Keep Hatred Aside, Promote Peace and Love: Shaheen Bagh’s Bilkis Dadi

PRESS STATEMENT – II SEPTEMBER 29, 2020
“This movement was about mohabbat (love) and barabari (equality).”
“Why are our young people being put in jail because of it? This is their time to study and learn.” “Government has so much to do for the future of India –for farmers, for hunger.
Those should be their concerns, and those are my concerns too”
“If we do not come out of our houses, how will government know our concerns”
SAID BILKIS BI, ONE OF THE DADIS OF SHAHEEN BAGH AT A PRESS CONFERENCE IN DELHI TODAY
Felicitating Shaheen Bagh and Bilkis Dadi – now global symbols of peaceful resistance – women today demanded that Delhi Police stop maliciously targeting all equal citizenship protestors for the Delhi riots. At a packed, though fully Covid compliant Press Conference in Delhi today, the women of Delhi, as citizens, individuals and members of women’s groups, felicitated Bilkis, one of the ‘Dadis’ of Shaheen Bagh, listed among the 100 most influential people of 2020 by Time Magazine. Each of the speakers at the event said that Bilkis and the Equal Citizenship Movement that started at Shaheen Bagh, have become powerful global symbols of peaceful resistance.
As photographers lined up in front of the podium, Bilkis Bi was gifted a Bamboo Plant and a poster designed with her own image, with the words – Shaheen Bagh ki Bilkis Dadi Ko Dilli Ki Auraton Ka Salaam by Dr. Syeda Hameed, former member Planning Commission, Annie Raja, NFIW, Professor Poonam Batra, Journalist Bhasha Singh, filmmaker and women’s rights activist Vani Subramanian and Vertika Mani of the PUCL.

In her opening remarks Vani Subramanian, said, “the event today is because this was our shared struggle. And women across India continue to be inspired by Bilkis Dadi and Shaheen Bagh.” She also said that Bilkis should have been honoured by her government, and felicitated by corporate houses too.
Dr. Syeda Hameed said, that “the history of the freedom struggle shows that Muslim women are not the way they are constantly projected. They have independent minds and are capable of leadership, and that is what Shaheen Bagh exemplified.” Annie Raja of the NFIW while proudly acknowledge Bilkis Dadi, as her compatriot, expressed her outrage at Delhi Police’s malicious investigation that she said, “has twisted our peaceful movement for Equal Citizenship, against the CAA-NRC into some sinister conspiracy to cause the terrible Delhi riots.” She said, “the women of India would fight against this attempt to criminalize our movement, against this projection and against the CAA-NRC.”

Journalist Bhasha Singh, who said she had travelled the length and breadth of India during the equal citizenship movement, said, ‘this was not a struggle about Muslims alone. I have gone to so many protests in India, and this struggle was across religions, classes, generations and regions. Something resonated in the soul of India, and women sat on our streets to be heard, and be visible as equal citizens. This is what women’s empowerment is about.” Patriarchy cannot accept this reality, she added, so they are criminalizing it.” Professor Poonam Batra, from Delhi University had visited Shaheen Bagh as part of a team to understand it from the perspective of children, after an anonymous complaint made to NCPCR claimed that children were not safe at Shaheen Bagh. She said, “I have not seen a space in a movement that was more safe, more inspiring and more educational for the children. It was everything that education should be” Vertika Mani from PUCL, added that she had learnt so much from Shaheen Bagh.
The woman of the hour, and the woman of the movement, 82 year old Bilkis Bi said “This movement was about mohabbat (love) and barabari (equality).” “Why” she asked, “are our young people being put in jail because of it? This is their time to study and learn.” She also said, “This was not a battle I fought alone, it was a shared struggle, and it continues to be shared.” Bilkis Bi said, “There is so much

for the government to do – for the future of our country, for the farmers, to fight hunger. If we do not come out of our houses, how will government know our concerns. Today Covid is the bigger disease. When that is overcome, then the disease of the CAA-NRC must be combatted. The struggle for equal citizenship will continue.”
Organised by: Saheli, PUCL, NFIW and others. Contact numbers: 9891128911, 9351562965, 9811099532