Women reclaiming spaces? Ethnography of an ongoing social movement in Shaheen Bagh, Delhi

THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED

CANCELLED

Zarin Ahmad

Abstract

Shaheen Bagh, a hitherto unknown primarily Muslim-dominated neighbourhood in South-east Delhi has in recent months hit national and international headlines as a hallmark of women’s protest in India. The movement is a response to the Citizenship Amendment Act, (CAA), 2019 and the proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC) as well as the National Population Register (NPR) which the protestors consider as unconstitutional and discriminatory towards Muslims as well as other marginalised groups. While there have been widespread protests across India against the CAA-NRC-NPR, the movement in Shaheen Bagh is significant because it is led by Muslim women who are commonly considered to be without agency. Though it started as a very spontaneous reaction by local residents of Okhla locality, and parents of protesting students who were subjected to police violence in the neighbouring Jamia Millia Islamia University campus on 15 December, 2019, it has turned into a sustained movement which is much larger than its supporters and detractors had imagined.

While Shaheen Bagh features in plural media as having played host to a variety of celebrities and visitors from various states (like Sikh delegations from Punjab), something that no journalist has been able to ignore, the ‘dadis’ (grandmothers) of Shaheen Bagh have themselves catapulted to fame. This newly acquired celebrity status of Shaheen Bagh’s women cannot be divorced from the rigorous political education that these women across class, caste, age and regional divides have given themselves and seek from others in the protest zone. The local women protesters struggle to be able to articulate and agential in the face of demeaning hashtags such as Shaheen Bagh ki bikau aurtein (the sold or saleable women of Shaheen Bagh). The meme culture and the social media-driven attention paid to Shaheen Bagh also means that they have to grapple with local men who use the platform to further their own political future. Based on ethnographic fieldwork this presentation (i) locates the emergence of an organic social movement by women; (ii) documents testimonies of protestors; and (iii) analyses the nuances and challenges to women’s resistance in India. During the course of this study, my own social position shifted from being a woman protestor to a researcher documenting a shared moment.

Biography

Zarin Ahmad is author of Delhi’s Meatscapes: Muslim Butchers in a Transforming Megacity (OUP, 2018). She is an affiliated research fellow at the Centre de Sciences Humaines (CSH), Delhi. Zarin is trained in Political Science and South Asian Studies at the University of Calcutta, and Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi; and works at the intersection of history, politics and urban anthropology.

Organiser: SOAS South Asia Institute

Contact email: ssai@soas.ac.uk

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