Do Shaheen Bagh protesters run risk of waning interest or should stay put for CAA endgame?

The Shaheen Bagh protest against the Narendra Modi government’s Citizenship Amendment Act has entered its third month. Supreme Court-appointed mediators met protesters this week and may meet them again at a different location. The Supreme Court also upheld the right to protest, but expressed concern over the sit-in causing public inconvenience.

ThePrint asks: Do Shaheen Bagh protesters run risk of waning interest or should stay put for CAA endgame?

Shaheen Bagh is now the name of an aspiration for equality, which can never be crushed or defamed

Umar Khalid
Activist and Former JNU student 

The protest at Shaheen Bagh is not beholden to media. A lot of people did not even pay attention to Shaheen Bagh for the first 15-20 days. But since this movement began in mid-December 2019, the women of Shaheen Bagh are convinced about what they are doing. They know that what they are fighting against – the infamous ‘chronology’ – impacts their very existence.

Despite being repeatedly defamed by a section of the media and BJP leaders leading to threats of violence, especially after the shooting episode, the Shaheen Bagh protesters have brazen it out. I strongly believe that they should continue and they will.

The inconvenience caused by the protests is exaggerated. Delhi Police has barricaded more roads than those blocked by protesters. Every protest causes some inconvenience. When people came out on the streets to fight for our independence, it must have caused some inconvenience too. Does that mean M.K. Gandhi and other freedom fighters were wrong in giving a call for civil disobedience? And what about the inconvenience faced by the protesters? They have been out on the streets the entire winter. Don’t their lives matter?

The protesters should fight till the end because now there’s not just one Shaheen Bagh in India; there are hundreds more in different cities. Shaheen Bagh is now the name of an aspiration for equality, which can never be crushed or defamed.

Modi govt can withstand Shaheen Bagh for as long as it goes. Only the political consequences are debatable

Shankar Sharan
Hindi columnist & professor of political science, NCERT

Shaheen Bagh protesters have already won to a great extent. They have become an international focal point for an unjust cause, shown the ruling executive and judicial class as unfit at engaging the minority community, and bolstered the confidence of Muslim leaders. Thus, they have added a new page in India’s Muslim politics.

How it moves forward is an open question. It’s a tug of war-like situation with a lot of uncertainty because the Narendra Modi government behaves erratically on Hindu-Muslim issues. Moreover, Muslim activists also act very differently, but they have an identical objective. So, any miscalculation could bring opposite results. In such circumstances, predicting the endgame is hazardous.

As things stand, the Modi government can withstand the protest for as long as it goes because the CAA is constitutional. Only the political consequences of such a protracted protest are debatable. The anti-CAA protest created more troubles for the common people than to the intended political group. The leaders may benefit in the long run.
The same cannot be said about Hindu-Muslim relations, something the protesters and their handlers hardly care about.

Modi govt’s resolve to not dilute the law has certainly broken the hopes and zeal of Shaheen Bagh protesters

Sangit Ragi
Professor of Political Science, Delhi University

The protesters claim that they want to save the Constitution by protesting against the discriminatory nature of the Citizenship Amendment Act. But it is still predominantly a Muslim protest intended to secure the stay of Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Afghan infiltrators who have changed the religious demographic profiles of several Indian states.

The anti-CAA protesters fear that the identification of the Muslim infiltrators and their subsequent deregistration from the national electoral roll would reduce the leverage of the Muslim population in these states. Protesters used the rumours of denationalisation of Muslims to bring people on to the streets.

The place, people, slogans and presence of Left-leaning organisations at Shaheen Bagh speak loud and clear that the protests are manufactured at best to provoke Muslim masses against the Modi government. They had thought that the chain of protests would force the government to blink. But they failed to anticipate the resolve of the Modi government, which made it clear that it won’t dilute the law under any pressure and refused to approach the protesters.

This has certainly broken the initial hopes and zeal of the protesters, which is evident from the dwindling presence of people at protest sites. The slogans have also dissuaded political parties from coming out in full support of the protesters.

By Unnati Sharma, journalist at ThePrint

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