The Shaheen Bagh women have challenged the tradition and expectation of their non-engagement in the public sphere, which is reflective of the conservative patriarchal Muslim society
In a gentle way, you can shake the world, thus said Mahatma Gandhi, the apostle of non-violence in India. And this is what the Muslim women of Shaheen Bagh seem to have set out to do. A motley group of powerless, politically insignificant Muslim women have spearheaded a women-all sit-in protest for the past 78 days in a Muslim middle-class locality. Of them, some are educated, some illiterate, some young, and some old, dadis as they are called. They are protesting against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act or CAA, claiming that the law is anti-constitutional and aimed at taking away their citizenship if combined with the NRC and the NPR.
For the protesting women of Shaheen Bagh, the sit-in is for their survival, to save their future generation. In doing so, the women have challenged the tradition and expectation of their non-engagement in the public sphere, which is reflective of the conservative patriarchal Muslim society.
Their grit and determination have given new strength to the protest, attracting people from other faiths, including some Hindus, to espouse their cause. A group of Sikh men and women have put up a langar (community kitchen) providing food to these women for the past one month.
The most striking feature of the protest is its Indian-ness. Indian freedom struggle heroes and other national icons are conspicuous by their presence in the wall paintings and posters at the protest site. They play national anthem and chant slogans of Vande Mataram and Inquilab Zindabad and hoist Indian tricolour. These give their protest an impression of struggle to save their Indian identity.
While Indian history is replete with the male activism, non-Muslim women too have spearheaded movements for gender and environmental rights like Narmada movement, Chipko Movement. But Muslim women have seldom led any movement. In fact, they have been discriminated at two levels: as Muslims in a plural society and as women within their community. Their voices have been either completely stifled or not given due consideration in the past even during issues of vital importance like the Ayodhya dispute, the Shah Bano case, the triple talaq, etc.
Aruna Asaf Ali and Hazrat Mahal were some exception, because they didn’t belong to the lower middle class unlike the women at Shaheen Bagh. In pre-Independence India, the first feminist movement in Asia was started by a Muslim woman Rokeya Sakahawat Hossain, a Bengali woman who was ranked by the BBC as sixth greatest Bengali in 2004. She advocated education as liberating force for women and started a school in Kolkata which she ran till her death in 1932. Her books Matichur and Sultana’s Dream have been part of great feminist literature.
The Shaheen Bagh protest has a different contour and context. This is a protest movement born out of particular situation which affects the protesting women’s existence, as they say. They are not only going through an emotional trauma of spearheading the protest but also staring at a future with dark possibilities.
Bereft of any charismatic leader, the Shaheen Bagh protest has sparked many other similar protests across India. They have all seen women participation. It is a protest which is not based on any ideology. Yet the protest has been able to break the “exclusive identity” tag with the support of many people from the other faiths.
The protest has immense social implications also. This could be harbinger of a liberating movement for the Muslim women from the clutches of patriarchy and spearhead the change in the Muslim society.
It is difficult to see how the protest will go further. The Government has stated its stance and the Supreme Court is yet to hear the matter. Moreover, skirmishes between anti-CAA protesters and others that culminated into communal riots a few days ago threatened the continuation of the Shaheen Bagh sit-in, but the peaceful manner in which the protest is going on have scotched such apprehension.
The protesting women, like their counterparts in other protests led by women, have invested their emotion into it and that is why they have refused to either budge from their demands. At the same time, they have not allowed anti-social elements to hijack their peaceful protest.
To recall again Gandhiji who said “strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will”, the women of Shaheen Bagh are fighting their battle with this indomitable spirit to save their children’s future and the idea of India which professes a unique pluralistic society with equal protection of law to all communities.
(The writer is Deputy News Editor, The Pioneer. Views expressed are personal)