21 Nov. 2020: Natasha Narwal and Devangana Kalita should have been working on their research projects, perhaps getting a few steps closer to writing their doctoral dissertations by now. Instead they have written letters showcasing the strength it needs to survive in jail, from jail. Where they have been lodged for speaking at meetings in solidarity with those protesting to safeguard their rights as Indian citizens.

“It is women’s defiance and collectivity that helped one survive ‘outside’, it is the same that is crucial to surviving ‘inside’, in jail. There are so many life stories, a new world, a different world, pushing you constantly to think, there is so much to absorb, so much pain, so much despair, yet moments of joy, of singing, of surviving,” wrote Devangana.

“How long will or can the moon be caged, hum dekhenge..” penned Natasha.

The letters were shared by their fellow activists from the Pinjra Tod collective, and are examples of strength Devangana and Natasha have continued to show during their long incarceration. The words will also give other young activists, especially women activists “further strength and courage to continue the struggle outside, and that the resistance against the attack on democratic rights will continue” stated Pinjra tod members who organised an online public meeting on November 19, marking six months since Devangana and Natasha have been in jail.

Natasha and Devangana’s families too shared their thoughts at the meeting. Mahavir Narwal said he had much to learn from his daughter, “She is in fact not feeling jailed, she is feeling she is like all other people. Those outside are also suffering, just like those in jails. Nobody in my family is demoralised or intimidated. We are all part of your resistance,” he said, adding that resistance was “not just to get them out of jail but to save all good ideas, truth”. Hemchandra Kalita said this was not just about Natasha and Devangana, “but for the cause of democracy and the sake of the Constitution… Every minority should be protected but every minority is being arrested.”

“Six months in prison for dreaming of freedom?” was the appropriate title of the public meeting organised by Pinjra Tod. Participants including several students, activists, teachers and eminent citizens gathered in solidarity with Devangana and Natasha, and were united in their call for the release of all arrested anti CAA-NRC-NPR protestors, and condemned the “growing abuses to democratic rights in the country”.

Devangana Kalita, is an MPhil student at JNU’s Centre for Women’s Studies and is the founding member of Pinjra Tod, a collective of women students and alumni from colleges across Delhi that takes up causes like movement against curfew and restrictive timings for women students in hostels and paying guest accommodations. Kalita was arrested on May 23, 2020 in FIR No. 50/2020 registered at the Jafrabad Police Station in relation to the communal violence which had broken out in North East Delhi in February 2020. It was alleged that she mobilized a crowd of a particular community at the protest site near Jafrabad metro station on February 22 and 23 with an intention to instigate a section of people to indulge in rioting that led to loss of lives and destruction of public and private properties. She was granted bail by the Delhi High Court citing lack of evidence to show that she instigated violence or gave a hate speech, but continues to remain in jail as she has also been booked under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, in a separate case related to the communal violence, for allegedly being part of a “premeditated conspiracy” in the riots.

On September 17, a Delhi Court granted bail to Pinjra Tod member Natasha Narwal, a Jawaharlal Nehru University student who is accused of instigating the riots that took place in the northeast districts of Delhi, news agencies reported. It was the trial court in Karkardooma granted bail to Narwal in a case registered against her under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act. Soon after being released on bail, another FIR was registered against for allegedly instigating the Delhi riots and she has been in judicial custody ever since. Narwal has been accused of various offences under the Indian Penal Code as well as the provisions of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.

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Speaking at the function, Uma Chakravarti read out “A Message for Devangana Kalita, Natasha Narwal and Members of Pinjra Tod”:

Today it is a day when we are marking six months since Devangana Kalita and Natasha Narwal, two young women students, were put into jail and we are sending out a message to them, standing with them in solidarity.

But, even as I write this message, I am left wondering: How have we reached where we are, with young women being picked up and jailed even in the capital city of Delhi? Why are they being promptly re-arrested on the occasions when they are released on bail, under new charges and slapped with the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, that terrible “law” that makes bail so difficult, if not almost impossible?

As someone who has researched the Emergency period to make a film on Snehalata Reddy, I am reminded of the arrests during that time, conforming to the adage whereby there was ‘no vakil, no daleel and no appeal.’ So you just rotted in jail like she did, occasionally getting released under one law and then re-arrested under another as we see now.

While many men from the opposition were in Bangalore jail, where she was, she alone was in virtual solitary confinement as she was the only woman political prisoner there. Gradually ill health took over, as she was asthmatic and got no proper medical attention, and ultimately she was the only prisoner who died because of the incarceration during the Emergency.

Are we back to those days now, with no legal remedy for the arbitrary acts of the state because all institutions have collapsed, even though there is no formal suspension of civil rights as there was then?

Technically, there continues to be a system where we can have vakils or lawyers, daleels or trials and appeals in front of courts that sadly deny more often than uphold the rights of even old and infirm prisoners, as we are seeing in recent days.

I have often been in a state of anguish and despair: is this the India we brought in on August 15, 1947, the country so many people went to jail innumerable times for? I was at school on that day, participating in a function marked by the unfurling of the national flag, denoting the birth of a new nation. Each of us got a packet of sweets to celebrate that day with.

And now, seven decades later, we are putting students in jail for defending the constitution, thus viciously punishing them for struggling for a country that promised the equal right to citizenship to everyone.

I am not normally a sentimental person, but I am a woman shaped by my history and my life as a teacher of history of young undergraduate students. I taught for 40 years and so students have a special place in my life.

My college, Miranda House, was founded six months after Independence, and was designed to be a premier college for women. Some of my students have gone on to become leading voices in the women’s movement and in the democratic rights movements. It is also the college that Devangana graduated from.

The teachers and students of the college stood up during the Emergency; a socialist colleague had to go underground and never recovered from the physical and mental stress of that experience. So, I feel very close to what is happening to students, especially women students now: and so when young women are imprisoned for translating their dreams of an egalitarian, secular and humane world where everyone can hold their heads high, and are punished for being political, it is a moment of despair that is almost overwhelming.

But, wait, perhaps, it is also a moment to celebrate. The young women, the Safooras, the Gulfisha Fatimas, and the Pinjra Tod girls (with whom I had worked regarding hostels that infantilised women students, locking them up behind hostel gates “for their own good”, and for whom I was supposed to be creating a series of informal lectures on the history of the women’s movement), are telling us something.

It is not enough to include women in panchayati raj, over which we spend so much time in discussions on women in politics. Instead, we need to create women who fight fearlessly for a more just India.

They are reminding us that the attempt to put women into cages and pinjras of silence and fear must be resisted. It is a new moment.

In the midst of the despair we must celebrate that. We celebrate the spirit of Devangana and Natasha: they are telling us to fight for our dreams of a better India even if it means confronting the power that the state has today.

There is much to learn from Devangana and Natasha, and others like them, who we know will take us to a better future although we cannot see its shape clearly at the moment.

(Uma Chakravarti is a feminist historian who taught at Miranda House, University of Delhi.)