“Speaking Up And Recording History Regardless, Will Have To Be The Satyagraha Of Our times”

I was present at the Constitution Club meeting ‘United Against Hate’ on 13th August. I had just met Fatima Nafees - Najeeb’s mother who bravely awaits the return of her son Najeeb even though he has been missing for over a year. The police have not been able to trace him or for that matter, locate any clue over his disappearance. She said,  “Even now I feel that he will walk through the door”. I read out a poem that I had written and roughly translated it into Hindi for her. As she heard the poem, ‘Where Are You Najeeb?’  a trickle went down her cheeks,  and  she  said,  “So many mothers care for Najeeb”.  However, despite the protests and candlelight vigils, Najeeb still remains missing. 

Then I met Junaid’s mother, who dressed in a burkha, spoke about how her thirteen year-old son had gone on a train to buy clothes. On 22nd June 2017, he was returning accompanied by Shakeel. He was asked to give his seat to a man  which  he did. Then at Tughlaqabad a crowd got in. There was some pushing and he was yelled at, abused, and slapped, at which his skull cap fell off.  Junaid even tried to call for help on the phone and then the beating started.  She said, “Shakeel got eight stab wounds and can’t walk.  Even today, he is immobilized”. She showed me a photograph with blood all over his body. And as for Junaid she showed me his photograph lying there at the station-   was he dead by then? - and then she wept.

Just then a young boy ran into the Speakers’ Hall at  the  Constitution Club.  He had some scrapes on his body and looked shaken. He said that as he was coming to the Constitution Club he was met at the gate by a man who had a revolver  who  threatened him. He said, “I was terrified, I thought just like Gauri Lankesh was killed, I was going to be killed too”. He continued,  “The man shot at me, missed, then pushed me and I fell”.  He showed the wounds on his body. He said that he then scrambled up and then the man fired in the air across the road.

Soon we learned that the young boy was none other than Umar Khalid, the JNU student who had been framed on charges of ‘sedition’. As he spoke, several media people were present and recorded him.  However,  a  guard came  in  and tried to lock everyone inside the hall. His reasoning was, ‘a bullet has been fired, so no one should leave’. One of the organizers told him that the bullet had been fired outside and he should not lock the audience in. The police was called and a large contingent arrived  and  took away  Umar Khalid to record a statement. Soon after, fake news videos stating this never occurred started circulating, but the police recovered a gun from the site.

If violence is being used to silence Muslim voices in the heart of Delhi and that too at the Constitution Club, I wonder what is the plight of our minorities in the villages and smaller towns? The right to assemble freely and express our experiential reality is guaranteed under the Constitution, but right there at  the  Constitution Club – a few yards away from the Parliament - one felt that right being trampled, and  that  a brute majority was using the muzzle of the gun to silence everyone. 

Speaking up and recording history regardless, will have to be the satyagraha of our times.

Sagari Chhabra is a writer and filmmaker.