The Other's Stories

A new generation of Muslim filmmakers is telling their stories through cinema

- Apeksha Priyadarshini

IT’S 5 AM. At a tiny tea stall near the police barricades encircling the Shaheen Bagh protest site, a woman wrapped in a shawl is serving tea. “How much loss have you incurred up until now?” Nausheen Khan, a filmmaker, asks her. “Around a lakh…maybe more,” she says, and adds after a considered pause: “It doesn’t matter. Even if these protests go on for four months, I will keep my shop shut.” When Khan asks: “Why are you so committed to this movement?” the woman replies: “We are Indian, that’s why! Why would we leave when we belong here?”

This conversation between Khan and the woman was filmed sometime between December 2019 and March 2020 when women, mainly Muslim, led a peaceful sit-in protest at Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh in response to the passage of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act by Parliament on December 11, 2019. Four days later, police action at Jamia Millia Islamia university shook students, including Khan, now 31, an alumna of Jamia’s AJK Mass Communication Research Centre.