Through Delhi’s coldest winter in over a century, women in a nondescript working-class Muslim ghetto squatted resolutely in protest on a stretch of a highway for over 100 days. They captured the imagination of people around India and the world, their protest becoming the symbol, epicentre and inspiration for the largest non-violent movement that India has seen since its epic struggle for freedom. Recently, one of these protestors, 82-year old Bilkis was listed among the 100 most powerful people in the world by Time magazine.
“I will sit here”, she had declared during the protests to journalist Rana Ayyub, “till blood stops flowing in my veins, so the children of this country and the world breathe the air of justice and equality.”
But another recent report, a 17,000-page charge-sheet filed by the Delhi Police, paints an emphatically different picture of the…