Bilkis from Shaheen Bagh is TIME magazine’s hundred most influential of the year
New Delhi: The 82-year-old Bilkis was one of the women at the forefront of the protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act in Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh area in 2019. The protest, which began on December 15 at Shaheen Bagh, demanded a roll-back of the newly amended law(CAA).
The Time Magazine article authored by journalist Rana Ayyub talks of how Bilkis became the voice of the marginalised and she refused to budge from the Shaheen Bagh protest site even in the peak Delhi winters and threats from supporters of CAA.
According to Time Magazine “Bilkis, along with thousands of women who joined her in Shaheen Bagh, a neighborhood in New Delhi, 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. Bilkis gave hope and strength to activists and student leaders who were being thrown behind bars for standing up for the unpopular truth in a democracy that was sliding into authoritarianism.”
Other Indians who made the list include Prime Minister Narendra Modi, actor Ayushman Khurrana, Google CEO Sunder Pichai and biologist Ravindra Gupta
