ABSTRACT

Inhabiting a space between the authorial, the intentional and the experiential, the authors write this piece to engage with Shaheen Bagh through the lens of democracy and citizenship. Shaheen Bagh, from late 2019 to early 2020 captured the world's headlines as a steadfast 24-hour sit-in by Muslim women on a major Delhi–Noida expressway in the southern parts of Delhi, against a tripartite population policy, the Citizenship Amendment Act, National Register of Citizens and National Population Register. The place of dialogue within academic publishing is marginal, and at best elicits methodological questions. Women have always resisted power and control; they have fought the smaller battles at home. But in Shaheen Bagh women from all classes and creeds occupied streets once considered unsafe and their thunderous peaceful presence and their transversal solidarities bolstered the movement against exclusion and marginalization of groups of people based on their religious faith.