As Delhi braved its coldest winter in over a century, 82-year-old Bilkis sat with hundreds of women under a canopied tent at the national capital’s Shaheen Bagh anti-CAA/NRC sit-in protest for over three months. Within days, Bilkis and the two other elderly women who participated in the protest became the symbol of resistance and hope and came to be fondly known as the “Dadis of Shaheen Bagh.” TIME magazine has now included Bilkis in its list of “The 100 Most Influential People of 2020.”
Journalist and author Rana Ayyub, who has penned the piece for TIME magazine, says, “Bilkis became the voice of the marginalised… Became the symbol of resistance in a nation where the voices of women and minorities were being systematically drowned out by the majoritarian politics of the Modi regime.”
On September 25, a delegation of Ladies Wing, Jamaat-e-Islami Hind Delhi, visited her residence to meet and greet her and congratulate her on having been felicitated by TIME. She told the delegation that while she was sitting on the protest site, some unknown persons tried to give her some money but she refused it. She claimed that this was an attempt to defame the anti-CAA-NRC movement.
On September 28, TWEET (The Women Education & Empowerment Trust) felicitated her by presenting a memento and a shawl to her. She expressed her strong hope that the Government would withdraw the entire CAA-NRC package.
Owing to her old age, her son Manzar Hasan said that he used to forbid her from going to the protest site, fearing she might catch cold; but “she did not listen to us and regularly visited the site for over three months”.
The Shaheen Bagh protest went on for 101 days and was cleared by the Delhi Police on March 24 in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
In January, as the Shaheen Bagh sit-in inspired similar protests across the country, Bilkis had told reporters, “We are old and we are not doing this for ourselves… This is for our children. Why else will we spend our days and nights during the coldest winter of our lives in the open?”
On January 26, Bilkis, along with the mothers of Rohith Vemula and Junaid Khan, hoisted the national flag at Shaheen Bagh as hundreds of people showed up there for Republic Day celebrations. At the time, the resilience of the “Dadis of Shaheen Bagh” was captured in songs, poems, slogans and graffiti as well.
In February, when an armed assailant fired at least two shots barely 50 metres away from the stage at Shaheen Bagh, Bilkis was at her spot near the stage. At the time, she told The Indian Express, “There was panic inside the tent, but people eventually calmed down. We walked till the point where cartridges were found and offered prayers… These bullets don’t scare us.”