New Delhi: Filmmaker Nausheen Khan’s Land of My Dreams recounts the 2019 Shaheen Bagh protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). Khan captures the resilience and powerful patriotism of the women at the forefront of the movement, while exploring her own Muslim identity.The poster of ‘Land of my Dreams’.Khan’s documentary has now been screened at film festivals in Japan and Austria, gaining international recognition. In August, it won the prize for the Best Long Documentary at the 15th International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala, putting it in the running for an Academy Award in the feature documentary category. While the protests took place three years ago, Khan said the issues of Islamophobia across the country prevail, and she hopes the film continues to gain momentum.Khan began filming during the protests at Jamia Millia Islamia on December 13, 2019. Here, police had retaliated violently with tear gas and batons, injuring students. In a conversation with The Wire, Khan said she was only visiting Delhi at the time, but as a graduate of Jamia, she felt a deep connection to what was happening and knew it needed to be documented.“This fear entered my mind that everything is going to change and Jamia is going to become this place where people will be scared to send their kids to.” Khan said. “When I went there, I saw the students escaping from the boundary wall of my department and I remembered that we used to nap in that lawn so fearlessly, and we used to study there through the night. Never once did I imagine that the police were going to barge in.”The anti-CAA protests brought out thousands from across India on the streets. The protests were in response to the exclusion of Muslims from the amendment that gave persecuted minorities from neighbouring countries eligibility for Indian citizenship.The 101-day long Shaheen Bagh demonstration from December 2019 until March 2020 followed the protest at Jamia. It was a peaceful sit-in led by women that blocked a key stretch of the highway between Delhi and Noida. Khan attended almost every night, sitting alongside other protesters and documenting their voices. Through her documentary, Khan captures the strength of the women at the forefront of the movement, and the love and acceptance they fostered at Shaheen Bagh. Nausheen Khan. Photo: By arrangement.“To sustain a protest for that long and to risk your safety and to kind of balance that with your daily life — it’s not easy to do that,” Khan said. “I just felt so much gratitude for them that I just became almost addicted to that space because I haven’t experienced anything like that before. And when I stood there on that lock national highway, I used to feel like, ‘Wow, I’m witnessing this revolution happening in front of my eyes.’”Along with documenting the protests themselves, Khan provides a candid look into her own journey accepting and embracing her identity, despite the fear she felt because of it. This decision to integrate her own story as a Muslim woman was one Khan said she debated for a long time into her editing process. She said she hopes that her personal storytelling will encourage other women to share their stories as well.“I realised that my experiences growing up and my experiences during the protests have value,” Khan said. “And it’s important for me to use my own voice, not just to tell the story, but also to inspire people to have trust in their own voice and in their own stories — especially Muslim women.” Khan’s perspective is one that encapsulates the inner conflicts that often come with religion and demonstrates her realizations and growth over the course of the protests.“If I’m going to feel less proud of myself because of my name, that’s really problematic. And if I’m going to continuously be this person who is blending in and camouflaging all the time, and kind of hiding my Muslimness, I’m doing a huge disservice to all of these people who are collecting during this protest, and I’m doing a disservice to myself,” Khan said.Khan said the issue of Islamophobia is ongoing. Through her film, Khan continues to be their voice from the outside and said she hopes audiences can also see the relevance of the film despite the protests having ended.“Just because nothing is actively happening right now and we’re not being beaten on the streets openly every day doesn’t mean that it has stopped,” Khan said. “I feel like this viciousness is growing every day and people are sporadically being affected by it… Islamophobia is affecting people every single day. And if we don’t talk about it and we continue to treat it as something that happened in 2019 and is over now, then it’s not going to help.”
