Shaheen Bagh: flight of the falcon
Tu shaheen hai parwaaz hai kaam tera/tere aage aasmaan aur bhi hain — Allama Iqbal
You are the falcon, your nature is flight,/There are more skies that await you. T he Shaheen Bagh sit-in protest led by women against the CAA-NRCNPR soared far beyond the small ghetto in south-east Delhi to enrich India’s democratic imagination. This collection of essays edited by Seema Mustafa, founding editor of the online portal, Citizen, is an invaluable record and manifesto of this citizenship movement. The writers of the essays in the volume are journalists, lawyers, activists, and academics. Each focussed on a different facet of the protest at Shaheen Bagh, such as its inspired counterpart sit-in protests in other parts of the country, the constitutionality of the NRC-CAA, the subsequent riots in Delhi, the state response to protests and riots, and possible ways forward. That most essays are by women, and many by Muslim participant observers is a key asset of the volume. This was a secular democratic movement led by Muslim women since the CAANRC(-NPR) combine affects the citizenship of Indian Muslims most strongly, and in all patriarchal societies, such as our own, women are often the most vulnerable. The volume thus records the complaints and hopes of the community most affected by these rulings of the Indian state in their own voices. It also further shows that Indian Muslim women (and men) not only have the resolve to take to the street to fight (peacefully) for their rights but are also equipped to take up the fight discursively.
The book is divided into three parts: Ground reports from a protest; The idea of Shaheen Bagh; and A riot, a witch hunt. Journalist Seemi Pasha points out the radical coming together of Muslim women at Shaheen Bagh to protest against the oppression of the government that elsewhere claims to be the saviour of minority women. The gathering is secular, safe, until attacks come from the anti-protest Right. Pasha’s chapter on the riots records the extent of the targeted violence, and also analyses the different standards the Delhi Police seemingly enforced when registering complaints against criminals and rioters as opposed to protesters. Mustafa Quraishi’s account struck a chord with me where he tells us that he is often prodded to leave the country by family and friends in light of increasing discrimination, but Shaheen Bagh worked as a beacon of hope against the bind of being a second class citizen in one’s own country or a foreign land. Sarvover Zaidi and Samprati Pani explain the interpersonal dynamics of the protests and the mimetic alterity of Shaheen Bagh as it came to be emulated across states (including UP where it met with the most brutal of responses). Nayantara Sahgal, Harsh Mander, and Zoya Hasan place the protests historically, in the tradition of the Gandhian freedom struggle with women at its forefront. Apoorvanand decries the becoming ‘Hindu’ through Hindutva of the Indian public, where Hindus who are secular may no longer be regarded as Hindus; he applauds the democratising energy of Indian Muslims and considers ridding Hindus of anti-Muslim hatred as indispensable for democratising the Hindu mind.
Shaheen Bagh and the Idea of India is an important record of a crucial moment in the ongoing history of Indian democratic struggles. It might work to show us the way forward as well.