Meet “Dadi of Shaheen Bagh” who made to Top 100 Influential People in Time Magazine along with PM Modi

The 82-year-old woman Bilkis who was at the forefront of the Shaheen Bagh protests in Delhi against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), has been named the Time Magazine in its list of ‘100 Most Influential People of 2020’.

Amongst one of the Dadi’s at the protest site, Bilkis became the face of the protest at Shaheen Bagh.

The Time Magazine article authored journalist Rana Ayyub talks of how Bilkis became the voice of the marginalised and refused to move from the Shaheen Bagh protest site even in the peak Delhi winters and threats from supporters of CAA.

“They call us traitors. When we pushed Britishers out of the country, who are Narendra Modi and Amit Shah? We won’t move an inch even if someone fires at us. You remove NRC and CAA, we will clear the site in no time.” said Bilkis during the protest.

Along with Bilkis Dadi, Bollywood star and musician Ayushmann Khurrana has made it to the same list along with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, CEO of Google Sundar Pichai, along with doctor Ravindra Gupta.

Writing about Narendra Modi in Time Magazine, the author Karl Vick said, “Narendra Modi has brought all that into doubt. Though almost all of India’s Prime Ministers have come from the nearly 80% of the population that is Hindu, only Modi has governed as if no one else matters. First elected on a populist promise of empowerment, his Hindu-­nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party rejected not only elitism but also pluralism, specifically targeting India’s Muslims. The crucible of the pandemic became a pretense for stifling dissent. And the world’s most vibrant democracy fell deeper into shadow.”