ByKaleem
Kawaja
The
commentaries on the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), and National Registry of
Citizens (NRC) Act from a large number of learned and distinguished Indians
including Nobel laureates, retired judges of India
The BJP
government expected that opposition to these Acts will come from their rival
opposition political parties. But they
were surprised when intense spontaneous opposition exploded from groups of
students at many universities across the country, where the number of minority
students is about 4%.
The biggest
surprise is that a bunch of women from the lower-middleclass locality of
Shaheen Bagh in the New Delhi suburb of Okhla, have organized a pacifist sit-in
campaign against these Acts, emulating Mahatma Gandhi’s iconic Satyagrahas of
India’s freedom movement. Indeed, they
kept the organization of the campaign entirely in the hands of local women, not
letting men get involved. Not only these ladies, majority of whom happen to be
Muslim, braved 2 months of the coldest- in- a- hundred years Delhi winter, with
awful cold and rain, sitting under a flimsy tarpaulin tent and sleeping on the
road, they have successfully thwarted the pernicious attempts of several
politicians to give a sectarian color to their agitation.
Indeed,
three weeks after they began the Satyagrah, a Muslim religious leader visited
Shaheen Bagh protest and proceeded to give a religious sermon- like
lecture. Within a few minutes, one of
the local women leaders nudged him and politely told him to stop his lecture,
since this was a composite Indian nation campaign. Similarly, they did not allow a single politician
space or time in their 2 month long and continuing rally. Instead of displaying any symbols or flags or
singing songs of their Muslim community, they have persisted with displaying
the national flag, pictures of Gandhi, Ambedkar and other heroes of India
The ladies
of Shaheen Bagh who had earlier spent their lives at home mostly looking after
their families, that even included a few grandmothers, had never taken part in
rallies or political campaigning. Yet, they have demonstrated remarkable
political skill and strategy in managing this critical movement for the
composite soul and unity of the nation.
Spurning
all controversy, they invited a delegation of Kashmiri Pandits to their rally
and expressed full solidarity and sympathy with their suffering. They invited a horde of Sikh farmers from Punjab to sympathize with their long-standing sufferings
vis-à-vis their farm loans. Being Urdu speaking themselves, they invited Tamil,
Telegu and Malayali Hindus to discuss their issues at their rally. In Shaheen Bagh, the ladies established
temporary book stalls and painting displays, organized poetry and folk music
sessions and lectures by a horde of grassroots activists.
Indeed,
with the highly contentious Delhi state election happening on their watch, in
the face of threats from the mighty to “send a current through their stayagrah
sit-in”, and facing down actual shooting by some rogue elements, the shaheen
Bagh ladies faced down the mighty, who dared not mis-speak.
Success
breeds success. So, in the weeks that
followed the start of Shaheen Bagh, about a dozen such grassroots women’s
campaigns against CAA, NRC, and to unite the diverse nation have sprung up in
many a city throughout the country.
Shaheen Bagh has proved once again that the Gandhian pacifist Satyagrah
methodology, that is inclusive of everyone and abhors discrimination against anyone,
is an invaluable template to save the nation from internecine discord that
breeds disunity and threatens us with national calamity.