No one stirred by humanity’s smiles and tears, or its hopes and fears, can ignore Latin America. One of my disappointments is that the We Are One Humanity website has not managed to present stories about this large and wonderful part of our world.
Let me start my column this week by noting the political news from Brazil that everyone would have heard, which The New York Times presented as follows on Oct. 5, via an article by Jack Nicas: “Over the last 18 months, right-wing candidates in Latin America have won the last seven presidential elections. Now the region’s biggest nation might be weeks away.
“On [Oct. 4], Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of Brazil’s former hard-right president Jair Bolsonaro, received the most votes in the election’s first round, making him a strong favorite for the presidency when he faces off against President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva later this month.
"Brazilians also gave right-wing politicians control of Congress and governorships across the nation, including four new federal lawmakers with the last name Bolsonaro. (They are the former president’s wife, two other sons and brother.)” A lifelong fighter, Lula has declared that the final round is the real round. He has a huge fight on his hands.
Block of Missing Voters
“In India, Frankness Grows and Tension Nears” was the headline last time for this weekly column. Right now, as I type on Oct. 6, the tension comes across sharply on YouTube videos from New Delhi. Scores of opposition members of Parliament (MPs) can be seen struggling physically against barricades erected by the police to stop them from entering the headquarters of a once-prestigious Election Commission. They wanted to protest what they — and a great many other Indians — are convinced about, which is the EC’s brazen partisanship and its role in the removal from India’s voters’ lists of millions of names.
On Oct. 5, the online portal The Wire published the following statement, addressed to Gyanesh Kumar, chair of the three-member EC, by a panel of former bureaucrats and current activists:
“By the time this exercise [of revising electoral rolls] is over, the gap between the adult population and the electorate would be 150 million or more, suggesting the largest ever [block of] ‘missing voters’ in human history. The resulting deletions have disproportionately affected vulnerable citizens — women, the poor, migrants, minorities and the elderly. ... You stand guilty of reckless disregard of the foundational principle of universal adult franchise.”
That Gyanesh Kumar must go has become a nationwide cry. On Oct. 10, the Cockroaches — the members of the Cockroach Janta Party or CJP — are to assemble in strength in Delhi to make that demand, and toward achieving that goal the India Alliance of almost all opposition parties has announced a mass joint rally in the capital on Sunday, Nov. 1.
Will the Indian regime let either the CJP or the India Alliance hold the events they’ve publicized? While demonstrations have mushroomed across India, in the capital even the small Jantar Mantar space where protests were earlier allowed was firmly denied in the last few days to students and activists who wished to express themselves. Scores were arrested and removed; they reappeared, were rearrested, appeared again, and were again removed.
Many arrests and removals, including of women activists and journalists, were visibly crude and allegedly improper and violative of laws.
Why Is Modi Silent?
Police and paramilitary presence in the capital is dominant. To curb participation in rallies, metro stations in the city’s heart were frequently closed during the last several days, and it seems that the internet too was often blocked.
The regime is speaking almost solely through actions of this kind. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah are not normally reticent, but neither has so far made any public comment on the protests or on the demand that Gyanesh Kumar must go. Are they in a dilemma? Have they been stunned by the popular reaction? Are they looking for a clever response? Or for something drastic?
Frank speech has latterly caught on in India, especially among the nation’s vast Gen Z. And this frank speech is being loved, copied and improved upon on a large scale. For the regime to restore the climate of silence-in-the-face-of-unfairness that marked Modi’s India for about 10 years, from around 2016 to this year’s summer, will not be easy.
To be clear, the bulk of India’s traditional media, whether print or electronic, continues to be extremely wary of incurring the regime’s displeasure. However, India’s independent YouTubers, their numbers rapidly growing, are keeping the country informed. This video by Ravish Kumar shows Rahul Gandhi, leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha (lower house), Priyanka Vadra and other MPs atop the barricades that had prevented them from entering the EC building.
Here, in another YouTube video, is Gandhi talking to reporters from inside the nearby building of All India Radio, which he managed to enter. Says Gandhi:
“Nobody is going to escape. Modi, Shah, Bhagwat (Mohan Bhagwat, RSS chief), Gyanesh Kumar, they have committed treason. Three hundred Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha (upper house) MPs, the people’s representatives, were here a few hours back. We were stopped and barred from meeting Gyanesh Kumar and his colleagues, who are a few yards away.”
What follows was written for this column on Monday, Oct. 5, before the paragraphs appearing above.
The ongoing trials and tests on India’s streets will make history one way or another. Will the people who are coming together stop a mighty, high-handed government in its tracks? Or will protesters be suppressed? Ruthlessly suppressed? Will they become exhausted? In the end, will the people choose to look away from the protesters?
The regime has much on its side. Limitless funds that can influence election outcomes. TV channels pumping out state propaganda. On virtually every acre of Indian soil, billboards presenting Narendra Modi as the tireless leader thanks to whom the nation is a global power. The regime’s capacity, repeatedly demonstrated, to silence or buy political foes. For restraining protesters, large paramilitary and police forces, which the country’s young, swimming in a sea of unemployment, vie to join.
Crucially, moreover, many of India’s Hindus, who form 80% of the population, have been indoctrinated to believe that for decades, in fact for centuries, previous Congress Party governments, as also prior British and Mughal rulers, had “appeased” the country’s Muslim minority — and that finally, under Modi and the BJP, Hindus have come into their own.
Modi Was Compelled
Enter, however, the Cockroaches, who said they know India’s ugly realities and have come together to change them. As a result of their historic and peaceful Gen Z protest in Delhi, to which the regime’s police responded with embarrassing brutality, Modi was compelled, on July 25, to drop his education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan.
Enters, too, Gyanesh Kumar, chair of India’s three-person Election Commission, who had been nominated there by Modi and by Modi’s closest associate, Home Minister Amit Shah. Gyanesh Kumar has been insisting, and continues to insist, that India’s electoral rolls need cleansing. Also that the body he chairs is performing the cleansing, and will continue to carry it out. It is widely thought that those who can’t be expected to vote for the BJP will constitute the bulk of weeded-out names.
But also lands, on Sept 23, a courageous and meticulous exposé by The Indian Express of what could be grave electoral manipulations, and of the questioning of some of Gyanesh Kumar’s directives by his two EC colleagues, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi.
The scene changes. Opposition parties demand action against Gyanesh Kumar. “Gyanu must go,” say the Cockroaches, using a colloquial abbreviation.
Sunday, Oct. 4, saw an immense rally in Mumbai, organized by opposition parties, demanding Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation. The previous Friday, which was Oct. 2, Gandhi Jayanti (Mahatma Gandhi's birth anniversary), the young men and women leading the Cockroach Janta Party had mobilized thousands of Mumbai’s Gen Z to make that same demand.
Apart from being India’s biggest financial and commercial hub, Mumbai is the capital of the politically dominant state of Maharashtra state, currently controlled by the BJP. When full-throated calls for Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation are made in Mumbai, a message goes out to the whole country.
On Monday, Oct. 5 another force entered the scene: India’s Supreme Court. Taking notice of a petition against Gyanesh Kumar, Chief Justice Surya Kant said the top court would wait for a response from him before coming to a decision, but he added remarks the opposition has pounced upon.
Directly repudiating a statement by Gyanesh Kumar that a change introduced in September by the EC in respect of the country’s electoral rolls was in conformity with an earlier judgment of the Supreme Court, the chief justice remarked that that was not the case.
“The CEC Lied”
To this, Gandhi’s instant comment was, “It is now established beyond doubt that Gyanesh Kumar changed Form 6 illegally and unilaterally.” The Congress Party’s general secretary, Jairam Ramesh, said: "Obviously and very clearly, the chief election commissioner (CEC) lied. Form 6 was deliberately modified by the CEC himself to delete Gen Z voters, of whom the Prime Minister is simply terrified.”
On Tuesday, Oct. 6, opposition MPs will march in Delhi to the Election Commission to demand Gyanesh Kumar’s exit. And Saturday, Oct. 10 will witness a demonstration in the capital summoned by the Cockroaches. Here’s what Abhijeet Dipke, the CJP’s founder, said in Mumbai on Oct. 2, directly addressing Modi:
“Wait for Oct. 10. If Gyanesh has not left by then, there will be a huge rally in Delhi. And this time don’t make the mistake of ordering a lathi (baton) charge. If you do, the next resignation demanded will be yours.”
India’s capital was not silent on Oct. 2, but protests there were banned and police personnel outnumbered protesters. Scores, if not hundreds, were bundled into police lorries, and released after some hours. They returned and were again seized. The scenes were repeated on Oct. 3 and 4, with a larger number of protesters.
To almost everyone’s pleasant surprise, a few of India’s prominent TV channels too, not just the brave YouTube ones, have been reporting what’s happening. Millions witnessed scenes from Delhi on Oct. 2 and 3 of, for example, Neha Bora, president of the All India Students’ Association, which is affiliated with one of India’s Communist parties, being arrested, returning to protest, and being seized again.
An eloquent speaker in English, Hindi and some other languages, Neha Bora was a constant face of July’s Gen Z protests in Delhi that produced the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. On Oct. 2, an X user posted:
“Maturity is realizing Neha Bora is more talented than Abhijeet Dipke. A complete Gen Z icon with an absolutely ridiculous aura.”
'I Agree,' Says Dipke
To this, Dipke offered a quick response on X. “I agree,” he wrote.
This tiny exchange, I may venture to predict, and Dipke’s response in particular, will have done more for solidarity in India’s movement for democracy, and for an understanding generally of the secret of teamwork, than any training course from our world’s experts.
[I should insert here, typing on the evening of Oct. 6, that after being arrested several times in Delhi, Neha Bora went to Kolkata, where a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government has been in power since May this year, and delivered a rousing speech at Jadavpur University. I should also add that we could witness heartening times if the political parties opposing the regime and the “pressure group” of the Cockroaches can between them show the spirit exemplified in Dipke’s instantaneous appreciation of Bora’s abilities.]
Declaring that truth was being suppressed, Gandhi launched on Oct. 3 the Satyagraha digital platform to consolidate issue-based protests unfolding across the country.
In a post on X, Gandhi urged people to register their protests against the government on the new platform, saying: “Across the country, people are fighting for their rights and too often, fighting alone. Gen Z, students, farmers, Adivasis, Dalits, women — every struggle has its own story. But a lone voice is often easier to silence. Satyagraha is an initiative to bring these voices together on one map.”
What’s On Your Mind?
In a YouTube video, Gandhi added: “Resist injustice. Speak truth to power. Be heard. For all those who believe in the power of peaceful resistance, this platform is for you. Tell me the issues you’re fighting for. I am listening.”
Ever since 2014, when he became prime minister, Narendra Modi has been giving a monthly talk, which the government’s media disseminates, titled “Mann Ki Baat,” or “What’s on my mind.” Gandhi seems to be asking the Indian citizen, “What’s on your mind?”
