The
Greatest Movement Since Independence But What’s Shaheen Bagh’s Future?
Saeed Naqvi
It would be unfair to compare the
Shaheen Bagh anti CAA, NPR, NRC movement with mass mobilization efforts leading
to independence. The movement has no Gandhi leading it. Its spontaneous expansion
across the length and breadth of the country and locations across the seas is
unprecedented.
As the movement completes its third
month in the next few days, a degree of restlessness is discernable among those
who have hovered on the margins and who are asking, sometimes in whispers,
“What next?” The quest for the “next” on the part of a limited group,
admittedly, gives a clue to their expectations. In their minds they had
probably set targets which have either been achieved or are unachievable.
Surely the target was not to enable AAP
to win in Delhi. Yes, the movement’s popularity across communities may well
have helped blunt the saffron in the air. In other words, the atmosphere the
movement generated helped the only party poised to defeat Hindutva.
By steering clear of all political
parties, the movement has placed itself unassailably on a pedestal. It is
clearing untraversed terrain. It may well have paved the way for a secularism
of common aspirations which the British found necessary to snuff out after
Hindus and Muslims had, in the words of Benjamin Disraeli, found a “common
interest and a common cause” during the 1857 uprising. In his address to the
House of Commons, Disraeli rebuked the administration in India. “Our Empire in
India was, indeed, founded upon the old principle of divide et Empira (divide
and rule)”. This “principle” had been lost sight of by the British in India
making it possible for the “rebels” to very nearly defeat the British. If Disraeli
were to be interpreted, the rebellion by Hindus and Muslims was the secularism
of common aspirations. The confused vision of secularism India’s founding
fathers accepted was profaned in electoral practice.
Shaheen Bagh and its affiliates, over a
hundred of them across the country, some of these bearing the name Shaheen
Bagh, has been a unique evolution. For the first time, Muslim women have defied
all the stereotypes which portrayed them as timid, homebound and subjugated.
They form the core of the protests everywhere, holding the national flag and
reciting the preamble to the constitution with expert ease and speaking to the
media with clarity and poise. University campuses are wholeheartedly in it.
The breakdown of a system of
uninstitutionalized apartheid or separate development of communities has been a
singular achievement of the movement. Communities which thought the worst of
each other in the absence of any interaction are now sharing the same shamiana,
chanting slogans for the protection of the constitution. No single event in
recent history has revved up a secularism of common purpose on this scale. When
I visited Shaheen Bagh earlier this week a regular langar, started by a group
of Sikhs from Punjab, had become permanent at the protest site. Goodness,
generosity, charity are infectious impulses. Muslim youth sweeping the site in
the shadow of Guru Nanak poster is the kind of “kar sewa” which is mandatory
for Sikhs at Gurudwaras. The media may not be deliriously ecstatic at the
composition but I found it symbolically transformational. That every Gurudwara
in Delhi opened its doors, including in the riot hit north east, harmonized
with the mood that Shaheen Bagh has set.
The core of the protest movement, the
women, have demonstrated extraordinary reserves of stamina. But equally on show
is the lack of commitment on the part of exactly the left-of-centre groups who
had initially boosted Shaheen Bagh by enthusiastic participation. Does it occur
to these groups that their dwindling presence will at some point begin to
dishearten the protesters?
Shaheen Bagh shunned political parties from
pitching their banners on the podium. The parties in response were mean in
their calculation: they saw no profit in strengthening a movement which
guaranteed them no returns. The quest for “returns” was a little puzzling on
the part of the parliamentary left. They have negligible presence in Delhi. The
cussedness on show is the mirror image of the CPM’s stance in West Bengal: “to
revive in the state we must target Mamata not the BJP.” Does not the BJP, in
its Amit Shah avatar, pose an existential threat to the nation? Or is that,
according to the politburo, dwarfed by the party’s desire to revive.
Left and progressive groups addressed a
rally at New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar last week against violence in North East
Delhi. It went largely unnoticed. Supposing each one of the star speakers had
taken time off on separate days to address the protesters at Shaheen Bagh, they
would have given heart to the women who have begun to look over their
shoulders, searching for the OB vans and the TV cameras which have left for
other assignments elsewhere.
Even with a movement of such benign
intent, AAP maintained a strict neutrality throughout the election campaign,
just in case the BJP amplified even notional sympathy for Shaheen Bagh as an
anti national association with “the little Pakistan”. “Tukre-tukre” or Pakistan
may not be considerations keeping progressive Hindus from participating in the
movement in states like UP, but it must be admitted that the protests are
increasingly Muslim driven, particularly in UP. It would be unreasonable to
expect T.N. Krishnan make en core appearances repeatedly on a movement which
will soon enter its fourth month. How long, one wonders, will the BJP wait
before resorting to brute police action. Will police action in Delhi and UP
snuff out the idea which has taken root everywhere?
An unexpected menace the protest faces
is Coronavirus which militates against groups huddled in one place. Protesters have
to ponder that one.
In reasonable times one could have
imagined Shaheen Bagh institutionalized as a permanent speaker’s corner,
focused on Constitutional practice, a variation on the corner in London’s Hyde Park
(and numerous locations across the globe) where even Karl Marx and George Orwell
once spoke.
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