Becoming ‘Mother-Activists’: Deconstructing the Boundaries of the ‘Ghar’ and ‘Bahir’ in Shaheen Bagh, India

Abstract

This article examines the motivations of first-time women protestors participating in the Shaheen Bagh resistance against India’s Citizenship Amendment Act. It highlights women’s experiences of protesting for their and their children’s citizenship rights, and the impact that women’s presence in this struggle has made to it. We argue the role these first-time women protestors played in protests made them express and grow their political subjectivities as activists. The article reflects on how they brought their caring roles, hitherto carried out in the personal space of their ‘ghar’ (home), into the public space of protests, or the ‘bahir’ (outside the home) — thereby impacting the very form of the struggle. The case of Shaheen Bagh shows how public space of protest can, and must, co-exist within and in conjunction with the private realm of women’s everyday lives for their sustained participation in struggles. Thereby, the article proposes that women protestors personified and lived out a composite identity as ‘mother-activists’ and erasing and deconstructing the binaries between the ‘ghar’, and the ‘bahir’.