Last week my column was headlined, “Is the Mood in India Changing?” This week I can say the mood has changed. In multiple YouTube interviews, CJP spokespersons have consistently claimed that the July 25 resignation of then education minister Dharmendra Pradhan, which protesting students had demanded and realist experts had ruled out, was not their chief win. “Fear has gone,” these spokespersons assert. “That’s the biggest victory.”
Since Prime Minister Modi and Home Minister Shah are now on the backfoot, should we expect a “sensation” from either or both to provide the Indian people with a new “narrative”? For almost three weeks, neither Modi nor Shah has entered parliament, where the opposition is insisting on clear answers to precise questions on harshness against Gen Z protesters and large-scale thefts in the Ram Temple (which Modi appointees control).
Massive Rally
Fear’s departure was confirmed by a massively attended student rally which the Congress Party’s Rahul Gandhi mustered on Aug 8 in Hindi-speaking India’s heartland, in the historic city of Allahabad (renamed Prayagraj by the Modi regime).
Joining the Allahabad rally were Gen Z’s young women and men from the city and from elsewhere in India’s large “ruling” tract, the state of Uttar Pradesh, which, following independence, has supplied a number of the nation’s prime ministers. The immense crowd voiced strong agreement with everything that Rahul Gandhi and a panel of students from Allahabad and Patna were saying about exam scams, joblessness, and the huge sums of family or borrowed money spent in vain on their study and coaching.
Watching a YouTube video of this rally, I could feel the frankness that has entered the Indian air. It’s a new element, this rebirth of free speech in a supposedly democratic India that from 2014 has seen a succession of restrictive measures. Before I provide fresh examples of the latter, let me recall, for their contemporary resonance, two sentences written 101 years ago by Mahatma Gandhi in his journal, Young India. At that time, Swaraj, i.e. self-rule or independence, was 22 years away.
Meaning of Independence
“Real Swaraj,” wrote Gandhi in 1925, “will come not by the acquisition of authority by a few but by the acquisition of the capacity by all to resist authority when it is abused. In other words, Swaraj is to be attained by educating the masses to a sense of their capacity to regulate and control authority.” (Young India, January 29, 1925; Collected Works, vol. 26, p. 52)
For reviving in 2026 the spirit of resistance to authoritarianism, acknowledgment must go to the new Cockroach Janta Party as well as to older opposition parties like the Congress, the Samajwadi Party, which possesses solid strength in UP, and the Trinamool Congress, which ruled West Bengal for 15 years until its defeat at the BJP’s hands earlier this year. Allotting percentages of credit for this restoration to different forces is an avoidable exercise. Appreciating what other groups do, and heightening the effort of one’s own group, is the way to go.
The regime had tried to prevent the Allahabad rally. Three days or so before April 8, the Congress Party in Allahabad was told that the space it had rented weeks earlier for the rally was no longer available. When Rahul Gandhi responded by saying he would be turning up anyway, and Gen Z indicated that it would do likewise, there was not much the regime could do as a counter. It seems that trains to Allahabad were deliberately delayed, but Gen Z was determined to show up.
“Hear us, Don’t Preach”
Heavily trolled on social media, Narendra Modi has not so far been publicly defended by ministers or other prominent BJP faces. Modi’s not very successful Instagram reels, in which he directly addressed Gen Z, may be contrasted with Rahul Gandhi’s practice, noticed during the Allahabad rally and elsewhere, of giving Gen Z the mike. CJP spokespersons have repeatedly emphasized that Gen Z wants to be heard, not presented with gyan, i.e. wise advice.
Unless the current session is extended, parliament will adjourn on Aug 13. We will soon know what Modi and Shah will or won’t say before that happens. Meanwhile we can look at instances of the restrictive measures to which I alluded earlier.
An Indian Express story written by Vidheesha Kuntamalla informed us on Aug 9 that New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) cancelled the booking of the auditorium of the School of Social Sciences for a discussion on a book by the school’s former student, Umar Khalid, citing “non-disclosure of the full facts” about the program. Indian Express adds:
“Umar Khalid has been held in jail without trial on charges under UAPA (Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act) for almost six years now. His PhD thesis was published this June as a book titled ‘Fractured Communities: Adivasi Histories and the Politics of Power’. The cancellation of the booking (for August 10) was communicated in a letter from the School of Social Sciences on August 9.
In an editorial (Aug 8), Kolkata’s Telegraph made the serious charge that changes are being made in influential national institutions such as the Kolkata-based Indian Statistical Institute and Mumbai’s Tata Institute of Social Sciences so as “to subvert their self-governance systems.” Adds the newspaper:
“Institutional autonomy is thus being eroded. Centralised tests for admission into institutions of higher education continue in spite of corruption and signal failure. Recent regulations for the selection of vice-chancellor direct that the appointee need not be a scholar with a decade’s experience as professor; a person with 10 years’ experience in industry, public administration or policy may be considered.
Downgrading Analytical Thinking
“This dominance of non-academic persons and principles is increasing with selection committees and governing boards being filled with representatives of the Centre, diminishing the role of not only teachers but of the states too... [S]cientific thinking is downgraded while changes are made in text-books to suit the dominant party’s ideas of history and culture,... and the greatness of ancient mythology is emphasised.”
In a story sent by Peerzada Ashiq from Kashmir’s capital, Srinagar, the Hindu tells us that “pursuant to legal requirements under India’s IT rules,” Meta has “restricted access in India to a report on Insha Mushtaq, a pellet victim in Jammu and Kashmir, on its platform, Instagram.” The paper adds: “Insha was an 8th-class student in 2016 when a pellet hit her, blinding her for life. During the 2016 protests in J & K, over 6,000 individuals were wounded by pellets.” In 2016, Insha would have been 12 or 13.
Not just restriction but forcible expulsion was revealed by another Indian Express story. Filed from Mumbai, this one was about Shaheda Fakir, a 40-year-old West Bengal woman living in Navi Mumbai, who was detained as an “illegal infiltrator” and then pushed into Bangladesh. According to the story, Fakir’s family is appealing to the Calcutta High Court for her return while another forum has approached the ministry of external affairs in New Delhi.
Evidently Shaheda Fakir was residing in Sanpada, Navi Mumbai, with her husband Jumman Fakir, 45, a housing society caretaker, and their younger son, a Class 7 student. They came to Maharashtra from Swarupnagar in West Bengal’s North 24 Parganas district, where their elder son is a technician repairing mobile phones.
“Who Will Look After My Son?”
“On July 18,” reports Indian Express, quoting Shaheda Fakir’s family, she “went to the market and was picked up by the police, who confiscated her cellphone. When we were informed, we went to a detention centre in Chembur with all her documents.” It seems that Shaheda Fakir asked, “Who will look after my son?” before she was forcibly sent to the border with Bangladesh and shoved across that border.
Indian Express also reports from Mumbai that Maharashtra’s BJP-led government has arrested a 22-year-old “migrant” from a UP village who recently arrived in the state for the offence of “attempting to convert” a young woman who is from the same UP village and with whom he has been in a relationship for some time. She is said to be a minor. It seems that the two were in Karnataka for a while before coming to Maharashtra.
Aimed at Muslims and Christians, a new Maharashtra law that came into force at the end of July prescribes strict punishment for those using “fraudulent” means to convert someone to their religion. The Maharashtra police has also registered a case against a UK national of Indian origin who holds an “Overseas Citizen of India” card for allegedly trying, at religious gatherings, to induce people to embrace Christianity.
The new law cited for these two arraignments had been preceded by unproven charges that India’s Muslims and Christians are trapping gullible Hindus, especially girls. The prosecutions show the card of majority victimhood being played in a land where Hindu supremacists have enjoyed open season for more than 12 years.
Next Steps for the Cockroaches
From September 1 the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) is to fan out across India with its national agenda, Kya Bolti Public (What the Public is Saying). The aim is to engage “directly with young people in every corner of India and shape a citizen-driven Reform Charter, built around four pillars: holistic education reform, education-to-employment integration, institutional accountability, and solidarity and alliances.”
The CJP’s newly announced 12-member national working committee (where no one is older than 35) includes founder Abhijit Dipke, 30, who is named convener, two co-conveners (Saurav Das, 27, and Abhishek Ranka, 30), and three women (Afreen Nawaz, 34, national secretary, Ratna Singh, 31, legal affairs lead, and Vaishnavi Gaur, 29, research & policy lead). Others on the committee (where four, including Dipke, seem to be from Maharashtra) have been assigned responsibilities for organization, finance, or technology, or for a regional zone (India’s north, west, south, or east-cum-northeast).
According to its website, the CJP will demand accountability in the country’s most influential public institutions, including the media, the judiciary, and the election commission.
The CJP seems to be building on its opening success with well thought out next steps.
