Hollywood star and ‘Wonder Woman 1994’ fame Gal Gadot picked Bilkis Bano, popularly called Bilkis Dadi, to be one of the personal wonder women. On Thursday, Gadot picked women from several walks of life who inspired her.
“Saying farewell to 2020, with all my love to #MyPersonalWonderWomen; Some are those closest to me—my family, my friends—some are inspiring women I’ve loved discovering, and some are exceptional women I hope to meet in the future,” she wrote.
Of the handful of women, which included Gadot’s family, friends, young girls and other female personas, Bilkis Dadi found a place. Sharing an image of Bilkis Dadi on her Instagram, Gadot wrote: “The 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.”
82-year-old Bilkis Bano, along with several hundred women, sat under a canopied tent at Shaheen Bagh against the citizenship amendment act and national registry of citizens (CAA/NRC) for over three months. She has, since then, became a symbol of the CAA-NRC protests.
Journalist and author Rana Ayyub called her ‘the voice of the marginalized’. “She became the symbol of resistance in a nation where the voices of women and minorities were being systematically drowned out by the majoritarian politics of the Modi regime,” Ayyub said.
Bilkis Dadi was also honoured by TIME and BBC in their respective “100 most influential people of 2020” lists.
Meanwhile, Gal Gadot’s ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ managed the best box office debut amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The film is a sequel to the Patty Jenkins directorial ‘Wonder Woman’ released in 2017.