Shifting Spaces of Resistance: A Processual Study of the Recent Protests in the Everyday in Delhi

Abstract

This paper studies the recent shift in spaces of resistance from designated to non-designated, peripheral and everyday public spaces in Delhi, the political capital of India. It further argues that this shift is essentially a state driven phenomenon instigated by preventing access to public space administered as a mechanism to diminish resistance against state activities. The study critiques the shrinking nature of democratic spaces in Delhi, thereby exposing how the city has been, in many ways, reorganised around the idea of preventing or subjugating protest. Drawing from an ethnographic study of the spontaneous anti CAA protests at Shaheen Bagh in 2019–20 and the Farmers protests against the three farm bills at the borders of Delhi in 2020–21, the research analyses how new forms of resistance emerge in these sites chosen and reclaimed by the public barred from institutional channels. By analysing the organic processes involved in the movement, occupation and identity formation, it examines the unique urban morphologies of transience, formed during the social and spatial evolution of the protest site. In doing so, findings reveal the transformative potential associated with these protests, thereby questioning the idea of permanence in their transience. This has implications on the definitions of a true protest, and represents how such spatial acts of resistances are manifestations of peoples aspirations and anxieties, where new communities of citizenship formed at protest sites are characterised by inversive processes of inbetweenness. The study thus attempts to redefine the everyday as a boundless space that allows for diversity, complexity and simultaneity in extraordinary situations as opposed to the dominant authoritarian narrative of the planned public space. Therefore, this paper situates within a larger discussion about alternative space-making processes in the city from ground up which reflects in the long standing ontological debate over use and value of public space.