ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how the use of hashtags (#womenofshaheenbah, #sheinspiresus #shaheenbaghprotests) produces affective publics in the context of the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 (CAA)/National Register of Citizens (NRC) protests in India. Twitter-based public communication made visible the image of the older “subaltern” woman as a nonviolent protestor. Data was collected from December 2019 to April 2020 using Twitter Academic API and visualized for analysis using computational tools such as Gephi and Netlytic. Using the theoretical framework of private (ghar) and public (bahir), a close visual analysis of images of Kasturba Gandhi and Bilkis from Shaheen Bagh was also conducted in order to map the resonances between the two gendered political subjects. In addition, this chapter also draws on interviews with a range of actors including women activists, in order to examine the nuances of how competing affective publics work to mobilize the image of nonviolent older women.
