As I was revising the manuscript, India was in the throes of civil disobedience against a new citizenship law. ‘Inquilab Zindabad’ and slogans demanding ‘azadi’ were reverberating in different corners of the country. Different citizen groups were protesting a new Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) passed on 12 December 2019. The Act promised citizenship to all those classified as ‘non-citizens’ or ‘illegal immigrants’ if they had made India their home before 2014. However, the law had a caveat. It was applicable only to people of Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Parsi, Jain and Christian communities who had come to India because of persecution in their countries of origin (that is, the neighbouring Muslim-majority countries of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh). The law excluded the Muslims coming from these countries. The CAA in effect introduced religion as one of the eligibility criteria for Indian citizenship in violation of the provisions of the Indian Constitution, which prohibited privileging or discrimination based on religion. The new amendment had followed in the footsteps of an earlier initiative to draw up a National Register of all Indian citizens (the NRC). The NRC required every citizen to produce a series of identity documents as evidence of residence and citizenship of India. The CAA was believed to have been passed to give relief to all those who would not be able to produce the identification papers required under the NRC (except the Muslims). Thus, the CAA and the NRC together set off nation-wide protests as the Muslim minority feared being disenfranchised through these provisions. On 14 December 2019, a group of Muslim women gathered around their men who were being beaten up by police for protesting against the CAA–NRC in a locality known as Shaheen Bagh in New Delhi. Hereafter the women blocked one of the major highways and began a sit-in that lasted over a 100 days. In the vicinity was the Jamia Millia Islamia university that faced brutal police repression for organising anti-CAA–NRC protests. Soon the protests spread across the country. The protests were varied in form, style and intensity. They included sit-ins on highways, roads, neighbourhood parks and crossroads as well as rallies, gatherings, candle-light vigils and long marches, either silent or accompanied by sloganeering, speeches and singing.