged the sanctity of this rare expression. This is the reason why many
activists who have been a part of numerous different protests over the years
have conscientiously remained away from the stage. They have addressed the
gathering when asked to, but they have been conscious of the uniqueness of the
setting. This simultaneity of Muslim women coming in huge numbers and seasoned
activists and “knowledgeable” people knowingly standing out of the frame can be
considered as a fresh chapter in the history of protests and demonstrations in
independent India.
Not against
Anyone Specific
There is
something unsettlingly convenient about accepting the premise that the protest
in Shaheen Bagh (perhaps in other regions too) is against the Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP). If Muslim presence is predominant in the protest and the ruling
dispensation at the centre is known for its anti-Muslim policies, what can
possibly stop us from seeing Shaheen Bagh as an anti-BJP protest? While it
cannot be denied that there have been repeated references to stalwarts of the
current regime, the protest is about more than the regime and its discriminatory
policies.
Muslim
women at Shaheen Bagh draw our attention to the way a marginalised identity
experiences its location and, consequently, association with the rest. In that
respect, their protest is against the pathologically inhuman ways in which the
state, for decades, encroached upon their everyday spaces of domestic life. A
little more than three decades ago, writing on the political culture of the
Indian state, Ashis Nandy (1989) warned us about a state that was decisively
moving from the realm of service to the realm of domination. Nandy was
highlighting something distinctly characteristic about the modern state, its
obsession with order and, in that regard,governable subjects. Nandy was quite
clear that for such an entity, the essential problem is not its failure, but
its success.
Protestors
at Shaheen Bagh are not against the regime, but a governing psychology or
template that defines marginalised identities solely from the vantage point of
lawlessness, chaos, violence,ignorance, etc. It is this reading of the margins
by the state that urged Das and Poole (2004) to refer to the state as an
“incomplete project” (p 5) and its margins as those pockets that are
“insufficiently socialised into the law” (p 9). Muslim women of Shaheen Bagh
are posing a serious question to that alleged “insufficient socialisation” of
theirs into the law. Instead of being defined as members of a community
allegedly inclined towards lawlessness, they have rightfully become the epitome
of the lawful, the bearers of the constitutional.
The state
is also questioned by unsettling the nationalised memory and remembrance. For
instance, the India Gate replica at Shaheen Bagh is, in a true sense, a
people’s response to national memory, as it carries names of people who were
killed by the state during the protests against the CAA and NRC. By drawing our
attention to a new perspective on sacrifice and mourning, the India Gate
replica at Shaheen Bagh brings to the fore the powerless’s claim on memory and
mourning. Similarly, the 40-feet iron and mesh map of India inscribed with the
words Hum Bharat ke log CAA–NPR–NRC nahin maante (We, the people of India,
reject the CAA–NPR–NRC) is a people’s humble-yet-stunning response to state’s
indulgent and extravagant national projects, such as theStatue of Unity.
Discrimination
vs Inconvenience
Recently,
residents of adjacent colonies, such as Sarita Vihar and Jasola Vihar, took out
a rally opposing the sit-in at Shaheen Bagh, citing the inconvenience caused by
the road blockade. Backed by the Resident Welfare Association of these
colonies, people claimed that instead of blocking Road 13A that connects Delhi
and Noida, the protestors should protest at dedicated and identified sites.
This narrative of inconvenience conveniently tries to dislodge the narrative of
discrimination.
The protest
at Shaheen Bagh is a marginalised people’s uncommon response to discrimination.
When we earnestly speak against discrimination, we go beyond our immediate
identity markers. A call against discrimination is a call for the “we” invoked
in the preamble of the Constitution. On the contrary, inconvenience places the
individual before the collective. A rallying cry around inconvenience is the
call of the individual expressing concern over what they are facing. The logic of
inconvenience invokes a “we” that is fundamentally different from the “we” our
Constitution’s preamble opens with. Almost all the protests and peaceful
demonstrations, a living expression of people’s solidarity against
discrimination, are denied their due because of the inconvenience caused by
them. Instead of earnestly inquiring into what forced common people to come out
on roads and remaining there for several weeks, the inconvenience fraternity is
only interested in “For how long it will go on?” The pervasiveness of this
pathology, this unsettling indifference can be attributed to our living in a
society where most of us are identified as consumers.
A society
decisively tilted towards consumption as opposed to social justice and equality
is a society that turns its back on injustice and discrimination. In such a
society, we find it more logical to talk about losses incurred due to protests
(not loss, for it offers a philosophical or existential promise), rather than
getting our acts together against the suffering faced by specific groups.
Problems are identified strictly from a class-informed perspective of everyday
routines, which is why an additional two hours in traffic preponderates over
concern about a law that is discriminatory against the marginalised sections.
Issues with
‘What Next’
In addition
to those crying over the inconvenience caused by the Shaheen Bagh peaceful
indefinite sit-in, many sympathisers of the protest too ask themselves, “What
next?” This anxiety cannot be dismissed as an altogether insignificant one.
However, people’s movements are to be appreciated in terms of how they inform
the “ongoing.” In not putting forth a full-fledged plan of action, the brave
Muslim women of Shaheen Bagh have questioned the state’s peculiar occupation with
planning that routinely excludes and marginalises various groups.
As of now,
what matters the most is that with every passing day, the protest site is
acquiring more dynamism. As the women talk to each other, discuss theissues,
and reflect on what turned them into flagbearers of one of independent India’s
most glorious phases, they add more meaning to our national present. Queer
activists are taking sessions with Muslim children from the locality. Braving
the harshest weeks of Delhi winter, women protestors are knitting messages of
peace and harmony. Artists are painting 500-metre-long cloths with messages
that uphold the values of the Constitution. Each of these extraordinary acts
that bring a hope-affirming version of a community makes a claim for citizenship
as participation, as something not simply granted by the state, but realised in
our behaviour towards each other, our contribution to our nation’s diversity.
We can set
up committees to look into whether Faiz Ahmad Faiz’s Hum Dekhenge is anti-Hindu
or not, but we cannot stop these peaceful protests contributing to the
emergence of a life-giving Hum (“we”) in nooks and corners of the country. As
the women of Shaheen Bagh tweak their daily schedules in the hope of tweaking
the dominant national narrative, we are witnessing a new Hum that assures the
present an uncommon longevity and refuses to define the future as a next
occurrence.
(Courtesy:
Economic & Political Weekly)