Standing their Ground

Documenting the daily resistance at Shaheen Bagh

- APPU AJITH

A ROAD SIGN FOR FARIDABAD, attached to a foot overbridge in the Delhi neighbourhood of Shaheen Bagh, has been spraypainted over. The altered text reads “Zindabad,” and a white sheet, with “Inquilab” scrawled on it, hangs above it. A one-kilometre-long-stretch below this sign has been the site of a women-led sit-in protest against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act for over a month.

The protest began on 15 December 2019, in the aftermath of police brutality against students protesting the CAA at Jamia Millia Islamia and Aligarh Muslim University. When I visited on the night of 18 January, it was the thirty-fourth day of the protest. Muslim women, particularly residents of the area, were at the forefront. The foot overbridge was lit up in neon-green and pink lights, and large banners bearing slogans were suspended from its deck. Prominent among these was an arresting portrait of a protesting woman clad in a red-and-green burqa; a flowchart depicting the grim potential outcomes, for minorities, of the CAA and the National Register of Citizens; and a massive red banner expanding CAA as “Communal Arbitrary Act.” There was a steel model of a detention camp installed under the bridge and, as I faced the marquee where around a hundred women were participating in the sitin, I came across young people holding postcards and inviting the crowd to write to the prime minister, denouncing the CAA and NRC. Vibrant protest graffiti-covered several portions of the road. In one piece, a visually impaired protestor is depicted screaming “I’m blind” to a masked assailant who, while thrashing him, responds with “Main bhi”—So am I. This was a possible evocation of the 5 January attack on Jawaharlal Nehru University, during which a blind student was beaten by masked attackers.