From streets to screens: Visual protest, feminist citizenship, and the politics of visibility in contemporary India

Abstract

From Streets to Screens: Visual Protest, Feminist Citizenship, and the Politics of Visibility in Contemporary India proposes to investigate how visual images on sites of protest and in articulation of decency online have created the conditions of possibility for people to realize their potential as citizens of a nation-state. These are individuals with intersecting identities articulating their heterogeneous belonging as members of multiple communities and they challenge the majoritarian discourse, vis-vis the idea of India, that renders minority identities invisible. In doing so, the thesis focuses on the mass movement against India’s Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 held at Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh (2019-2020) and its various manifestations across social media platforms as my primary archive. I envision utilizing my archive to build upon and expand the existing scholarship on the historical studies of visual activism and its role in social change. At the same time, I build on existing discussions of feminist struggle, demand for democratic transparency, and protest tactics through a focused study of Shaheen Bagh. In reflecting on the mass protest at Shaheen Bagh, this thesis examines how participants employed visual forms to protest, such as street art, posters, drawings, and content circulated across various social media platforms to communicate their views, assert their voices and demand justice and accountable governance. Indeed, I analyse the production, reproduction, circulation, and reception of these primarily visual discourses to think about the intertwined relationships between the individual and the collective and how collective actions are conjured. The visual practices examined in this study demonstrate a dual strategy of protest: occupying physical public spaces while simultaneously engaging with digital platforms. This research examines Shaheen Bagh as a site of tactical resistance, where women converted visibility into political agency through murals, slogans, public readings of the constitution, and the live documentation of protest events on social media platforms.