Resilience is braving it out despite feeling defeated

The year 2021 had started with the peak of the farmers’ protests on the borders of Delhi. Despite several setbacks, the ranks of the farmers had continued to grow through the year. Fittingly, it ends with the return of farmers to their homes. They are jubilant and celebratory, even as they know that the farming community all over the world remains besieged by discriminatory government policies, corporate excesses and socio-economic marginalisation. The Modi government’s withdrawal of the farm laws has offered us the most important lesson of the year. It has renewed our belief in the power of the people, as farmers united and organised themselves to remind us what it means to be citizens in a democratic state.

American feminist icon bell hooks (who styled her name in lower case letters to keep the attention on her ideas) died recently. Born Gloria Jean Watkins, the writer had assumed the pen name, bell hooks, to honour the legacy of her great-grandmother, who had suffered the worst oppression as a slave

In the middle of 2021, the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in India left no family untouched by disease, death and fatigue. The country’s health infrastructure collapsed and healthcare workers struggled to meet demands. Bodies floated down the Ganges as cremation grounds overflowed, yet the tragedy failed to shake the government into action that could alleviate the suffering of the people. The emotional devastation we experienced was not just because we witnessed a health crisis from so close, but also because the criminal lack of efficient governance and the failure of most mainstream media to inform and investigate left the people of India feeling helpless and abused.

On December 15, students of Jamia Millia Islamia and other members of civil society gathered at the Delhi Press Club to commemorate two years since the weekend when Delhi Police had cracked down on the university — vandalising the library, and violently assaulting students in response to protests on the campus against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).

“All the students of Jamia have been asked one question — where were you when this incident happened? What exactly happened? When we contemplate the answers, I wonder if I was in just one place or was I there with everyone who was facing atrocities that day,” said Anugya Jha, a student, evoking the idea of a visceral solidarity between the students who witnessed the pain of each other.

“When I look back, I don’t have the memory of only my own experiences. I look back to find in me the collective memory of everyone who was beaten, who was told not to come inside their own university and who were made to put up their hands and walk like criminals. I remember all this and not just my own experiences. It’s impossible to forget.”

Fawaz Shaheen, another alumnus of JMI University, recounted how the students came back to protest and used wall art to express their dissent. “The story of anti-CAA protests is the story of hope,” he said. “Students came out in defence of the Constitution of India.”

I was still processing the powerful words of this new generation of Indians, when the news came that the American writer and feminist icon, bell hooks (who styled her name in lower case letters to keep the attention on her ideas), had died.

I had chanced upon a book titled ‘Yearning: Race, Gender and Cultural Politics’ by hooks when I had been a post-graduate student of mass communication at Jamia. I read it for years afterwards, often carrying it with me when I travelled, and reading it wherever the page opened. Born Gloria Jean Watkins, the writer had assumed the pen name, bell hooks, to honour the legacy of her great-grandmother, who had suffered the worst oppression as a slave in America.

“Dominator culture has tried to keep us all afraid, to make us choose safety instead of risk, sameness instead of diversity. Moving through that fear, finding out what connects us, revelling in our differences; this is the process that brings us closer, that gives us a world of shared values, of meaningful community,” wrote hooks in her book, ‘Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope’.

As her death became an excuse for her words to come alive again, I was surprised by the grace and beauty of the writing of hooks as she distilled complex structural inequalities into a universal expression of forms of resistance.

In her essay, ‘Marginality as a Site of Resistance’, hooks has written, “Marginality (is) much more than a site of deprivation. In fact, I was saying just the opposite: that it is also the site of radical possibility, a space of resistance.”

I was reminded of the farmers’ protest and the movement for equal citizenship all over again. There was so much resonance between the ideas in her writings and the speeches we had heard from the farmers and students in the last two years in India.

The themes of this year have been loss, mourning and healing. Above all, we have witnessed resilience — as protest movements and oppressed groups have demonstrated the courage to continue to brave it out despite feeling defeated. They drew upon their inner reservoir of energy and wisdom to find it in themselves not only to survive, but to continue to challenge those who wield power recklessly. Power to the people is what I pray for as we cross into the year 2022.

— The writer is a filmmaker & author. natasha.badhwar@gmail.com