Listen! Faiz,
Do you know?
The difference
between your and my wait
Is only
A fixed time
Just a few more days
You knew that
Like the gust of breeze
Speechless cloud does not tell
When I ask—
“How many more seasons like this?”
Who knows how many more seasons?
— Gulfisha Fatima, prison poems.
So, how many more seasons, condemned, exiled, trapped, a young girl, a brilliant scholar, a compassionate heart which beats for justice?
How many more seasons would it take for the wise and elderly, in the justice system, and in the political establishment, to realise, that, perhaps this is sheer injustice, and a form of relentless cruelty. Only because she was a peaceful dissenter, and, of course, a Muslim and a woman.
With the arrival of spring and summer, this was no Vivaldi’s lilting four seasons for Gulfisha Fatima. April 9 this year marked five years of un-freedom for her. Five years can look like infinity, if you look at the drab walls which traps a young, restless soul with a spark in her eyes. It could be like living hell.
And, yet, from where do these young minds generate the stoic resilience, the dogged optimism, the spirit of freedom, the power to write?
While the political class, the students and academia, the mainstream media and intelligentsia, chooses to shut their eyes wide shut, a few sensitive souls, recited her poetry, sitting on the bench in a park, inside a metro or a library, across the pan shop on the street, in the classroom, here, there, everywhere, as a symbolic soliloquy of solidarity. And protest.
Devangana Kalita, a former JNU Phd scholar, too, was imprisoned in Tihar Jail, Delhi. She was released along with Natasha Narwal, another JNU researcher. Their crime: peaceful protest with other women against the polarising and communal CAA.
ALSO READ: Devangana’s Husband Andre Ling Recounts Their Ordeal
In a PUCL bulletin, Devangana writes: “Gulfisha did not have any prior experience of engaging or organising protests. She learned and emerged organically as the movement progressed to become a powerful voice of collective assertion and democratic resistance. In the sit-in protest site in Seelampur, she used to regularly hold adult literacy classes for the women who would come to participate in the protest. She was committed to building women’s local initiative and leadership through the protests. In the face of inhuman incarceration, she has remained steadfast in her commitment to education, activism, and the collective spirit of solidarity. Inside the prison, she has become a source of hope and support for her co-inmates, many of whom rely on her for basic literacy, legal aid, and emotional support. As a tutor with the ‘Pado Padhao’ programme inside prison, she has taught fellow prisoners to read and write, and has provided them with a sense of agency that is often denied within the prison system. Gulfisha has also found strength in creativity, turning her hardships into powerful poetry, artwork, and letters that capture the emotional toll of her unjust imprisonment…”
She continues: “It will soon be five years since Gulfisha’s arrest. While Gulfisha got bail in the other two FIRs in 2020 itself, she continues to remain incarcerated under the UAPA case. Her quest for bail in FIR 59/20 has been marked with never-ending adjournments and judicial delays in what has become a complete travesty of justice. She filed for bail in the High Court in May 2022. It will be three years for her, just waiting for a verdict on her petition. Her bail has been argued twice but judges in two benches have been transferred and they have left without pronouncing a judgement. Currently, since November last year, her bail is being argued for the third time in the High Court and the ordeal continues…”
The ordeal continues. According to a statement by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, Gulfisha is detained for protesting religious freedom conditions. In May 2020, Fatima was granted bail in the Jaffrabad protest case (FIR 48/2020). However, she was forced to remain in prison under FIR 59/2020. On June 26, 2020, several UN experts called for the release of Fatima and other protesters, saying that their arrests seem “clearly designed to send a chilling message…that criticism of government policies will not be tolerated”.
For a young girl, exercising her fundamental right of peaceful protest, the commission cites the charges against her: Criminal Premeditation and Conspiracy, Hate Speech, Illicit Financing Murder and Attempted Murder, Public Disorder, Terrorism, and Treason and Sedition.
Similar cases include others who are still languishing in jail: Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam, Khalid Saifi, and others. The Neo-Nazi apparatus of stark injustice rolls on.
On June 15, 2021, Devangana, Natasha Narwal and Asif Iqbal Tanha were granted bail by the Delhi High Court in a historic order which observed: “We are constrained to say, that it appears, that in its anxiety to suppress dissent and in the morbid fear that matters may get out of hand, the State has blurred the line between the constitutionally guaranteed ‘right to protest’ and ‘terrorist activity’.” Subsequently, their bail was challenged by Delhi Police in the Supreme Court. On May 2, 2023, the Supreme Court upheld Devangana, Natasha and Asif’s bail. It, however, directed that the above bail order cannot be “treated as precedent”. (Sabrangindia.in, Courtesy Free Speech Collective, April 9, 2025).
In a tweet, Natasha Narwal has written: Today marks three years of Gulfisha’s painful incarceration under UAPA for daring to raise her voice against the unjust CAA-NRC-NPR. She has been penning beautiful heart-wrenching poetry from her prison cell. Listen to them. Let it sink in.
In this darkness at noon, their ordeal speaks of a Neo-Nazi State which seems to have focused on young Muslims, especially enlightened and brilliant scholars, who have a parallel vision for the country, who are peaceful dissenters, and who believe in the Indian Constitution. They are celebrating the murderer of Graham Staines and his two teenage sons, burnt alive in their vehicle in Odisha. In the same manner, a former Union minister garlanded the mob-lyncher in Jharkhand. The same way as “Brahmins with good Sanskar” rapists of Bilkis Bano were feted and garlanded after their release. A predictable pattern, indeed.
The message is cold-blooded: if you are young, Muslim, and, worse, an intellectual with a political vision which is radical, inspirational, egalitarian, secular and pluralistic, and if you dare to protest, then you better be prepared to be condemned in a prison, branded as a terrorist, or charged with sedition and other deadly cases under a draconian law. While bail is the rule, and the accused is deemed innocent till proved guilty, for these young men and women, the process itself has become the punishment.
And, indeed, once they are found innocent, who will return them their nights and days, their seasons of poetry, happiness and romance, their freedom and desires, the love of their loved ones?
Who will give them these precious days of youth back?
In the same poem, writes Gulfisha:
On the pitch-black night yesterday,
There was a knock on the doors of prison
Of the innocent breezes
Of cries of our dear ones
Even the lightning
Was screaming for help
Asking for our freedom
Even the well-shaped branches
Openly joined in the grief
After failed attempts
And losing control
The delicate tears of rain
Started to pour
Struck against the earth’s crust,
And the rhythm of the drops
Turned it into
A commotion of pleas.
But—
The deaf snakes
Kept dancing
With their poisonous hoods
Laying their web of traps.
And—
The oppressed
Stood with their hands raised
On that pitch-black night…
The court says:
Now that you have come
Make an appeal, but yes
It will take long
And by then, you will be exhausted.
Justice says:
I am precious
Hear me loud in clear
You may be destroyed/consumed
Seeking me…