Two years have rolled by since a handful of Muslim women from the working class nieghbourhood of Shaheen Bagh sat down on one of Delhi’s busiest highways to protest against the CAA and NRC
Pic courtesy/Prarthna Singh
THE portraits of the women protesters in photographer Prarthna Singh’s photo book, Har Shaam Shaheen Bagh, remain with us long after we’ve tucked the kora cotton-wrapped journal away. Some of them gaze in the distance, most smile with their eyes, others have a shy curl in their lips, but almost all of them look us straight in the eye — as if to say, “We’re here. And we’ll remember.”
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Two tumultuous years have rolled by since a handful of Muslim women from the working class neighborhood of Shaheen Bagh sat down on one of Delhi’s busiest highways to protest against the CAA and NRC, and the police brutality on students, many of them their kids. The peaceful sit-in grew to include hundreds of women, who camped in one of the coldest Delhi winters for 100 days and inspired protests across India. But today, all that remains is the memory; all signs of protest — their shawl-woven tents, the mini library that had sprung up, the art and graffiti that plastered the nearby walls — have been whitewashed, as if nothing happened. And if “the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting” as Czech writer Milan Kundera wrote, then Singh’s photo book is the living, breathing diary that captures the resilient spirit of the awe-inspiring women of Shaheen Bagh for posterity.
Designed like an intimate journal by Bombay Duck Designs, the book, she tells us, is the iteration of a diary she maintained then. The uneven pages, as if lovingly cut out by hand, pack in photographs of the women, often layered over intricate designs of the dupattas and shawls that held the ever-expanding tents together, doodles by kids, songs and poems by Amir Aziz, Sabika Abbas Naqvi and Ankur Tewari, letters, a hand-drawn map, and other memorabilia. It’s a document of memory, yes, but it brings us closer to the women we saw on TV, the ones who put their lives on hold for 100 days, who are now being forgotten. And in that solidarity, it urges us to remember, in love and rage.
Title
Har Shaam Shaheen Bagh
Artist Prarthna Singh
Genre Photo book
Designer Bombay Duck Designs
Cost Rs 3,300
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