Shaheen Bagh Protests
Written on April 7th, 2020 by {"login"=>"jcbphc21", "email"=>"f20181005@hyderabad.bits-pilani.ac.in", "display_name"=>"Journal Club, BPHC", "first_name"=>"Journal Club", "last_name"=>"BPHC"}The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) was passed on 11th December 2019. This act amended the Citizenship Act of 1955 by providing citizenship to all illegal migrants of Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Parsi, Jain and Christian religious minorities who had fled persecution from islamic countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan before December 2014. It was the first act which overtly used religion as a criterion for citizenship under law. This act was highly criticised by the Muslim minorities of our country. The passing of the act led to many violent and non-violent protests which left the nation in peril. One of the protests which was special in its own way was the Shaheen Bagh protest. Shaheen Bagh is a neighbourhood in the south Delhi District and is a Muslim-dominated area. A non-violent protest majorly against the CAA, NRC and NPR was held here. It was the first protest in which women and children participated to stand against the current government’s decision. The Shaheen Bagh protest was also the longest protest against CAA and stood tall for 101 days.
The north eastern states opposed saying that no citizenship at all should be given to any refugee or immigrant, irrespective of religion, because they fear it would alter the region's demographic balance. Many leaders argued that this law also does not offer benefits to other religions or from other countries, such as Sri Lankan Tamil refugees, Rohingya Muslim and Hindu refugees from Myanmar, and Buddhist refugees from Tibet. They also questioned the selection of countries as Afghanistan was never part of the undivided India. They also inquired why countries like Myanmar, Bhutan, Sri-lanka and Nepal were left out from the benevolence of the act. They also avowed that the National Register of Citizens (NRC), which is going to be implemented for the whole country in 2021, could be used to deprive Muslims of Indian citizenship. The government's plan to implement a nationwide counting of citizens has particularly spooked Muslims amid fears that millions could be rendered stateless. A similar exercise in the north eastern Indian state of Assam abandoned nearly two million people from the citizenship list (National Register of Citizens or NRC) last year. All this led to the nationwide protest against the CAA.
For 101 days, people in Shaheen Bagh - a Muslim working-class neighbourhood - had been protesting against the new citizenship law that activists have dubbed "anti-Muslim". The protest started when the local women started to gather and object against the law by blocking the main road using barricades. As the popularity of the protest grew, more women and children started to join the gathering. The protesters have been supported and coordinated by more than a hundred volunteers, including students and professionals from Delhi. Within 10 days, the peaceful protest had grown to cover nearly one kilometre of the highway. The blocked road affected more than 100,000 vehicles a day, adding hours to some journeys. As the area is also a border point into the capital, thousands of trucks were being diverted to other border points. They also expanded their motto to CAA, NCR, NPR, police brutality, unemployment, poverty, women's safety and violence against Jamia Millia Islamia students who gathered to protest against the act.
They installed a 10-metre map of India with the words: “We the people of India say no to CAA, NCR, NPR.” There were many other installations, including one depicting a detention centre. The government is using such centres to lock away those who could not prove their citizenship in Assam. A miniature replica of India Gate bears the names of those killed during the anti-CAA protests across India. They also hung huge posters from the overbridge, which spanned the main road. There were tents offering free medical care, hundreds of books were stacked up in the tents serving as free book depositories. Speeches, lectures and shayari poetry readings had been held every day. Lines of poetry and nazm of revolutionary poets such as Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Pash, Habib Jalib, Muhammad Iqbal and Ramdhari Singh Dinkar were recited. Inter-faith prayers had been recited continuously as a large group of people from different religions gathered as the protest progressed.
The Shaheen Bagh protest paved the way for similar types of protests across the country such as in Kolkata, Prayagraj, Mumbai, Gaya Bengaluru, Parbhani, Malerkotla, Ranchi, Deoband, Chennai and Jafrabad. They were successful in garnering the attention of both national and international media which brought the BJP led government to their backfoot, but the government said that they were not going to listen to any objections related to the act. The Supreme Court started a legal proceeding regarding the act but the verdict turned out in favour of our government as they declared that there was no question of violating constitutional morality.
The main problem it faced was that the protest was leaderless, therefore the national or international media, government, police force and political parties were having complications with the communication. When protesters came to know that the data gathered for the NPR can be used to prepare the NRC, they deflected their main focus towards NPR exercise. But they identified that moving forward would be difficult given that NPR and Census 2021 are connected. Census gives most comprehensive and critical data for policy making, and has never been delayed. The NPR exercise originally demanded certain documents such as proof of residence and also Aadhaar for listing in the national register. The anti-CAA protests including that at Shaheen Bagh raised a slogan, "Kaagaz nahin dikhayenge" - a song penned by writer-activist Varun Grover.
But leaving these things aside, the anti-CAA protest at Shaheen Bagh has achieved much success that many other protests, especially those led by political parties, have failed to accomplish. This grand protest amassed more than one lakh people, majorly women and children, against CAA on a regular basis which was one of a kind in the history of our country. Days after the Delhi riots, as media focus shifted to riot-affected areas of Delhi and Delhi police action, Shaheen Bagh started losing steam. As media attention dwindled, the protest site started losing the crowd.
When the Delhi Government announced the lockdown amidst pandemic time, the Shaheen Bagh protesters refused to vacate the area as they feared that once removed, they won’t be able to reclaim their space for protest. they also argued that they were taking the necessary precautions such as proper distancing, usage of hand sanitizers and also had some doctors seated there just in case. But when the central government announced the lockdown in the whole country, the protesters were removed forcefully by the police. Though police claimed that they requested to stop the protest twice but the protesters failed to fulfill the request. As of now this protest is put on hold indefinitely due to the worldwide pandemic COVID-19. Whether this protest will continue after lockdown or not is still unclear, but the government should certainly unburden the doubts of the protesters and make the citizens of our country, irrespective of religion, feel safe about their citizenship.