In India, fear has switched sides
By refusing to be intimidated, India’s students have turned a protest over education into a crisis for Narendra Modi. Twelve years, one month and 24
By refusing to be intimidated, India’s students have turned a protest over education into a crisis for Narendra Modi. Twelve years, one month and 24 days after Narendra Modi was sworn in, the words “Modi must resign” were uttered full-throatedly for the first time – without fear, in front of witnesses and cameras – on the streets of the national capital. India’s Gen Z is saying the unthinkable. For more than a month, students, led by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), have been camped out at Jantar Mantar, a prominent protest site in central New Delhi, seeking education reforms and the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. This week marked a significant escalation in the movement’s demands with students now also calling for the resignations of Prime Minister Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah. Modi has announced fast-track courts to deal with exam-leak cases, but the government has offered no apology for the police crackdown on protesters or indicated that officers accused of using excessive force will be investigated. The CJP had called for a march on the Indian Parliament on Monday, the first day of the monsoon session. The government’s misstep was to forcibly take activist Sonam Wangchuk to Safdarjung Hospital on the 21st day of his hunger strike. He had not eaten since June 28 in support of the students’ demands. The forced hospitalisation drew even greater support for the students. “Unmobilised” people – those who had not been called on or directed by any organisation to join the protest – also started pouring in, trying to make their way to parliament. More than 100,000 “cockroaches” streamed into central New Delhi, paying no heed to warnings from the Delhi Police or government decisions to close 16 metro stations leading to Jantar Mantar, barricade roads, jam the internet and bring in plainclothes goons. Still, people kept pouring in. Central New Delhi became a tinderbox, and students stood their ground, facing pellet guns and batons through heavy overnight rain and clouds of tear gas.
By the end of the march on parliament, at least 200 people had been injured. Police officers were filmed staging evidence, assaulting women and using spiked batons and tear gas. The Delhi Police assault acted as a force multiplier with India’s opposition parties staging their own protest, this one outside the prime minister’s residence. The protests spread across India, like a stubborn oil stain, from Patna and Mumbai to Goa. Families of children who died by suicide due to the exam leaks joined the protests. Farmers who had protested for an entire year on Delhi’s borders in 2021 returned from Punjab with food, supplies and additional volunteers. Social media were awash with reels of former voters for Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party joining the protests. Just a few hours after police cleared the protest site, the monsoon cockroaches returned to Jantar Mantar that same night after a tumultuous day spent trying to reach parliament. What began as a dispute over education has morphed into a broader moment of resistance. There can no longer be any doubt that India’s elections and political system are being manipulated through voter fraud, horse-trading, hate speech, coerced political defections and the misuse of state institutions. Voter manipulation alone makes even the Emergency era when democratic rights were suspended under Indira Gandhi from 1975 to 1977 look decent by comparison. The education minister refuses to resign. Rajasthan’s health minister blames parents for overdosing their children instead of holding the manufacturers of substandard cough syrups responsible for the deaths of children in India and around the world. The petroleum minister says fuel prices will not be reduced even as global crude oil prices fall sharply. And the finance minister has responded to complaints about soaring onion prices by saying she does not eat onions. Modi has been presiding over a scam-tainted government that has lost its legitimacy. Across his three terms, he has not accepted a shred of responsibility for any crisis that has befallen Indian citizens on his watch: COVID-19, demonetisation, the revocation of Article 370, the violence in Manipur and inflation.
The BriefWire