by Ajanta Dutt

A year ago, a huge chunk of history was made–and it happened very fast. Years hence when people ask us where we were when it happened, we should be able to say–at Jamia Millia Islamia and Shaheen Bagh. The turn of the decade in a chilled Delhi December covered by the fog will perhaps be recorded as the winter of protest.

When we went into Jamia that Saturday afternoon, massive pictures adorning the left walls of the University buildings led us to the protest site, the enclosure for “We The People.” There was an artist still at work perched on a semi-high ladder, wearing her hijab in muted cream, painting a life-sized figure in bright colours, issuing a slogan. The traffic moved slowly on the other side of the road, crawling past the protestors and audience who sat grouped together between the schools of Social Sciences and History. In the distance stood the library where uncalled for police brutality and vandalism had occurred on that fateful night of December 15, 2019. Smaller posters lined the gates and walls in a further outburst of creativity, intellectual wit, and phrases of dissent. The artists and students were milling around everywhere watched wearily by the police, but there was a sense of decorum and calm that hung over the University road. Visitors were told that the street artists could paint us our favoured quotations on a poster which we could then carry into the enclosure. I was especially moved to see an announcement for a street play called Jamiawallah Bagh, and another poster with a Shakespearen quotation tweaked deliberately: “Cry foul, And let loose the dogs of War.”

I was dressed all in black and could merge easily with the crowd, but I was also wearing a bindi! It was amazing to see the courtesy with which an elderly, bearded man wearing a skull-cap greeted us newcomers and called upon the young people to escort us towards the front of the enclosure where burkha-clad women sat in orderly rows. They were listening to young voices reciting poetry. I tried to return several welcoming smiles by touching my forehead in an awkward adaab. During a break, the firm voice of a student at the podium addressed more speakers awaiting their turn. Striking were her words that no one should speak on matters of caste, religion or gender…or any topic which could hurt the sentiments of anyone gathered there. Indeed a responsible student movement had begun, led by youngsters, especially college-going girls who were dignified, sensitive, and aware of their surroundings and the circumstances.

We heard a lot of poetry that afternoon in Jamia, most of them written by the student-poets who came up and recited with passion and fervour. It was impossible to remain unmoved when they asked not to be labelled as terrorists because of name or attire; they pleaded for their worth to be assessed instead. I wish I had memorized the chaste Hindi verses recited by a young boy who concluded with these heartfelt lines: “Don’t identify me as a Mussalman/ For I want to be first an Indian; /And when my kafan is finally laid to rest, Let each corner of the casket be named Hindustan.”

This was followed by the rousing cheer of Jai Hind. In that one afternoon, I heard the chant of Jai Hind more times than I can remember and it spoke volumes towards uniting that mixed audience of students, locals, bystanders and visitors.

There were a few donation boxes randomly placed–near the stall which had tea for us all, and another in the artists’ corner. A girl wearing a black, flowery hijab made the tea and her classmates served us. A little child nearby neatly took off her sandals and placed them on the road before curling up on the mat to watch her mother paint a new poster. One student asked us to write postcards to the Chief Justice of India, pleading the cause of the Jamia fraternity. No one asked for money; in fact, they denied it saying we could instead donate tea, sugar, and stationary if possible. Yet more students were chatting comfortably in their pavement library or simply reading quietly next to a display of books by Gandhi, Nehru, Ambedkar, Tagore, Shakespeare, Shaw, Marx, Toni Morrison…and so many others.

As we moved down the road to the e-rickshaws, I wondered whether the drivers would haggle typically about the fare and when they would be ready to take us to Shaheen Bagh. The fee was a very moderate sum of Rs. 10/- and the man assured me that he didn’t have to wait for the seats to fill up.  He proceeded smoothly, picking up passengers along the way. We slowed down at a crossing because a straggly procession of women was moving into our lane that was now meandering towards Shaheen Bagh. The leader called out “single line, single line–give way to traffic” and our passage was easily arranged. A mass of tricolours was waving in the air and the marchers sang a song of azadi as they went.

When we entered the more crowded area of Shaheen Bagh, the smells of biryani and kababs floated in the air. At one of the numerous identical restaurants lining both sides of the lane, a friend of mine had brought her daughters for a snack just a few days earlier. When she asked for the bill, the owner resolutely refused payment for the girls because he said he had fed “his betis.” Some open tables were piled high with jackets, sweaters, trousers… and lots of flags. In fact, the last stall did brisk business because parents were busy buying their little ones the Indian tricolor in varied sizes. The newly transformed highway, echoed with the voice of an unseen woman asking tearfully over the microphone, “What papers of identity can I show you when I have no identity of my own? For a while I belonged to my father and then he gave me away in marriage; so I now belong to my husband. What can I prove except that I am a daughter, wife and mother?”

As we approached the enclosure of the Shaheen Bagh protestors, we once again received absolute politeness and courtesy reminiscent of the khandani times of pre-modern Delhi. Muslim men wanted to escort us to the front where we could sit on the mats. Alternatively, they made room for us to stand at the side where we had a clear view of the stage. Women sat in disciplined rows wrapped in burkhas or hijab, protecting their children against the biting wind. During the next hour, younger and older women came to join them, but there was no jostling or pushing, groping or grabbing. They moved quietly through the crowds of people standing all around. The men seemed to have formed a security chain around this roped enclosure for women, and there was even a play-area where the young ones who were not sleeping in the laps of their mothers were playing happily. A lady standing near asked me where I had come from, and she offered me guava when I met her again near a fruit seller, later that afternoon.

Fiery speeches made mostly by women carried clearly over the air as we moved towards the mini India Gate, stepping over shadowy pictures on the road-surface that had been recently doused by rain. As we continued towards the over-bridge, more posters beckoned us–some were works of art, some just were sincere pleas. One pink poster said, “Your choice, Dharna ya Darna?” This place had become a veritable open-air museum where a somber carnival was in motion. Pictures of Ambedkar and Subhas Chandra Bose stared down at us, as though they too questioned what we felt about the Constitution. Ahead was the famed map of India turned around, silently asserting “No CAA, No NRC, No NPR.” This map facing the opposite direction symbolically proved that the sequestered life of a nation had suddenly taken a 180-degree swing, accompanied by a poignant break-down of trust and faith.

The afternoon sun was setting over this map of India, lighting up a basket of onions placed just below, reminding bystanders that their cost had surged beyond Rs. 100 a kilo. The last words we heard as we left the protest site was again a woman asserting that she had not wanted to leave the shelter of her home, but she had been forced to come out onto the public road. Her voice was full of passionate warning when she claimed, “…And when a woman is compelled to come outside, she will never return home until she has fulfilled what she has ventured forth to achieve—kaam haasil karke hi jayenge.” Her message rang out…simple, clear, ominous—and extremely courageous. It made me feel almost guilty to belong to a safe community, a safe religion, a safe status in life from where I could only be a hasty spectator at this site of dissent.

Jai Shree Ram we say, but do we wonder about the significant tenet of Ramrajya? Ram’s uniqueness lay in listening to his subjects, even if the voice of dissent was that of the lowliest subject. The Jamia students and the women of Shaheen Bagh were teaching us that their leadership and their quest for truth came from complete dedication to a cause–not only for themselves, but for their family and others around them. Their dignity and courage in conducting a Gandhian, non-violent protest demonstrated what it means to connect as Indians, and what it means to be citizens of a collective India. Many of these women had come out in protest—encouraged perhaps for the first time by their husbands and in-laws. Many of the men-folk were staying at home, looking after the children and the elderly. The laws of family and the laws of society—indeed, the patriarchal equation of a Muslim home was changing. Some children who had come with their mothers and grandmothers were also chanting the song of Azadi, freedom for humanity.

These women had given a platform to musicians and theatre artists, academicians and activists speaking the language of togetherness. Langars had been organized by complete outsiders; even netas had shared their stage. The women were told not to march to a minister’s house without an appointment; they had listened to reason and turned back. They had waited long days and then far into the night through the bitter-cold days that followed for someone to come to them, someone who would listen, answer their questions, and explain. The city existed on tenterhooks as the new decade began when an assembly election took place– before the city burned and a virus went on a rampage.

The decade had turned–showing that women protest differently from men; students protest differently from their elders. Women and students do not use guns and sticks; they use words, songs and conversation instead. Their call for freedom spreads while rumours divide communities and the nation. Fear was not in the hearts of those protestors—and neither is it in the hearts of hundreds who are guarding the entrance to Delhi today–in another chilling winter, another cascading protest.

About the Authors:

Dr. Ajanta Dutt is an Assistant professor of English at Deshbandhu College, Delhi University and has a doctorate from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, USA. She writes on Indian English literature and Shakespearean Studies. She has also translated songs from Tagore’s writings and her book on The Home and the World was a text in Delhi University for many years.

Photo Credit: Ahona Chatterjee