Locating Gramsci in Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh: Perspectives on the iconic women’s protest in India

Abstract

The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), 2019, in India was widely contested by both political parties and various civil society formations. Shaheen Bagh, a sit-in protest demonstration which continued for over a hundred days in the nation’s capital from mid-December 2019 to late March 2020, occupied the central position within the corpus of these protest demonstrations. The protests at Shaheen Bagh were led by poor, Muslim working-class women, who had come out on the streets protesting and asserting their rights amidst the dominant ruling-class communal politics. The Shaheen Bagh protests were a potent force of the working-class and oppressed minorities of the country. The paper brings in Marxist and Gramscian perspectives to explain how Shaheen Bagh has contributed to Indian left-wing politics. The paper argues that the women in Shaheen Bagh have been successful in bridging the gap between the civil society and political society in the country and has to an extent, altered the very nature of Indian politics. Moreover, the assertive nature of the Muslim women regarding their religion and the support which they garnered from the Indian left, widely accused by many of being Islamophobic in nature, has wide repercussions as far as political and social alliances between the left and Muslim politics in India is concerned. The present paper locates the protest within the notion of subaltern unity and tries to analyse the possible impacts of the support for the protests, within and beyond the anti-CAA protest movement, from the Indian left.

Feminists against Fascism: The Indian Female Muslim Protest in India

“…They also discussed wider frustrations, such as demonetization, GST, unemployment, inflation, lynching, farmers' suicide, police brutality, rising inequalities, and corruption. They also talked about Islamophobia, the lynching of Muslim men, the difficulty in renting accommodation, biased educational textbooks, and constant public humiliation for over 1000 years of history [79,80].…”

“…Yet, there has been a glaring absence of their voices in public policy [68]. Through their counter-hegemonic civil movement, however, they occupied the political space currently dominated by the male bourgeois-elites, and challenged the dominant power-structure like no other protests in India [80]. Nabiya's verse below became a popular protest slogan: Ayega Inquilab Pehenke bindi, chudiyan, burqa, hijab (Revolution will arise dressed in bindi, bangles, burqa and hijab) Nabiya's juxtaposition of bangles, bindis, and hijab with revolution reclaims them from symbols of weakness to symbols of strength.…”

“…The Shaheen Bagh movement became a multi-layered fight against religious victimization, casteism, inequalities, patriarchy, statist oppression, etc. In Gramscian terms, subalterns of all types came together to overthrow the hegemony [80]. Ayesha saw this shift as a defining feature of the politics of the future:…”

Feminism from the margins: How women are contesting the “othering” of Muslims through arts‐based resistance?

“…Without surprise, the passing of the CAA (Ministry of Law and Justice, 2019) in the Indian Parliament marked the moment of unapologetic granting of citizenship rights to the six religious minorities belonging to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi, or Christian community from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan–thus, excluding Muslims (Alam, 2020; Bhatia & Gajjala, 2020; Kaur, 2020; Roy, 2020). By enacting the CAA (Ministry of Law and Justice, 2019) the BJP revived the fears, anxieties, and hatred induced by the 1947 partition (Hasan, 2020; Mander, 2019).…”

“…In defying the CAA's (Ministry of Law and Justice, 2019) blatantly anti‐Muslim character, Shaheen Bagh emerged as the epicenter of the proverbial street protest from mid‐December 2019 to mid‐March 2020 (Roy, 2020). This grassroots feminist movement was staged by Muslim women, social activists, and student activists from Jamia Milia University, Aligarh Muslim University, and Delhi University, and by young people of all faiths (Chhabra, 2020; Roy, 2020). In condemning the CAA, thousands of people at several international universities also expressed solidarity with the protestors in India (The Telegraph, 2021).…”