The series Har Shaam Shaheen Bagh (Every Evening Belongs to Shaheen Bagh) is an ode to the infinite courage and resilience of the women of Shaheen Bagh, Delhi, who sat in protest for a 100 days and nights. Drawn from a book of photographs, drawings, songs, letters and other material gathered as a record of the iconic protest, the photographs shown here mark an extraordinary moment in the political and contemporary history of India. In December 2019 a small group of Muslim women from the working-class neighbourhood of Shaheen Bagh, came out of their homes and sat down in protest, occupying a stretch of one of Delhi’s busiest highways. They were standing up against the Citizenship Amendment Act, which was designed to strip the Constitution of India of its right to religious equality. This peaceful sit-in began in December 2019 until the pandemic sent India into lockdown, and the state used this as an opportunity to destroy and dismantle all traces of the protest. These photographs serve as urgent and crucial evidence of a time that is systematically being erased from our collective memory.
From the women of Standing Rock and Black Lives Matter, The Dandi March and Chipko Movement, and those at the frontlines of India’s non-violent protests, they are an act of remembrance that preserves the powerful legacy of women at the forefront of historic revolutions.