Female power fuelling protests

Anti-CAA protests are largely led by women, many of them stepping out and demonstrating for the first time. What explains this phenomenon?

The Shaheen Bagh sit-in in Delhi has garnered massive local and international attention for many reasons — prominent among them being that it is a ‘leaderless’ protest, imagined, led and sustained entirely by citizens, and spearheaded by women.

Shaheen Bagh has inspired similar women-led sit-ins across the country, including in Bengaluru, Prayagraj, Kanpur, Kolkata, Patna, and Gaya.

Singer-actor MD Pallavi, prominent among those who have protested at Town Hall, Bengaluru, says women are showing the way.

“There are people from all communities and classes—it’s a very diverse group stepping out on to the streets. I am overwhelmed at how peaceful the protests have been, considering these are some of the biggest protests one has ever seen,” she says.

Is there an underlying emotion connecting women from different parts of the country? “Yes, of course, there is anger. But there is also a certain grit in these women: we won’t step back this time,” she says.

Pallavi observes that Muslim women, who usually don’t hit the streets, were playing a big role in the protests this time. “And there are many women from other communities too,” she says.

Aamina Azhar, a First PUC student, poet and baker, says that the fight was for their future. “When our country is burning, we can at least say that we tried to save it, instead of sitting there and watching it burn. I am Muslim, but I was brought up to see everyone as the same and stay in harmony with others. I found the idea of diving the country on religious lines difficult to comprehend”, she says.

Her mother accompanies her to the protests. “She feels for the cause and inspires me to keep going. People say it is not safe for women to go out there, but my family has been supportive. It is a universal cause — it will affect all of us, so it is a cause we should all stand for,” says Aamina.

What are the implications for women sitting overnight, considering a baby recently lost its life in Shaheen Bagh because of the cold?

Pallavi says if the government does not want children to face extreme situations, it should “talk to the protesting women and address their demands.”

“Otherwise women will continue to spend the nights on the streets and they will bring their children with them; where else will they go?” she says.

Heartbroken about the death, she feels the hue and cry raised over the incident was disproportionate. “When was the last time we outraged when a labourer’s child died at a construction site? An infant in Assam died at a detention centre. Why didn’t we see this kind of anger then?” she asks.

‘When women protest, we are forced to take notice’

Harish Ramaswamy, political analyst and professor of political science, Karnatak University, Dharwad, says that the increased focus on women’s protests stems from societal norms and historical patterns.

“If a man is hit, society does not react very violently. Physical harm is seen as a part and parcel of a man’s life, across the world. Only when women come out and start fighting do people tend to think twice; because this country has bred certain values which forces you to respect women, you cannot treat them the same way you treat men.”

“When women were targeted in institutions like Jamia Milia and JNU, it became a huge issue. If the same thing had happened to only boys, perhaps that would just have been considered as a normal clash between two groups.”

Making it clear that he is not supporting any party and is instead interested in the discrepancies in society as an academicians, Harish explains his point with an example.

“When somebody comes and tells you they don’t like XYZ community, you take it as the usual conversation men make. But I have noticed that if the same point is made by a woman, people take note. And when I recount the observation later on, I will definitely tell the listener that ‘it is not just men who are saying this, even women feel this way’. Because we are used to thinking that women will not get into this arena of the public space. So when women take up these things, we believe that the matter is much more serious than what we see,” he says.

Sit-in protests gaining currency

While protests are not unheard of in a democracy, it is the very nature of the resistance that is new. Peaceful sit-in protests, unmindful of freezing weather or police brutality, are springing up in different parts of India and are the strongest reminder yet of the everlasting legacy of the Gandhian non-violent method of protest ‘satyagraha’.

Sit-ins (called dharnas) are effective because they are peaceful and yet have the capacity to disrupt normal life and business.

Dr Narendar Pani, professor, School of Social Sciences, National Institute of Advanced Studies, points out that there are two kinds of protests -- those of assertion and those of resistance. “Those who feel they are on the losing side of things resort to protests to resist it for as long as possible.”

He adds this is a more difficult way of protesting, since it is non-violent, more sustained and kept up over an extended period of time. “You resort to such protests when you feel you have no other option. This time, the core reason is a much more deeply felt fear. It is not a matter of disagreement, it is a matter of losing out on everything you are,” he says.

Trigger for protests

The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) has revived fears of a majoritarian state that seeks to overturn the Indian Constitution’s secular nature. It has led to intense, citizen-led demonstrations.

Harish Ramaswamy points out that one of the tipping points was that every person, educated and otherwise, was faced with an existential question. “Whether the person is a university professor or a labourer, he/she needed papers to prove that they were citizens of the country. We have always had to prove our identities — whether religious, social or political — but this was the first time that all of us were being asked to prove that we belong to this country.”

He added that the reactions to NRC and CAA caused the ruling party to make some corrections in their own understanding. The psychology which they carried from 2014 to 2019 — which had earlier led to events such as changing the names of the road, the right to choose one’s food — had not only caused disruption at the highest levels but also trickled down to violence in society. “As a result, when CAA came, the society, especially the youth, had picked up these lessons from the past because their future was at stake. And there was no arbitrator, like Gandhi, who could communicate and make people understand opposing view points,” he rues.