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How Shaheen Bagh Lives on

rights
author Q Manivannan
15 hours ago
Five years after the iconic protests began, communities of care continue to fight for justice.

On December 15, after a night of horrific violence by the Delhi police at Jamia Millia Islamia University that remains etched in public memory, the women of Shaheen Bagh occupied a highway and began a sit-in that inspired hundreds more across the country. They came because they saw their children and loved ones hurt, knowing that if police and state-enabled forces could enact such harm in a university merely for peaceful demonstrations against the Citizenship Amendment Act, no home and no neighbourhood was safe for Muslims.

The women came because they cared. 

Earlier this year on March 11, the Union government notified the rules under the Citizenship Amendment Act, and the Supreme Court refused to grant a stay in its hearing on March 19. Despite Senior Advocate Indira Jaising and others repeatedly insisting that no new citizenships should be granted in the meantime, her request was laughed away by both fellow petitioners and the then Chief Justice of India, D.Y. Chandrachud, who stated, “They don’t even have the infrastructure in place.” By May 2024, according to a senior government official, around 300 individuals were granted citizenship under the CAA. The infrastructure, it would appear, was in place. Infrastructures of oppression often are, while infrastructure of care – compensation for riot-affected victims, trials for those imprisoned for protests, and support for minority communities – continue to be suspended in the limbo of bureaucratic violence: delays, misplaced files, and requests for extensions. 

Lawyers, artists, activists, writers, and filmmakers continue to fight for justice, despite these everyday barriers. On the fifth anniversary of Shaheen Bagh and the violence at JMI, the Vice-Chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia arbitrarily closed the canteen and library at the university, claiming it to be for maintenance purposes, allowing police personnel to occupy campus spaces to restrict protests and campus entry and exit. Still, hundreds of students marched to remember not only the harms they faced, but the fight for justice and accountability that continues undeterred. 

File image. Shaheen Bagh on Republic Day, 2020. Photo: Vedika Singhania

Arbab Ahmad – whose film Insides and Outsides demonstrated the deep ties between the personal and political, from the CAA protests and northeast Delhi violence to the harsh quietness and isolation of COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020 – recently curated Coordinates of Resistance, a series of films in Bengaluru and Delhi exploring Muslim identity under the present Indian regime. He quickly found venues and organisers backing out of past commitments made to him, paired with a lack of effective promotion by partners, effectively quashing possibilities for wide-scale engagement. Yet, they continue to find alternative spaces to showcase their films, with documentaries like Nausheen Khan’s Land of My Dreams and Prateek Sekher’s Chardi Kala being lauded by experts and students at forums across the globe.

Anirban Bhattacharya, a few days earlier, declared in a social media post that ‘Shaheen Bagh lives on’. His Voices for Umar series shows the wide scale of criticism for the Union government and courts for still not allowing bail for Umar Khalid, who completes four years of incarceration for peaceful protests. In each interview in this series, speakers fondly relate their memories of Umar – including those who have never met him. They tell us about the kindness and softness Umar continues to show his loved ones, alongside his courage and resilience in prison, a resilience he should not need to perform. 

It’s the same beauty and bravery found in Gulfisha Fatima, Sharjeel Imam, or the many others who continue to be unjustly imprisoned, and still find hope. In a virtual meeting earlier this year, I heard musicians, activists, community leaders, and friends send warm messages of solidarity to Gulfisha – some of them read her poetry from prison:

“…Finally! one day,

these burdened walls collapse

and erected in their place

are new silenced walls.”

Such poetry, joining the words of Umar Khalid, G.N. Saibaba, Hany Babu, Natasha Narwal, Devangana Kalita, and many others, point to a difficult reality – that these poems find meaning not just for their beauty, but because of the conditions they are written from. When Saibaba passed away on October 12 this year, many noted that his death was an institutional murder, born of the complications he suffered through his years of unfair detention and imprisonment. His letters to his wife, A.S. Vasanthakumari, or her telling The Caravan’s Shahid Tantray, “Sai means everything to [her]” should make us feel, deeply – this making-public of their relationship is, itself, a difficult resistance that the two of them performed, one that should have never been necessary in a just society. The love they shared is a reminder of the many loves stolen under the regime’s injustices, the love that poets, activists, artists, and lawyers alike still fight for. 

Also read: The Brave Women of Shaheen Bagh

On the legal front, after years of delays at the Delhi high court on cases on justice for victims of the northeast Delhi violence, advocates not only continue to fight for the dispersal of the promised relief money to the affected communities, but have also developed interim systems of supporting and caring for them. The Neev Foundation led by advocate Mishika Singh worked to distribute blankets and rations to victims until 2022. More recently, Singh along with other advocates supported some affected individuals in re-establishing their shops. Others have helped fundraise for the education of children in families who lost their homes and livelihoods in the violence.

File image: The protest site at Shaheen Bagh. Photo: Rohan Kathpalia

In parallel, despite civil society organisations like Karwaan-e-Mohabbat facing CBI raids to their offices even earlier this year – they continue to work. Their office continues to hold a fresh breeze that simmers through the trees above their modest central courtyard, as they eat lunch together and imagine new ways to breathe love with and for communities who suffer under Hindutva oppression. In my interactions with them, Harsh Mander and his staff are ever smiling, ever caring.

Just three weeks after their office was raided, they, along with other activists and concerned citizens, organised a memorial event with the victims of the northeast Delhi violence titled In Search of Healing and Justice. In the event, I saw the vast majority of victims with tears in their eyes as Al Hind Hospital’s Dr Anwar remembered the countless wounds he treated on one of the night of the violence, how advocate Suroor Mander’s midnight call to Justice Muralidhar likely saved hundreds of lives. When others like Syeda Hameed or Mishika Singh spoke of the work they continued to do, it wasn’t exposition as much as testament, a regular and diligent accountability performed to the people of Shiv Vihar and other neighbourhoods in northeast Delhi, an accountability which the prime minister, the Union home minister, and the chief ministers of Delhi have as yet failed to show. 

It’s not only those directly involved with work with victims who remember the demands and duties of justice. Musicians remember it – from Ali Sethi singing Hum Dekhenge at the University of British Columbia to Diljeet Dosanjh invoking the lyricist Rahat Indori’s shayari ‘Kisi ke baap ka Hindustan thodi hai’ ostensibly in response to protests by the Bajrang Dal, a Hindutva group, against his concert. Artists remember it – the group Drawing Resistance continues to distribute their graphic comics that documented the CAA movement. Students and academics remember it – Seema Mustafa’s book Shaheen Bagh and the Idea of India is now taught at universities around the world, and students in India continue to protest against the CAA-NRC-NPR. Activists continue to rally – even earlier this month on December 12, on Human Rights Day, numerous protestors gathered at Jantar Mantar to call for the release of all political prisoners. 

Graffiti on the walls of Jamia Millia Islamia, whitewashed. Photo: Vidyun Sabhaney.

While almost all graffiti and protest art at Shaheen Bagh were covered up by the Delhi police and administration soon after the sit-in was disbanded, the Fearless Collective’s mural Ishq Inquilab Mohabbat Zindabaad still remains, but more importantly, Shaheen Bagh’s strength still remains. While its economy struggles in the aftermath of many waves of violence and state-sponsored oppression, its community persists. As Umar Khalid said, the name “Shaheen Bagh” is synonymous with all fights for equality, across geography and form. It’s not whispered, or even shouted, but sung across the country and the world – a continuing message to all authoritarian forces that all hatred falls to the most tender and steadfast of caring resistances. 

Shaheen Bagh’s story stretches far before the ‘official’ story of the sit-in, and far past its afterlives. It survives in the bodies of all those who resist – not just as affect or sentiment, but as embodied and dutiful action. Those who experienced the sit-ins at Shaheen Bagh, who were part of it, are now forever changed by it, infused with a spirit of collectivisation, love, and resistance. 

Shaheen Bagh lives on.

Q Manivannan is a writer based between Scotland and India. Their ESRC-supported doctoral work at the University of St Andrews studies caring and grieving narrations of protests. They can be found @q.ueering on Instagram.

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