100Shaheen Dangerous portents of ongoing protests Baghs
DECCAN CHRONICLE | HYDERABAD | FRIDAY | 20 MARCH 2020
The ongoing protests across venues — many of them having been christened ‘Shaheen Bagh’ of the particular town in which they are located — in India many not be, from a public health perspective, safe in these times of Covid-19. But it is those gatherings all over India that show the political health of the country in good shape and are expected to be harbingers of political change.
For the Shaheen Baghs of India and the other nameless protest venues have become micro universities or centres of political learning, where the many youth and women have had their first lessons in politics that they might have hitherto shunned as needless and waste of time. Yes, two perceptible things have happened after the Indian government brought in the Citizenship Amendment Act, which is popularly known as CAA.
One, they are of women coming out in large numbers to sit and protest and two, students organising agitations in their institutions for a cause not particularly related to them. In fact, the large protest, mostly by women, at Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh, started on December 15, 2019, after police entered the campuses of Jamia Miliia Islamia and Aligarh Muslim University.
Thus the first voice against the CAA, which has now been given a new explanation by the legions of protesters as ‘Communal Arbitrary Act’, was raised by students in university campuses, raising the Central Government’s hackles. Then, it was women who organised themselves at Shaheen Bagh to oppose the government highhandedness against students and also against the CAA and two other acts that they fear could make many people lose their citizenship.
More than the CAA, the protestors dread the National Population Register (NPR) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC). So the protesters raised slogans against all three combined together - CAA, NRC and NPR - and put up placards running down all three, besides the Central government and also some high priests of the ruling dispensation.
The way Shaheen Bagh assumed cult status is remarkable in that it coalesced into a single army various groups of people having some cudgel or the other to pick against the BJP government and the Hindutva forces. Shaeen Bagh offered a common platform for those opposed to the ruling party to express their views, display their creativity, to educate the gathering and to send across the political message that the BJP has to be defeated.
That the BJP did take note of the happenings in Shaheen Bagh and its clones around the country was evident from the Delhi riots of 2020. The riots left 49 dead, hundreds wounded, many vehicles and buildings damaged. The war cry of those who perpetrated the acts of violence and sabotage was ‘teach them a lesson.’
The ‘them’ refers to the students of Jamia, JNU and also Gargi College, among others, and the protestors at Shaheen Bagh. For, they were all learning from the speakers who addressed the protestors and through the books stocked at the ragtag library that has sprung up at Shaheen Bagh and from the multitude of posters, art pieces and other installations a different lesson: Whom to vote the next time.
That the BJP lost the Delhi Assembly elections so badly is partly attributed to Shaheen Bagh. Though the ultimate winner, the Aam Admi Party did not show any solidarity to the protesters in any form prior to the election - they also did nothing to help victims during the riots even though they were in power then - the voters had been turned against the BJP by the protests.
So as the government at the Centre does nothing to find a resolution to the issue, remaining resolute on implementing the three acts, CAA, NRC and NPR, all over the country, the protests are only likely to intensify.
The intensification of the protests means that more secular forces would speak out and more truths about the government and Hindutva would be told to people, who are otherwise immune to political harangue. It means more voters could refuse to buy the regular bogeys of BJP that has helped the party win elections in the past.
Another fall out of the nation-wide protest is that it has brought Muslim groups together. Hitherto, many of the Muslim outfits rarely saw eye-to-eye and seldom came together as one group to fight for anything. Many of them had dug their own furrow in the past. But now they have learnt to interact among themselves and share concerns leading to a joint fight. This also does not augur well for the ruling dispensation since the unity could mean that a single call for favouring a particular party in the elections would be more effective hereafter.
Then comes the most crucial fact: the mobilization of women. Though visibly Muslim women dominate the protest venues, there are women from all communities sitting through the day, raising slogans and also organizing the protests. The women have now learnt to juggle domestic chores and a participation in a protest of this scale, running for months together. Now that the spirit of protest has been awakened in the women, they have become full-fledged political animals.
Having gained more political knowledge, thanks to the speeches by political leaders, activists and intellectuals at the venues, the women have become more aware and become more spirited to guide democracy in future. They may not give in to emotional appeals from politicians or for glamour in future, having gained the ability to take informed decision on whom to vote for.
So, the continuation of the protests could mean the BJP losing out in one state after the other and ultimately at the Centre if the protestors keep Shaheen Bagh alive for a longer time.