The malice in making protests and protesters invisible

The city police attempted this with Mumbai Bagh too in a way citing traffic impediments and bringing pressure to bear on the women sitting-in, slapping notices and FIRs on them and volunteers, profiling protesters and visitors.

There were an unusually large number of groups of Muslim women in suburban trains leaving Churchgate and CSMT last Saturday evening. Their excited chatter gave them away. They were returning from the massive rally at Azad Maidan earlier that evening by ‘Samvidhan Bachao, Desh Bachao’, an alliance of several Muslim, Dalit, OBC and other organisations, to protest against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and the imminent National Register of Citizens. There were references to Mumbai Bagh, a sit-in protest by women at Morland Road in Nagpada since January 26 that was inspired by Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh.

The women, some with children in arms, were part of the 50,000 or one lakh gathering – depending on police estimates or organisers’ claims – which raised slogans, read the Preamble of the Constitution, and heard leaders implore them to not allow enumerators of the National Population Register (NPR) into their homes. Many were part of a protest for the first time and most had trooped into Azad Maidan for the first time in their lives but the incongruity of the venue did not escape some. “Protest should be seen, protesters should be heard by those in power and by other citizens. This is like a sheltered space,” remarked one.

She had, unknowingly, put her finger on the absurdity of a shielded protest space. It makes the protest, protesters and their cause invisible to the public, the lack of public attention often means that those in power need not be embarrassed, making such invisibilised protests easier to control and dissolve. The city police attempted this with Mumbai Bagh too in a way citing traffic impediments and bringing pressure to bear on the women sitting-in, slapping notices and FIRs on them and volunteers, profiling protesters and visitors. The purpose was to scare protesters into dissipating, break up the protest in some way, or render it invisible and inaudible to the city. Protesting at Azad Maidan in the last few years, sliced into parts and barricaded into zones for construction of metro lines, is like that corner of a large home where one can make some noise but no one else will know or get disturbed. It does not serve any purpose.

The voices of protesters at Azad Maidan now, whatever their cause and grievance, do not reach the seat of power in the state secretariat more than a mile away. The rest of downtown Mumbai does not see the protests or hear the protesters.

Security concerns and the High Court’s orders are cited to justify virtually locking in protesters or rendering them invisible at Azad Maidan, but this is only half the story. The other half is that a government, any government, does not want protesters to be seen or heard. That’s why the ‘Occupy Gateway’ protest against mob violence in Delhi’s JNU was swiftly moved to Azad Maidan where it dissipated. A sheltered protest space is an oxymoron because public protests, by their very nature, are an open display of dissent or articulation of grievances.

It wasn’t always like this. Through the late 80s and till the end of the 90s, I recall reporting protests or occasionally being part of ones against attacks on the press. These began at Azad Maidan, wound their way along the magnificence of DN Road, and crossed Hutatma Chowk to culminate at Kala Ghoda if not at Mantralaya. Hundreds of shop owners and pavement vendors along the route heard of causes, thousands ensconced in their offices on the route heard slogans and became aware of the issues being articulated.

A protest with a rich repertoire of informed speeches and rousing slogans is, after all, society’s education in progress. And this was brought home by a protest itself – Kisan Long March. When more than half a lakh of Maharashtra’s debt-hit farmers marched 180 kilometres from Nashik to Mumbai two years ago and wound their way along the eastern corridor to culminate at Azad Maidan, it made Mumbaiites a tad conversant with issues of agrarian crisis and farmers’ debts.

The anti-CAA-NRC-NPR protests have happened at other locations in Mumbai and in far suburbs like Mumbra but a more visible protest at city centre might have stirred more to action, perhaps made the government squirm a bit. Chief minister Uddhav Thackeray has stated his opposition to the NRC but is comfortable enough with the NPR to set it in motion this summer. Voices from Azad Maidan and Mumbai Bagh do not reach him; they would if protesters could come to Mantralaya gates.