BOOKS: THE SHAHEEN BAGH IDEAL
INher introduction to Shaheen Bagh and the Idea of India, journalist Seema Mustafa, the editor of this anthology, notes that “unlikely revolutionaries—lower-middle-class Muslim women easily lost in a crowd— took the lead, laying claim to our democracy and its enduring symbols, and the rest of India followed”. If only such an optimistic interpretation were true. Sadly, it appears as if the so-called silent majority—which has elected Prime Minister Narendra Modi twice by emphatic margins—has internalised the BJP narrative that the grandmothers of Shaheen Bagh are, in the words of Seemi Pasha, author of several pieces in the anthology, at the vanguard of a “treasonous revolt by a belligerent and politically dispensable community”.
Led by home minister Amit Shah and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath, the BJP ran a viscerally prejudiced campaign before the Delhi elections in February. Push the button marked ‘lotus’ so hard, Shah exhorted voters, that they feel the current in Shaheen Bagh and run. It backfired, not necessarily because voters disapproved of the language, but because Arvind Kejriwal had Delhi voters eating out of the palm of his hand and the BJP had no compelling chief ministerial alternative. The hideous coda to the old-fashioned secular nationalism on display in Shaheen Bagh were the riots in northeast Delhi resulting in at least 53, mostly Muslim, deaths. “One cannot now be sure,” writes Pasha, “if [BJP politician, Kapil] Mishra’s speech was the trigger or scene one, act one of a carefully planned drama of terror.”
Ziya Us Salam and Uzma Ausaf in Shaheen Bagh: From a Protest to a Movement lionise the protesters as these “exemplary Shaheen Bagh women— steadfast, resolute, united and almost unbelievable peaceniks... With their incredible powers of patience and abiding belief in ahimsa”. Rather than persuade us that these women “gave the nation hope”, this reads like a eulogy. Both books show us in detail that Shaheen Bagh was extraordinary. That the bravery of those who were there cannot be gainsaid, which applies equally to all those college students who protested in the maw of the thugs seemingly permitted a free hand by police. But both books also offer immediacy rather than depth, celebration rather than analysis. And even if Shaheen Bagh deserves panegyrics, wading through pages upon pages of soupy truisms can make one long for a flash of the polemicist’s blade.
There is a brief glint when Aslam and Ausaf quote academic Prabhat Patnaik decrying the “systematic use of lies and half-truths to mislead the public”, and “the unconcealed debunking of the Indian Constitution”. Part of the tragic aftermath of Shaheen Bagh has been how a global pandemic has been used to defang dissent. Scores of young Muslim men, and at least one pregnant woman, have been arrested for their alleged parts in the Delhi riots, with questions about due process and evidence presented to courts working at reduced capacity muffled by mainstream media determined to look the other way. Glorious as the Shaheen Bagh protests were, they have not had the sweeping effect of the Black Lives Matter protests in Covid-ridden US, for instance.
This is not a criticism of these highminded, if sometimes slapdash, books, but of our society which appears to resist asking itself discomfiting questions. “The idea of Shaheen Bagh has survived,” writes academic Apoorvanand in his essay in Mustafa’s anthology, “though the streets of Delhi have been stained with blood.” Is this wishful thinking? Have we forgotten Shaheen Bagh and those tens of thousands across the country who took to the streets because they recognised the fundamental, un-Indian prejudice of the Citizenship Amendment Act, though it was presented to us as a fait accompli? We cannot know, so long as we continue to sequester ourselves on government advice except to shop and go to work.
Only months ago, these books remind us, the streets were full of opposition to a narrow, sectarian ‘idea’ of India. Those streets are now bereft. ■