Description
This paper explores Hindutva with/as coloniality to offer a deeper understanding of media constructions of protestors in India as epistemic harms. Despite formal British rule ending in 1947, the oppressive gendered and religious logics of colonialism remain hegemonic in India and are perpetuated by these media constructions.
The Shaheen Bagh protests were a series of spontaneous sit-ins across India, led by predominantly first-time Muslim women protestors, against the ruling right-wing Hindu nationalist BJP's discriminatory anti-Muslim citizenship laws. Protestors perceived the laws as the culmination of anti-Muslim injustices since the BJP’s 2014 election victory: lynchings, acquitting destroyers of holy Islamic sites, and ever-increasing militarisation of Kashmir. These injustices resonate with the BJP’s epistemic agenda of Hindutva (‘Hinduness’), which constructs ‘the...peaceful Hindu Self vis-à-vis the threatening minority Other’ (Anand 2011,1). Key to sustaining this epistemic agenda were hegemonic media constructions of the protestors as paid actors; as being forced by their husbands; and as anti-India Pakistan agents.
In turn, Shaheen Bagh protestors engaged in epistemic resistance: ‘us[ing] epistemic resources and abilities to undermine and change oppressive normative structures’ (Medina 2013,3). Namely, protestors subverted India’s hermeneutical structures which construct Muslim women as victims of Islam and Muslim men who need rescuing (Abu-Lughod 2013).
