On Time
magazine’s ‘100 Most Influential People of 2020’ is the 82-year-old Bilkis, the
face of the protests against the citizenship Act, rubbing shoulders with American
actor Billy Porter, Egyptian journalist Lina Atallah and Mexican activist
Arussi Unda in the ‘Icons’ category.

Bilkis,
known as dadi, was at the forefront of the Shaheen Bagh protests in Delhi
against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and became a face of the protest.
The article on her in the magazine, authored by journalist Rana Ayyub, talks of
how Bilkis became the voice and face of the protesters who refused to move
despite biting winter cold of Delhi.

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“When
I first met Bilkis, she sat in the midst of a crowd, surrounded by young women
who were protesting with placards displaying verses of revolution. With prayer
beads in one hand and the national flag in the other, Bilkis became the voice
of the marginalized in India, an 82-year-old who would sit at a protest site
from 8 a.m. to midnight,” Ayyub writes.

The frail
protester  had told Ayyub that she would
never give up. “I will sit here till blood stops flowing in my veins so the
children of this country and the world breathe the air of justice and
equality.”

Also Read: A timeline of CAA-NRC: From passing the act to protests across the country

Bilkis’s
presence inspired many other ‘dadis’ and they soon formed a group and were
fondly called the “Dadis of Shaheen Bagh.” The Shaheen Bagh protest went on for
101 days and was cleared by the Delhi Police on March 24 amid the coronavirus
pandemic.

The CAA,
passed by Parliament on December 11, 2019, aims to fast-track citizenship for
six persecuted minority communities — Hindus, Parsis, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains
and Christians — who arrived in India on or before December 31, 2014 from
Muslim-majority Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

The
protesters said that the Act discriminated against Muslims and violated the
right to equality enshrined in the Constitution.