Jubilee Post News & Views
Shabahat Husain Vijetha
LUCKNOW: Women across the country have taken up the front against the CAA and NRC. The process of protest started from Shaheen Bagh in Delhi has spread to all the states of the country. Inspite of the severe cold, fog and rain, the women along with their innocent children have gathered on the streets demanding justice.
The government says that there is no injustice to any Indian, the government is only campaigning against the intruders. The women sitting in demonstration were first described as confused, then the pawn of political parties, then were accused that the drama of demonstration was getting just five to five hundred rupees. Even after doing all this, when there was no success in ending the sit-in, police started using lathis. In the freezing winter, women’s blankets were snatched away. But even that did not work, so a new rumor were spread that slogans were being raised in support of Pakistan at the demonstration on Clock Tower.
To protest is the basic right of democracy, it is the identity of a democracy. Democracy is killed when the voice of a common man is silenced by using lathies. The dictatorial game being played by the police from Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh to Clock Tower in Lucknow is not only shameful but it is also a big joke played on woman in India. Leaving aside the common Hindustani, even the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen said in Bengaluru that the CAA is a violation of constitutional laws. He said that there would have been unity in the opposition and only if they had been together, demonstrations would have become easier. The government is holding rallies to convince people about the CAA. The Prime Minister and the Home Minister are talking about the CAA at election rallies, but when everything is right, the why does the government have not reached among the protesters. If women are confused then their confusion can be removed by going among them, but instead we see policemen walking with sticks among them.
In addition to the Shaheen Bagh in Delhi, Sabzi Bagh in Patna, Deoband of Saharanpur, Allahabad, Aligarh and Lucknow,where thousands of women are protesting day and night in all these cities of the country including Samastipur in Bihar. The most special thing about this demonstration is that everyone has a tricolor in their hands, people can be seen holding pictures of Baba Saheb Bhimrao Ambedkar who wrote the Constitution, along with slogans like ‘Hindus and Muslims have been together’ were seen that jogs our memory. ‘Inklab Zindabad’ was the punchline for everything but in the protest, but there was no one that said ‘Murdabad’ that’s for sure, yet there are people who want to end these protests in a bad way.
The people of India have suffered the burden of inflation, tolerated demonetisation, bought expensive petrol, saw days when the price of Onions went 1.5 hundred rupees, kept silence on the triple talaq bill, nobody said anything on the issue of section 370, jumped the Ayodhya verdict while the Supreme Court gave the land to Ramlala, saying that no evidence was found to build the mosque by breaking the temple, yet EVERYONE remained silent so that the condition of the country could be better but relation started to simmer in the country as the government started linking NRC to CAA and soon the country reached its boiling point. Everyone loves when a government runs smoothly.
The Narendra Modi’s government ran smoothly for five years, and they won themselves a bigger majority than before. But, when the government tried to set fire to the Ganga-Jamuni Tehzeeb by planting seeds of discord between Hindus and Muslims, then even the women came out of their houses. If the relationship between NRC and CAA has created an atmosphere of fear is not visible to you, then one should take a look at the woman protester who has been sitting in at Shaheen Bagh, along with her newborn baby of just 20 days old. She says that when our house is in danger, when our lives are in danger, what should we do to save a 20-day-old child.
The country in which we were born, who gave us bread, gave us clothes, gave us a roof to hide our heads, through which we loved, we should prove that love. After all, how do we prove that this is our home and this is our country. This sea of people taking on the streets is just half the population who has now begin to rise, in fact it has emerged out of such fear that they might be losing their home.
People are upset that the government we have chosen is asking for proof of our belonging to this country. People are worried about where should we find the birth certificate of our parents, grandparents and their grandparents?
The country is already smelling like smoke from inflation, unemployment and issues like building temples over mosques but this one has left all that behind like wind passes through a chimney and it has now stated a fire. We will gulp down the accusations of taking money to sit in protests we will bare the wounds of stick on our body even in this freezing weather, you can snatch away our blankets too but we will not mind. Every wound or pain given look small to us but don’t take us away from our motherland.
The police is bent on coercion and have their sticks lifted in the air in the name of Section 144. The woman standing fearless in front of the sticks shouts that when we started the demostration, there was no Section 144. They asks whether there can be a government rally in Section 144? There are many questions that are floating in the air.
A small girl at the demonstration was holding a play-card that said:
Zinda rahe to watan Mubarak;
Nahi rahe to kafan Mubarak.
(The writer is a senior journalist, his personal views are in the article)
