Gal Gadot, the Hollywood actor who recently reprised the titular role in the film Wonder Woman 1984, hailed 82-year-old Indian activist Bilkis Bano as one of her “personal wonder women” on social media on Thursday.
Bidding farewell to 2020, Gadot took to Instagram to dedicate a post to “some exceptional women” who have inspired her and some she hopes to meet, while asking her fans to share pictures of their “own wonder women” with her.
Bilkis, who is popularly known as Bilkis Dadi was the face of the peaceful anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protests at Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh. She sat along with the hundreds of women protesting against the CAA and the National Register of Citizens for over three months, enduring the harsh Delhi winter during early 2020. The Act enables non-Muslim immigrants from India’s three Muslim-majority neighbours, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, to become citizens of India. Protestors, however, claim that the CAA discriminates against Muslims and violates the Right to Equality as laid down in the Indian Constitution.
While she shared pictures of her friends and family, she also shared a photo of Bilkis participating in the anti-CAA protest, with a poster that reads “Shaheen Bagh ki Bilkis Dadi ko Dilli ki Aurton ka salaam (The women of Delhi salute Shaheen Bagh’s Bilkis Dadi).”
Bilkis recently supported and raised her voice during the farmers’ protest against the three Farm Reforms Bills passed by both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha in 2020. She was featured in the Time magazine’s list of the top 100 influential women in the world.
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According to a report by The Indian Express, Gadot shared the same picture as an Instagram story on Thursday and wrongly captioned it as “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.”
Though the actor later deleted the story, the Indian activist’s picture is still present in her post.
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In the post, Gadot also listed Wonder Woman 1984‘s director Patty Jenkins, executive producer Katy Strutynski, stunt woman Christiaan Bettridge along with other women crew members of the film. She also listed Carmela Chillery-Watson, who has a muscle-wasting condition, who walked a kilometre a day for 30 days dressed as Wonder Woman.
According to a report by The Hindu, the list of her “personal wonder woman” also includes celebrities such as US Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Arden, Kathrin Jansen (head of vaccine research at Pfizer) and Sofia Scarlet (activist).
The 2020 American superhero film Wonder Woman 1984, is a sequel to the 2017 film Wonder Woman, which is the ninth instalment in the DC Extended Universe.