Shaheen Bagh and the Politics of Protest in the Anti-CAA Movement in India

Abstract

This article attempts to understand the pathways and politics of resistance within the anti-CAA/NRC (Citizenship Amendment Act/National Register of Citizenship) protests in India. Led and organised by Muslim women, the activists living in the locality of Shaheen Bagh emerged as a powerful symbol of resistance against, and reimagination of, hegemonic notions of nationalism, secularism, citizenship, and belonging in contemporary India. By exploring the resistance seen in Shaheen Bagh as a case study, our analysis tries to understand the ways in which the protest was a reflection of emergent solidarity, engendered in part by the communalisation of everyday life in India and the rise of Hindu majoritarianism. We contend that the actions in Shaheen Bagh should be seen as symbolising an organic resistance movement located at the intersection of gender and religion. This research aims to raise the following questions: How did the activists from Shaheen Bagh navigate its potential as a gender-based protest movement while framing a political opposition to CAA/NRC? How does the idea of Shaheen Bagh offer us new vocabularies of thinking about alternative democratic futures through the prism of prefigurative politics? This article suggests we need to resist a linear or coherent reading of the protest and instead attend to its fragmentary, contested, and contradictory forms.