Shaheen Bagh women becoming mascot of anti-CAA-NRC protests across country
Women sitting in protest against CAA at Shaheen Bagh.
New Delhi: The sit-in protest against the Citizen (Amendment) Act (CAA) and the proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC) by women at Delhi’s that began on December 14 with 10–15 women blocking Delhi’s Kalindi Kunj Road (Road 13A), a six-lane highway bordering the Muslim-dominated neighbourhood of Shaheen Bagh in the southeast of the city, continued to grow bigger and louder with hundreds of women, activists and citizens pouring into the venue on the 27th day running. The mainly Muslim women protesters sitting in protest day after day, night after night braving the bitter Delhi winter has now caught the attention of the country as well the international community.
The women, who fear that the rights of their community as citizens of India would be snatched away after the implementation of the CAA and followed by the NRC look determined to carry on their protest unless the government rolls back the newly amended citizenship law.
The women are taking turns to sit in the makeshift tent where many are participating with their small children. They say they have been left with no choice as they are now facing an “existential crisis”.
Activists say their fears are not misplaced as many Indians are undocumented and if they don’t make it to the National Register of Citizens for the lack of papers, they might still get a chance to get Indian citizenship as the CAA provides for fast-tracking the processing the citizenship requests of people who can claim to be refugees from either Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Pakistan – if they are non-Muslims. For Muslims, there seems to be no way out and the possibility of them landing in detention centres, like those in Assam, is very real.
Already, people from across India are now talking about the Shaheen Bagh women. Inspired by them, women in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and elsewhere have also reportedly are staging similar protests or are planning to. The international media is also now getting more and more curious about the women-led peaceful protest against the CAA-NRC, which is in stark contrast to the widespread violent and deadly protests the country saw a few days earlier.
The government also looks out of ideas how to deal with women sitting in a peaceful protest. As things look today, the Shaheen Bagh women seem to have dug in for a long winter.
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