Gal Gadot hails Bilkis dadi of Shaheen Bagh as her Wonder Women; retracts post

Hollywood actress Gal Gadot shared a photo of Bilkis dadi from Delhi's Shaheen Bagh in her Instagram story as a personal wonder women. She admired Bilkis for her fight for women's equality but later deleted the tweet due to various factual incorrectness.

Since Wonder Woman 84 recently released at the theatres, as a part of promotional planning, lead actress of the film, Gal Gadot who plays a superhero in the DC Comics franchise, used the hashtag, #MyPersonalWonderWomen, where she admired various women from her circles such as her mother, her sister, her girlfriends, her colleagues, director Patty Jenkins and a few more figures who became internationally famous in 2020.

Bilkis dadi of Shaheen Bagh became one of the Indians who made it to TIME Magazine's 100 Most Influential people, along with India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi and actor Ayushmann Khurrana.  Although her protest at Shaheen Bagh was directed against the Central Government of India, Bilkis in an interview had also said that she was glad to be in the same list as Prime Minister Modi, as he is 'like her son' and thereby congratulated him on being in the TIME list again. 

In her Instagram story, Gal Gadot had said, "This 82-year-old activist fighting for women's equality in India showed me it's never too late to fight for what you believe in."  Her version of the story was wrong in various ways. 

What Bilkis dadi fought for?

Bilkis was famous for protesting against the Citizenship Amendment Act which was passed in Lok Sabha in 2019, and National Registrar of Citizenship which according to India's Home Minister Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi 'has not been drafted yet'. The Prime Minister in a rally had said that 'discussions are yet to be done'.  However, Bilkis was not fighting for women's equality but against CAA and NRC. 

Also, when the protest was at its peak in the early months of 2020, Gal was not one of the celebrities who had shown any kind of support to the women of Shaheen Bagh, neither had she personally visited Bilkis. Hence to include her in a hashtag of 'Personal Wonder Women' especially in a list which included her acquaintances from her inner circle, did not go down well with the netizens. Many criticised her PR team for not doing enough research before posting the stories on social media. However, the tweet was deleted later by the actress.