By Ziya Us Salam & Uzma Ausaf
When the anti-CAA protests hit Shaheen Bagh, it took most by surprise. Most residents of Delhi did not have an idea about the place. Many went to Google Maps to find its location. Aviral Anand summed up the larger society’s ignorance in Sabrang India thus:
As I get off the metro at the Jasola Vihar-Shaheen Bagh station, I am uncertain how to get to the Shaheen Bagh camp. I think there might be some signs from the metro station itself since the encampment had suddenly shot in the news. But none seemed apparent. So I look hopefully for a metro exit towards Shaheen Bagh, and sure enough, Gate number 3 leads in that direction. A further sign, ‘Follow foot overbridge to Shaheen Bagh,’ directs me thenceward. But from that distance I cannot spot any encampment. I am a little apprehensive.
Anand had to ask more than a couple of persons on the road to reach Shaheen Bagh, the epicentre of anti-CAA protests!
Those who knew the place well, they too were taken by surprise that Shaheen Bagh women had decided to leave the confines of their home to not only step out on the road to protest, but to actually sit at a public square, raise slogans against the new law, speak for the Constitution of the land even as they risked life and limb for it. The image of Shaheen Bagh women in the mind of the common man was one of a conservative section where women’s domestic responsibilities overshadowed any other potential they have may in their inner reservoirs. They were supposed to be those anonymous souls who would spend their life in the seclusion of home in the name of dignity. It was an erroneous belief, as was to be proved.
It was not entirely surprising to see the guts and gumption of the students of Jamia Millia Islamia; youth has its compulsion, students their fearlessness. A photograph of some Jamia girls looking the policemen in the eye, even as they covered a man to protect him from the blows of the policemen, left many in awe of the youngsters. It is, however, the determination and fortitude exhibited by women of Shaheen Bagh, located barely a couple of kilometres from the border of Noida in Uttar Pradesh, that not only pleasantly surprised the residents of Delhi, but gave a fillip to the campaign against CAA like none other. It was an entirely unexpected though absolutely welcome comfort for the people out on the streets of India against the discriminatory law.
It set our political scientists and sociologists thinking too. Seasoned sociologist Prof. Avijit Pathak of JNU visited the place as much to raise his voice alongside the protestors as to find out for himself about the ‘phenomenon’ that Shaheen Bagh had become within a couple of weeks of the women hitting the road. He came back to narrate, ‘I read about Shaheen Bagh; I saw videos; heard commentaries; and students and friends talked about it. But then, I visited the site, saw the phenomenon, felt it, and possibly experienced the ecstasy of the confluence of human souls for a higher cause. For me, the experience was amazing.’ So amazing that he discovered ‘the power of human possibilities. If inspired and motivated, each of us, irrespective of the socio-economic background, can do wonders.’ And Shaheen Bagh women, supposedly from the conservative section of an otherwise conservative minority, did exactly that!
Not too different was the understanding of Prof. Mohammed Talib, who once stayed barely a couple of kilometres from Shaheen Bagh when he taught sociology at Jamia Millia Islamia. Now teaching at Oxford, he related,
‘Shaheen Bagh has emerged as a powerful symbol from the wide urban sprawl centred around Okhla and Jamia Millia Islamia. Why Shaheen Bagh is a symbol of protest and hope? This is to be seen in the backdrop of the wider context of Muslim urban living where responsible people in the government holding negative prejudices addressed the area and its people in personal terms, largely with negative connotations. Shaheen Bagh addressed in terms of imagined traits of a community, with distinct dress and food habits. Shaheen Bagh was partly born in the way it was defined by dominant Hindutva sentiment looking for its ideological fodder against a community in a given area.’
But when the women sat on a long protest, it demolished many a stereotype about the area. Shaheen Bagh soon became what Prof. Talib called ‘a platform rather than a de-limited area which articulated disgust people expressed against the wanton manner in which most innocentsection of the population, its youth and students were targeted violently without accountability or legal restraint.’ And Shaheen Bagh, not entirely affluent—the colony has stretches of lofty houses with fancy gates, guards, and so on, just as it has stretches with the dwellings of the poor—found it within itself to organise the protest. It had little to do with its history, much to do with its sociology, the inter-personal relations of its residents. The colony had come up on tracts of agricultural land a little more than thirty years ago. Its founder was Ansarullah, who came to Delhi as a young man from Rampur in pursuit of higher education at Jamia. Later, he got into real estate. Along with his family, Ansarullah bought eighty bighas of land in Jasola village. He happened to be a lover of the works of illustrious Urdu poet Muhammad Iqbal.In one of his nazms in 1935, ‘Sitaron se aage jahan aur bhi hain’, Iqbal said, ‘Tu shaheen hai, parwaz hai kaam tera, tere samne aasman aur bhi hain’. Shaheen, or falcon, was a symbol of freedom for Iqbal. It struck a chord with Ansarullah. And thus, the colony came to be called Shaheen Bagh; though for easier familiarity, it was also called Abul Fazal Enclave-II. Abul Fazal Enclave is literally next door. Incidentally, Laurent Gayer and Christophe Jaffrelot analysed the foundation of the colony in Muslims in Indian Cities: Trajectories of Marginalisation, where Gayer wrote in an essay:
AFE (Abul Fazl Enclave) is well defined, bounded as it is by the old Agra Canal (presently a nallah) in the west, by the west bank of the Yamuna in the east and by two roads (that from the junction of Okhla Head in the north and that from Kalindi Kunj to Sarita Vihar in the south). The population of this locality is almost exclusively Muslim, with the exception of a small Hindu-dominated pocket known as Nai Basti (new settlement), at the northwest extremity of the neighbourhood, of which AFE was originally an extension. This locality is divided into two parts: Abul Fazl I, the abode of middle-class and upper-class Muslims, and Abul Fazl-II (also known as Shaheen Bagh), which has a higher density of population and a larger concentration of lower-middle-class Muslims, although it is undergoing a rapid process of gentrification.
This was in 2012. Today, Shaheen Bagh has progressed to a peaceful coexistence where the affluent and the poor often live cheek-by-jowl. It is not uncommon to find an upper-middle-class family and its retinue of servants, drivers, maids and cleaners living down the same road. Then, there are small traders and businessmen hailing from towns of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar who would have come here with almost zero capital, but scaled their way up. For them, Shaheen Bagh, while opening a window of opportunity in the national capital, also provides a taste of home: similar food, familiar people, mosques, etc. It brings about a certain degree of social equality and compassion not found in very many other places. The fact that men stand together while praying in a mosque helps. Equally, women gather for religious congregations across the class barriers.
That at the protest site one often found the owner of the house and her maid sitting at the same place was not an aberration. It stemmed from mutual respect and appreciation. There was easy acceptance of the others. Both the women, from different spectrums of society, were used to each other’s presence in life.
As Prof. Talib put it:
‘It is true that Shaheen Bagh is not an affluent area of Delhi yet it could spare its time and material support for organising protest. This may seem ironical on the face of it. The reality is that the majority of residents around Shaheen Bagh belonging mostly to informal sector of society and economy have the required “surplus” borne out of shared experiences of collective life which is not entirely exhausted by the wider productive system. Sociologically speaking, humanity needs a threshold of relative deprivation to produce the extra sociality that is usually missing in areas where the majority may be characterised by high achievers. Perforce, individuals, groups, and institutions heavily integrated in the serious productive frame of society are also depleted of creative resources and alternative visions of humanity required to foster active citizenry. Communities who share among themselves symbolic goods tend to surprise those who observe them from a distance as to what keeps them engaged in a given place and time. The dominant prejudicial environment against the minorities, especially the Muslims has produced enclaves of mutual help and protection to deal with the perceived “danger” which the aggressive negative stereotyping in the wider society produces.’
The brave women of Shaheen Bagh demolished many a negative stereotype.
These excerpts are from 'Shaheen Bagh: From a Protest to a Movement' written by Ziya Us Salam and Uzam Ausaf and published by Bloomsbury in 2020.
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