In India, protests against the CAA and NRC protest erupted everywhere.Among the protesters are Shaheen Bagh’s unbending women campaigners who have invoked self- realisation and self-introspection among the like-minded population across India. So much is happening around the globe, but the underdogs at the lesser-known and low-profile locality of Shaheen Bagh in the capital city of India has attracted the attention of national and international media, registering in opinion and editorial pages of all the elite newspapers of India. As an ardent reader, persistent exposure of different perspectives about Shaheen Bagh triggered an unprecedented curiosity in me to have the first-hand experience of the famous protest. Something within me prompted me to travel to Delhi from Chandigarh after a six-hour journey in a bus. On reaching the protest site, I felt the difference that I had never experienced in my long journalistic career. The undaunted women of Shaheen Bagh, clad in black burqas, have designed their own fresh format, idiom and style of protest. The impact of the Shaheen Bagh women’s strong protests could be gauged from the fact that it has become an eye-sore for the Indian government, whose ministers have hurled various derogatory remarks against these peace-loving female agitators. These protesters have been compelled by circumstances to launch a struggle for which they do not even have the financial resources. That is why this is a unique sit-in which the Indian masses have never witnessed in the history of the independent India. “We didn’t react to the Babri Masjid land title decision given in favour of the majority community on wrong grounds. Neither did we show much concern when Article 370 was abrogated in Jammu and Kashmir.We endured the pain and mental trauma of lynching of Muslims by cow vigilantes. But since the CAA and NRC directly affect the lives of our wards, we cannot sit silent,” says Mrs Mohdusman, 56, a housewife, who has been protesting along with thousands of other women at Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh area. The lesser-known and low-profile Muslim majority localityShaheen Bagh, with around two hundred thousandpeople, is up in arms against the Citizen (Amendment) Act-2019 (CAA), and the National Register of Citizen (NRC) for the past fifty-five days. The relentless fight through the peaceful sit-in by women, college and universities’ female students assembled at Shaheen Bagh has been attracting the attention of national as well as international organisations. Mrs Mohdusman further said, “Here we’ve assembled to protest against the onslaught on democracy by the ruling dispensation led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, HM Amit Shah and a large number of their ministers.” To many, this fight is between those who believe in democracy and are holding a peaceful dharna and the promoters of the theocratic state, the so-called Hindutava, majoritarian nation. The BJP leaders call Shaheen Bagha “MiniPakistan” where “anti-nationals” who want to disintegrate the country are on protest. The protesters raised the national flag on the midnight of January 25-26, India’s Republic Day, on a specially erected pole and sang the national anthem. They read the preamble of the constitution and professed their faith in the Indian constitution. Childrencarriednational flags. The sit-in site is also well decorated with national flags. Pictures of Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, B R Ambedkar and Bhagat Singh decorate the backdrop of the stage. Three incidents of pistol firing attacks on Shaheen Bagh protesters have been reported in the last week. Even the European Union Parliament (EUP) has taken notice of these protests against the “unconstitutional” CAA-NCR citizen laws. EUP’s absolute majority members, out of the total seven hundred, sponsored the resolution for discussion at its meeting; it may also pass a judgment in March 2020 in the General House meeting. Five Muslims, including two women and three men, led by Farhana Nasib, a retired schoolteacher, started the sit-in on December 15, 2019, on the side of Noida-Kalindi Kunj road for withdrawal of CAA and NRC, following the brutality with which the protesting students of Jamia Millia Islamia University were beaten. The number of protesting women has been increasing every day. Which on its fifty-fourth day was between ten-fifteen thousand at 9 pm. Farhana told this writer, “We do not have any leader and we are not leaders. People voluntarily started participating in the dharna. Among the protestors are highly educated people like doctors, IT engineers, teachers, other professionals, and housewives. Even those working as domestic help or doing jobs of cleaning houses have been participating in the protests.” Farhana said that the 85-year-old dadi Asma Begum came out of her house herself to participate in the protest. Some other elderly women with dentures and without dentures arrive every morning to participate in the sit-in for the whole day and go back at night to return the next morning. When I approached Asma Begum for her views, she saidthat the presence of media persons at the protest venue put her in a state of a tizzy. The Shaheen Bagh Muslim women protest has elicited voluntary support from the secular and the saner elements of other religions: Hindus, Sikhs and Christians Some of these Muslim women, many of them clad in black burqas, are there with their breast-fed dependent babies in their laps; others ranging from three-five years are playing around their mothers; and some are getting into their laps, joyfully facing media’s cameras, waving at them without knowing what is happening, and why their mothers are sitting there in biting wintery cold. Many a time the night temperature was as low as three to five degrees centigrade. On some days, even rain could not dampen their spirit. These invincible brave women fighters bear the brunt of cold nights to continue round the clock dharnas that have baffled the BJP leadership. According to Farhana, this is a self-generating resource and a self-sustaining dharna. “We do not accept donations or funds from anyone. These dharna protesters live across the road and they go to their homes as and when they feel thirst or hunger.” The Shaheen Bagh women bring food from home and distribute it among the protesters. By rotation, women go home and bring food for small groups, and in this way, many women pool in cooked food to serve to all of them. The same goes for water, tea and snacks. The Shaheen Bagh Muslim women protest has elicitedvoluntary support from the secular and the saner elements of other religions: Hindus, Sikhs and Christians. Sikhs from Punjab reached there in five buses to support the sit-in and cooked langar (community meal) for them.The langar peacefully continued for fifteen days, but the police forced the shamiana (tent) dealer to remove his structures from the langar site, which he ultimately did under strong pressure from the Shaheen Bagh police. After it started raining heavily and the community lunch was disbanded by the police, the Sikhs from Punjab returned to their state. Since February 3, new Sikh groups from Punjab and Delhi have started serving the langar, but they are preparing the food in open in the same place near the dharna site. Though BJP leaders have been attacking these women “sitting on a daily wage of Rs 500 or so”, their female pride was also attacked by using cheap vocabulary and attacking the autonomy of the fairer sex.All types of words were used to demoralise these gentle and respectful housewives. But nothing could deter them. Females of younger age group were led by educated young women who have done graduation and postgraduation from Delhi University, Jawaharlal Nehru and Jamia Milia Islamia University. The Jamia Milia Islamia Universityis located threekilometres from Shaheen Bagh. Students of Jamia were beaten. In the brutal attack, one student’s left leg was fractured, and he also lost vision from his left eye. Some students, quietly studying in the library at the time of protest, were also attacked with rods, batons and whatever hard thing the police force or their goons could use to hit the unarmed male and female students. Besides the armed Delhi police, some masked goons also attacked the protesting students, leaving them injured. This type of ‘goonda gardi'(hooliganism) has never been witnessed before in Jamia Millia Islamia University, a central university established for the Muslim minority. Students following other faiths also study there. Days and weeks have passedby, but no arrests have been made, causing much distress among the students, members of the faculty and students’ parents.Najma Akhtar, ViceChancellor of Jamia, said on record that she never gave permission to the police to enter the university campus because the students’ protests were “democratic and peaceful.” In Shaheen Bagh, mothers trust young artists with their children who teach them painting, toy making and art and craft paper modelling skills. In the bus stand queue shelter, a photo exhibition displaying police brutality on the students of Jamia and Jawaharlal Nehru universities and other places are installed round the clock. At another place, a bookshop with books displayed on the floor has been opened to provide books about great leaders and social activists.Books are on sale to spread awareness among the visitors. It is pertinent to mention that the innovative protest at Shaheen Bagh has inspired people of many other regions, including Lucknow, Kolkata, Azamgarh, Malerkotla (Punjab), and Goa, to start a similar kind of protest against the controversial CAA and NRC. Inspired by Shaheen Bagh protesters, the Punjab Kisan Union (Ruldu Singh) has announced thata similar indefinite dharna would start in Mansa, Punjab, from February 12. There have been provocations like the words of Minister of State for Finance Anurag Thakur who incited the crowd at a Delhi assembly election rally with the slogan “deshkegaddaron ko”(traitors of country) with the crowd responding with “golimarrosalaon ko” (shoot the miscreants). The BJP MLA Parvesh Sharma went one step further, threatening there could be rape of women after the election. A young man opened fire at Shaheen Bagh, and another at the Jamia protests, injuring one student. The writer is a veteran journalist and Indo-Pak peace activist