The movement was a creation. A modern one. Because it could carve out a space in one’s own neighbourhood to resist the brutalities one had to endure. And could successfully capture the imagination and solidarity nationally and internationally.
Looking back to last December amidst a pandemic and the clamp down of social life along with it, It was a time of happenings and gatherings. Of people flocking in again and again, every time against an attack that had happened. Be it the first police attack on Jamia university, or the subsequent state sponsored firings and pogroms. What is more empowering for a community other than to be heard and talked to. With the setting up of a protest shed and a small stage, for a duration of over three months, many across the nation spoke to the women of shaheen bagh and many came to hear them.
The people of Jamia Nagar will be remembered for facilitating the movement with much love and care and for reminding us that even when our lives are seemingly segmented, we are bound together in resisting an oppressive state. This was being reminded to every student of Jamia, when the women of shaheen bagh sat up for a road blockade and when farmers from punjab flocked in and fed shaheen bagh.
The movement had the charm of creativity and wit. It also had its graceful way of busting out the myths about the community. The myth of saviour seeking muslim women, the assumption that muslims tend to strictly segreagte their genders, and the dominating dictating muslim men.
The movement gained greater meaning and relevance whenever it bridged the larger struggle with the inner ones. One such instance was when the girls of Jamia hostel broke their curfew at midnight to march out on the night when Jamia was attacked by an unnamed gunman. There were several instances like these, when speakers and creative works at Shaheen bagh referred to other injustices around and reminded people that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
The beauty and exception of Shaheen Bagh is that along with the space it created in the neighborhood, it ensured that the space is accessible for all. Young kids, women and men spoke. It also democratized and normalised the culture of protesting, sloganeering, and muraling. Such revolutionary practices continuing for over three months would have created immeasurable waves of changes in the lives of the people around. The large number of people joining the protest site along with their families after the Friday prayers, ensured expanding meanings to spirituality and to domestic life.
There were kids who came everyday to the protest. They always had something to contribute. Once before them was a chart with dates of their examination , excusing them from the protest only for those days.
Every form of creative expressions were used. Murals, road art, photo exhibition, theatre, street lecture series, street libraries, out-door movie screening. Protest sites attained more meaning through the movement. A new possibility of protest sites expanding beyond anger, fury and hunger strikes were brilliantly sought.
It has been several months since many of the student leaders and activists are jailed unfairly. It was hopeful to see the farmers’ protest demanding the release of all political prisoners on Human Rights Day.
The movement for sure had politicized the muslim households and had given them the ground to express their concerns and to have dialogues about them. But any politics that deviates from people and is negligent to the larger oppressive mechanisms can’t take us far.
