notes on the ongoing movement
the people of the subcontinent have raised their voices against the repressive forces that intend to establish the hindu rashtra. women in shaheen bagh, delhi, are holding an indefinite sit-in demonstration against the regressive citizenship laws the state has enacted in the past year, and this has spread to park circus maidan, kolkata, among others. the women leading these protests are largely muslim, and this is both significant and heartening.
what is less heartening is the fact that certain student movements, instead of offering their solidarity, seem to be intent on co-opting this mass mobilization by muslim women into their own, rather narrow, class interests. it is not that student movements are any less important, students stand at the forefront of the war against the nation state, however, the women who are organising are entirely capable of creating their own means and methods of resistance.
while students have been carrying out an endless number of rallies against the CAA/NPR/NRC, it was muslim women who began the sit in demonstrations. they were the ones who re-configured their bodies and the spaces they occupied against the fascist state. rallies are good for awareness raising, no doubt, but the diffused nexus of the neoliberal fascist state requires a re-signification of the body that resists fascism.
the movement at shaheen bagh exemplifies this form of re-signification. women in shaheen bagh, live, work, eat, and sleep on the premises and the state is intent on their unconditional removal. that is exactly why JNU was attacked at the same time as shaheen bagh. shifting the focus of state violence from the women of shaheen bagh to JNU was a strategic move by the nation state. violence on students by state machinery is easier to swallow than violence against women, in fact, the latter is written into the laws of the nation state. it is effectively rendered invisible.
we cannot afford to be swayed by these feeble attempts at drawing attention away from the issue. the issue at hand is that women, especially muslim women, are extremely vulnerable to the ideology of citizenship as it is being deployed by the BJP/RSS/VHP/ABVP. at this moment solidarity against the forces of hinduism is a weapon, one that must be deployed accurately. we have no room for errors at this moment. the students must learn to show solidarity, without assigning excess value to their own traditions of resistance.
this is because at the very heart of the oppression we seek liberation from are issues of class, caste, and sexual difference. and in this, students and women are united in their resistance. we must hold these unities in place as strategic. any differences can be dealt with when the threat of hinduism has been destroyed.
(these musings are largely based on observations at rallies and sit-ins in kolkata, i do not claim to know the situation in delhi, i have only read and heard about it. the condemnation of the attack on JNU should be implicit, but we must remember the attacks on AMU, and JMI as well; muslim universities whose movements have been sidelined due to their large muslim composition)
