THE END OF SILENCE

Liberty, equality, sorority. With its collective self-representation by Muslim women, this movement is already a success.

- Ghazala Jamil

MANY Indians would know what I mean when I say that, by the time I reached the last month of 2019, I had exhausted the energy to keep up with the news of spreading communalism (and ‘news’ that spread communalism). The widely prevalent references to Nazi Germany and concentration camps to discuss the impending statelessness of millions of Indian Muslims was disconcerting on many counts. Honestly, it was devastating to have to come to terms that a vast majority of Indians were so full of hate that they did not care if a section of their compatriots were disenfranchised or condemned to an even worse fate. Or to have to acc ept that Indian Muslims were considered sitting ducks who could be dep orted en masse to detention camps without a whimper—as a famously told chronology would have it.

But that’s when the protests began. It began the day the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2019 was passed in the Rajya Sabha—first, Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI), a central university in Delhi, spoke up. Women students marched out of their hostels, braving the rain and biting cold. Three of them—Ayesha Renna, Ladeeda Farzana and Chanda Yadav—were iconised in a frame, their fists raised in slogans. It was this defiant image that first caught the attention of students and multitudes of citizens across the country. They wanted their voices to travel far, said Ayesha and Ladeeda. It did.

The police crackdown came soon. First, on a citizen’s march called by students. Then, inexplicably, mayhem inside the Jamia campus, in the library and mosque, with studying and praying students brutalised. The images were stark and shocking. We heard of worse from Aligarh Muslim University and elsewhere in UP. (Later, as visuals streamed out after an internet shutdown, the police action there recalled the wanton terror of private militia—‘ghar mein ghus kar marenge’ was no longer an empty threat.)