Image: Screengrab
First Shaheen Bagh, then Khargone and now Khambat. Muslim women in various parts of the country have been showing great courage, asserting their fundamental rights to claim what is rightfully theirs.
A viral video on Facebook dated May 11, 2022, brings to light the number of women gathered in Khambat, Gujarat to raise their voice against the continued oppression of the community, and to show how the media has been ignoring their plight repeatedly. In the video, a woman can be seen seeking help and some encouragement in this endeavour.
Similar videos and photos circulating on social media revealed how Muslim women marched down the streets in Khargone, Madhya Pradesh condemning the administration for their continued attacks against the community. Women have condemned the police for being mute spectators during the recent violence during Ram Navami.
In an utter disregard for due process of law, statutory and constitutional protection, the administration came down heavily upon the Muslim minority in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Delhi by making selective arrests and using bulldozers to destroy structures owned by people allegedly involved in communal clashes during Ram Navami and Hanuman Jayanti.
According to The Wire, the local police have so far arrested 182 people in Madhya Pradesh where shockingly, Muslims formed the bulk of the arrested. Shops and houses were devastated when miscreants in the religious procession went rogue. There were reports of arson, riots, stone-pelting during the communal violence in various parts of the country.
Here is a heart wrenching visual from Jahangirpuri where the demolition drive continued despite the Supreme Court’s orders imposing status quo on such demolitions.
Woman weeps & begs before the authorities as a JCB demolishes part of her house/shop in Delhi’s #Jahangirpuri. Citing ‘illegal construction’, MCD demolished several structures days after communal clases on 16 April. The SC has ordered to maintain status quo @TheQuint @QuintHindi pic.twitter.com/wfWLatwacx
— Eshwar (@hey_eshwar) April 20, 2022
Sick and tired of the continued administrative oppression, Muslim women finally marched down the streets to protest the atrocities committed against their community as they face repeated instances of Hate Speech, Mob Lynching and other kinds of exclusion and violence.
Last month, a man identified as Bajrang Muni Das, a priest or ‘mahant’ of Maharshi Shri Lakshman Das Udasin Ashram in Khairabad town of Uttar Pradesh, issued a criminal threat to rape Muslim women. He spoke into a microphone connected to loudspeaker from a vehicle, parked outside a mosque in Sitapur on April 2, saying, “If you tease a single [Hindu] girl, I will abduct your daughters and daughters-in-law from your house, and rape them in public.”
Ironically, the hijab clad women are seen to be standing up against the same oppressive regime who often claims the Muslim women to be oppressed by their own religion. But one cannot forget that it was Muslim women who were at the forefront of the peaceful protest at Shaheen Bagh where they drew attention of national and international media to the discriminatory Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in later 2019, early 2020. Even then it was housewives and even grandmothers who stood up to the regime with their sit-in protests, encouraging similar sit-in protests in other cities as well.
Related:
Khargone’s Muslims rise against police atrocities
Bulldozing the law and homes of the Muslim marginalized: Gujarat
‘An eye for an eye’- new law of the land for the Muslim minorities in India?