The Shaheen Bagh Protests (15 December 2019 - 24 March 2020): Coloniality, Epistemic Resistance, and Decoloniality in Present-day BJP-led India

这个项目使用殖民主义的概念（Quijano 2007）来质疑印度独立于殖民主义而存在的资格。通过探讨最近沙欣巴格抗议反穆斯林公民法，我将调查这种阻力的认识（基于知识）方面，以了解当今印度人民党（BJP）领导的印度更广泛的反穆斯林不公正。这种方法的结果将是对印度等领土后殖民国家的殖民罪责和当今对此的抵制的微妙理解。沙欣巴格开始与穆斯林妇女，其中许多人是第一次抗议者，占领公共场所在德里抗议人民党的反穆斯林公民身份修正案。抗议者认为这一行为是自人民党2014年选举胜利以来反穆斯林不公正行为的高潮：私刑，在没有咨询他们的情况下将穆斯林妇女从伊斯兰离婚行为中“解放”出来，与伊斯兰圣地的破坏者站在一起，以及穆斯林占多数的克什米尔不断增加的军事化。抗议活动在第101天被迫结束，原因是新冠肺炎疫情的限制，以及政府摧毁了抗议地点的壁画和艺术品。因此，这个项目提供了一个及时的贡献，记录沙欣巴格的认识意义。虽然学者（阿南德2011）理解人民党对印度教民族主义（Hinduness）的认识承诺，但人民党领导的“后殖民”国家的动力往往是毋庸置疑的。我将通过探索印度教与殖民地来解决这个问题，认为尽管1947年英国在印度的正式统治结束，但殖民主义的压迫性性别和宗教逻辑-殖民主义-在印度仍然是霸权，并由人民党延续下去。这造成了认识上和物质上的伤害-被不公正地定型，从而受到虐待。反过来，沙欣巴格对殖民主义的抵抗将被探讨为认识上的抵抗（麦地那，2013年）：女性抗议者颠覆了压迫性的性别和反穆斯林的印度教文化，认为穆斯林妇女是顺从的，没有代理权。

This project uses the concept of coloniality (Quijano 2007) to question India's credentials of existing independently of colonialism. Through exploring the recent Shaheen Bagh protests against anti-Muslim citizenship laws, I will investigate the epistemic (knowledge-based) aspects of this resistance to understand broader anti-Muslim injustices in present-day Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led India. The outcomes of this approach will be nuanced understandings about both culpability for coloniality in territorially post-colonial states like India, and present-day resistance against this. Shaheen Bagh began with Muslim women, many of whom were first-time protestors, occupying public spaces in Delhi to protest the BJP's anti-Muslim Citizenship Amendment Act. Protestors perceived the act as the culmination of anti-Muslim injustices which have proliferated since the BJP's 2014 election victory: lynchings, 'freeing' Muslim women from Islamic divorce practices without consulting them, siding with destroyers of a holy Islamic site, and ever-increasing militarisation of Muslim-majority Kashmir. The protests were forced to end on their 101st day by Covid-19 restrictions, accompanied by the government's destruction of the protest site's murals and artworks. Hence, this project offers a timely contribution for documenting the epistemic significance of Shaheen Bagh. Whilst scholarship (Anand 2011) understands the BJP's epistemic commitment to Hindutva ('Hinduness') as Hindu nationalism, the dynamics of a BJP-led 'post-colonial' state often remain unquestioned. I will address this by exploring Hindutva with coloniality, arguing that despite the end of formal British rule in India in1947, the oppressive gendered and religious logics of colonialism - coloniality - remain hegemonic in India and are perpetuated by the BJP. This generates epistemic and material harms - being unjustly stereotyped and thus mistreated. In turn, Shaheen Bagh's resistance to coloniality will be explored as epistemic resistance (Medina 2013): the women protestors subverted oppressive gendered and anti-Muslim Hindutva constructions of Muslim women as submissive and bereft of agency.