From Delhi to Chennai, a million Shaheen Baghs. A copy of the Constitution in one hand, the tricolour in the other, Shaheen Bagh became a symbol of a vibrant democracy and secular pilgrimage. But who were these women who braved it all? Shaheen Bagh: From a Protest to a Movement is a moving tale of the brave women of Shaheen Bagh-patient, persevering and unbelievable peaceniks-who raised their voice for the deprived and the discriminated. Initially starting out as a cry of anguish against the allegedly discriminatory laws of the Citizenship Amendment Act and National Register of Citizens, it soon became a modern-day Gandhian movement for equal rights for all citizens. The book is a result of the authors' abiding focus on the movement, including spending time with the brave hearts almost every day of the protest from dawn to dusk and beyond. The authors slept in the open near the protest site to understand what it takes for a ninety-year-old woman to leave the comfort of her bed during a chilly winter night and stand up for the future of each one of us as equal citizens of the country. The book recounts how the women did not abjure ahimsa even when their opponents stooped to barbs and bullets. It recaptures for the reader the riveting cry for democracy that was Shaheen Bagh. Authors Ziya Us Salam and Uzma Ausaf take us on this glorious journey of the making of Shaheen Bagh and how it became a metaphor for resistance, spawning a hundred Shaheen Baghs across the country in a bid to restore the sanctity of the Constitution, the national flag and the national anthem.

Description On 15 December 2019, police in riot gear stormed Delhi's Jamia Millia Islamia University and attacked unarmed students protesting against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), which makes religion the basis of Indian citizenship. In neighbouring Shaheen Bagh, a few women-mothers, other relatives and friends of the students-came out into the streets in outrage and anguish. They sat on a main road demanding repeal of the CAA which, twinned with the proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC), could make Indian Muslims aliens in their own country. Soon, similar protests broke out across the country in a display of civil resistance of a kind never seen in Independent India. Shaheen Bagh and the Idea of India examines how the sit-in by a small group of Muslim women-many of whom have stepped out of their homes alone for the first time- has united crores of Indian citizens of different faiths and ideologies in a fight to save the principles of equality and secularism enshrined in our Constitution. It also throws up many important questions: Can Shaheen Bagh-and the many other 'Shaheen Baghs' it has inspired-reverse the damage that has been done to our Constitutional democracy in recent years? What has sustained this non-violent movement despite vilification and persecution by the central and state governments and their police? Will it survive the aftermath of the brutal communal violence, provoked in the main by members of the ruling party, that devastated northeast Delhi in February 2020? What form will the movement take after the Shaheen Bagh protest site was cleared by the police on 24 March 2020 following the COVID-19 outbreak? Will it continue to build new and transformative solidarities in our society? This timely and necessary anthology comprises interviews with some of the brave women at the core of the protests; ground reports by journalists and social activists like Seemi Pasha, Enakshi Ganguly, Nazes Afroz and Mustafa Quraishi; and essays by leading thinkers and writers, including Nayantara Sahgal, Harsh Mander, Subhashini Ali, Nandita Haksar, Apoorvanand and Zoya Hasan. It is a book that must be read by everyone who cares about India as a liberal democracy.

'To keep at it with our dissent and our protest is a sign that our humanity is alive' - Swara BhaskerFrom the Anna Andolan in 2011 to the anti-CAA-NRC movement in 2019, a fierce spirit of liberty has gripped the nation over the last decade. Across the country, citizens have taken to the streets, petitioned, lobbied and hashtagged their demands for justice, equality and better governance. Their ask: freedom in independent India. The speeches, lectures and letters collected in Inquilab: A Decade of Protest capture the most important events and issues of the past ten years.The anthology includes the voices of * Anna Hazare * Kavita Krishnan * Nayantara Sahgal * Rana Ayyub * Rohith Vemula * Kanhaiya Kumar * Romila Thapar * P Sainath * Mahua Moitra * Majid Maqbool * Chandra Shekhar Aazad * Nabiya Khan * Ramachandra Guha

The gripping story of an explosive turning point in the history of modern India On the night of June 25, 1975, Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency in India, suspending constitutional rights and rounding up her political opponents in midnight raids across the country. In the twenty-one harrowing months that followed, her regime unleashed a brutal campaign of coercion and intimidation, arresting and torturing people by the tens of thousands, razing slums, and imposing compulsory sterilization on the poor. Emergency Chronicles provides the first comprehensive account of this understudied episode in India’s modern history. Gyan Prakash strips away the comfortable myth that the Emergency was an isolated event brought on solely by Gandhi’s desire to cling to power, arguing that it was as much the product of Indian democracy’s troubled relationship with popular politics. Drawing on archival records, private papers and letters, published sources, film and literary materials, and interviews with victims and perpetrators, Prakash traces the Emergency’s origins to the moment of India’s independence in 1947, revealing how the unfulfilled promise of democratic transformation upset the fine balance between state power and civil rights. He vividly depicts the unfolding of a political crisis that culminated in widespread popular unrest, which Gandhi sought to crush by paradoxically using the law to suspend lawful rights. Her failure to preserve the existing political order had lasting and unforeseen repercussions, opening the door for caste politics and Hindu nationalism. Placing the Emergency within the broader global history of democracy, this gripping book offers invaluable lessons for us today as the world once again confronts the dangers of rising authoritarianism and populist nationalism.

This book details the movement against India's Emergency based on newly uncovered archival evidence and oral histories.