Description On 15 December 2019, police in riot gear stormed Delhi's Jamia Millia Islamia
University and attacked unarmed students protesting against the Citizenship
(Amendment) Act (CAA), which makes religion the basis of Indian citizenship. In
neighbouring Shaheen Bagh, a few women-mothers, other relatives and friends of
the students-came out into the streets in outrage and anguish. They sat on a main
road demanding repeal of the CAA which, twinned with the proposed National
Register of Citizens (NRC), could make Indian Muslims aliens in their own country.
Soon, similar protests broke out across the country in a display of civil resistance of
a kind never seen in Independent India.
Shaheen Bagh and the Idea of India examines how the sit-in by a small group of Muslim
women-many of whom have stepped out of their homes alone for the first time-
has united crores of Indian citizens of different faiths and ideologies in a fight to save
the principles of equality and secularism enshrined in our Constitution. It also throws
up many important questions: Can Shaheen Bagh-and the many other 'Shaheen
Baghs' it has inspired-reverse the damage that has been done to our Constitutional
democracy in recent years? What has sustained this non-violent movement despite
vilification and persecution by the central and state governments and their police?
Will it survive the aftermath of the brutal communal violence, provoked in the main
by members of the ruling party, that devastated northeast Delhi in February 2020?
What form will the movement take after the Shaheen Bagh protest site was cleared
by the police on 24 March 2020 following the COVID-19 outbreak? Will it continue
to build new and transformative solidarities in our society?
This timely and necessary anthology comprises interviews with some of the brave
women at the core of the protests; ground reports by journalists and social activists
like Seemi Pasha, Enakshi Ganguly, Nazes Afroz and Mustafa Quraishi; and essays by
leading thinkers and writers, including Nayantara Sahgal, Harsh Mander, Subhashini
Ali, Nandita Haksar, Apoorvanand and Zoya Hasan. It is a book that must be read by
everyone who cares about India as a liberal democracy.
