Kolkata, Feb 21, 2020: A speaker told the women protesting the new citizenship regime at Kolkata’s Park Circus Maidan that she was “ashamed” that members of a community were having to endure such pain to demand the rights of a citizen.
Theatre director-actor Rasika Agashe, who is married to film actor Zeeshan Ayyub, said on February 19 that India had changed in the 12 years since she married a young actor in Delhi in 2007.
Speaking in Hindi, she said: “I am the wife of Mohammad Zeeshan Ayyub. I am a Hindu. And there is this poem: ‘I am Hindu and I am ashamed’. I want to say that here in this Hindu Rashtra, what is now being called Hindu Rashtra, we the Hindus are ashamed of the fact that the people of a particular religious community are having to sit like this,” Rasika said, to loud applause from the audience.
She later told The Telegraph. “I could not think of any other line after I met the courageous ladies.”
An alumna of the National School of Drama, Delhi, Rasika, who played Rabia in the film Mere Pyare Prime Minister, told the crowd: “You are not alone, we are all together with you here.”
Initially, there were only a few dozen women. The count has been rising by the day and Park Circus Maidan has emerged as Calcutta’s Shaheen Bagh, the Delhi pocket where women’s protest against CAA-NRC has been continuing since December 11.
More than 3,000 people listened to Rasika, who had come to Calcutta to perform at a theatre festival, around 9.30pm.
Saluting the fight of the women at Park Circus Maidan, Rasika said: “So far we would say that the country can sleep in peace because the army is standing guard there; but now I’d say because you are sitting like this across the country, secular India can sleep in peace.”
The dais from where Rasika was speaking was a stone’s throw from the place where her husband had addressed a rally against the CAA and NRC on January 31.
“Muslims should stop being apologetic…. They should never consider themselves second-class citizens. They must realise that they have equal rights in this country, guaranteed by the Constitution,” he had said.
Rasika, who had graduated from Fergusson College, Pune, said: “This is not the India where I had married Zeeshan Ayyub, without bothering to know what community he came from. I know the Narendra Modi government still has four-and-a-half years left. But I think we will live longer than that and will keep fighting.”
At the end of her address, Touseef Ahmed Khan, a lawyer at Calcutta High Court, gave a call from the stage: “Reject CAA).” Rasika joined the audience with the response: “We will not show our papers.”
The audience joined the chorus when one of the organizers said on the mike: “Rasika-Zeeshan move ahead, we are with you.”
The way a Hindu reached out to Muslims left college and school students at the protest venue enthralled.
“We are so touched by her approach. It really made us feel that we are not alone,” said Mehjabi Khatoon, a first-year student of history at South Calcutta Girls College.
“Someone from the majority community said she was ashamed of the harassment of the minorities. She exemplified harmony,” said Nazia Rahman, a student of Anjuman Girls’ High School. Aisha Rahman, a Class IX student at Vidyapith School, spoke of “the empathy in her voice”.
Source: telegraphindia.com