What will be the Modi regime’s response to the almost dramatic surge in popular criticism directed at it on social media, especially on dozens of YouTube channels? While elections can at times be “fixed,” and forced or induced defections might “remedy” an awkward post-election legislature, countering exposures that reach millions of homes day after day is another matter.
Defeats in two by-elections to state legislatures should cause the regime new worry. Bihar’s Bankipur, one of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) “safest” constituencies anywhere in India (held by it continuously for 40 years) became vacant when Nitin Nabin, currently the party’s national president, was elevated to the Rajya Sabha. In this stronghold, Prashant Kishor, founder of the Jan Suraaj Party, has handily defeated the BJP candidate. Similarly, in Datia in Madhya Pradesh, a state where the BJP is supposed to enjoy unchallenged sway, an Indian National Congress Party (Congress Party) candidate has defeated the ruling party in a by-poll.
Even more noteworthy, perhaps, is the total silence of Modi’s normally voluble second-in-command, Home Minister Amit Shah. Outside and within Parliament, which is currently in session, there are insistent demands for an explanation of July 20’s police brutality on peaceful young protesters, including girls in their teens, who had been rallied by the Cockroach Janta Party.
Avoiding Parliament
As I type these lines, even though 15 days have elapsed since the CJP’s bid to walk up to Parliament House was forcibly and roughly stopped, Amit Shah, the minister to whom Delhi’s police officers report, is yet to face Parliament. Extraordinary in any democracy.
By now, thanks to fearless YouTubers, millions in India have seen what seems to be clinching evidence that at around 5 a.m. on July 20, the police had permitted a truck filled with stones to park itself at Jantar Mantar, the enclave where protesters had gathered. The CJP suspects that there was a plan to send mischief-makers to hurl the stones and discredit the CJP. How that truck entered a spot barricaded on all sides by his police is only one of a dozen questions Shah would face if he showed up in Parliament.
He is in a fix. The opposition wants him to resign. Defending the police’s widely condemned conduct would intensify Gen Z anger. Some must be wondering if his silence is ominous.
To get out of current difficulties, the regime has, among things, sought to criminalize “abusive language.” On July 31, Reuters reported, citing a senior police officer, that police in the southern city of Hyderabad have registered a case against the head of Meta India, Arun Srinivas, over multiple videos posted on Facebook that allegedly depicted Prime Minister Modi in an “abusive manner.”
Regime’s Armory
Hampering communication is another tool. Frequent internet jamming prevented phone conversations between protest leaders before the Gen Z campaign extracted, to everyone’s astonishment, the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. Although the jamming didn’t achieve its aim, it is part of the regime’s abundant armory.
Will the regime try to put pressure on Google, which owns YouTube? Given the fierce loyalty of millions commanded by some of India’s YouTubers, such a move could become hugely counterproductive. An understanding of this may restrain the Modi regime. Moreover, the regime may wish to think twice before risking the alienation of global public opinion, including that of the Indian diaspora, which is not small in size.
In recent weeks Modi has personally become an ardent user of Instagram, which is owned by Mark Zuckerberg's Meta. Discovering the attachment of India’s Gen Z to Instagram, the prime minister has evidently decided to meet the youngsters on their own ground. The four or five reels he has made post the protests are said to have reached hundreds of millions.
We don’t however know that he is swinging opinion in his favor. The mother of a girl charged with abusing Modi has indeed made a public apology (on Instagram) and sought Modi’s forgiveness on the daughter’s behalf. She has also begged the prime minister to have the charges against her daughter dropped. Since in one of his reels Modi says he has forgiven the young people who in childish ignorance have said foolish things, the mother wants the police to do likewise and cancel the charges against her daughter.
Not what Modi says on Insta but how police and other agencies treat people is what counts.
Memorable Creation
Here I must mention a piece of brilliant art which is simultaneously a memorable exercise in verbal demolition. I am speaking of a 12-minute YouTube video, Unreal Interview, in which Akash Banerjee (whose channel is called Deshbhakt, i.e. Patriot) splits into a dozen separate sentences the Instagram reel where Modi announces his forgiveness of young detractors or “abusers.” After each sentence thus detached, Banerjee responds with a word of appreciation, puzzlement or shock.
The net result is 12 minutes of irresistible “conversation” between Banerjee and Modi in his “I-forgive-them” reel. Viewers’ comments at the end — their number endless and growing — reveal the video’s power.
Gen Z and other Indians have been telling themselves that as far as forgiveness is concerned, the relevant question is not whether Modi is magnanimous enough to pardon, but whether young and old Indians will forgive the Modi regime for the brutality that everyone saw. Without spelling out the words, Unreal Interview communicates this home truth. Even those not knowing Hindi may be able to follow the video’s meaning.
The second of August was to have witnessed the 86th convocation of Mumbai’s prestigious Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), but “unforeseen circumstances” intervened at the last minute and the annual event was canceled. Indian Express reported on Aug. 1 that an email sent out by TISS announcing the cancellation didn’t specify a reason. The newspaper however added that “officials and students said there were discussions on campus over security arrangements, since Chief Justice of India Surya Kant had been scheduled to attend as chief guest. They said there were concerns that protests linked to the CJP movement could break out during the event.”
As is pretty widely known, the CJP movement was birthed by an inadvertent remark by the chief justice which to some appeared to liken India’s unemployed youth to cockroaches.
NYT’s Guest Essay
A July 31 “guest essay” in The New York Times by Indian author Kapil Komireddi conveyed to the American public the significance of Gen Z’s recent success in India. I may be permitted to quote a few of Komireddi’s sentences:
“For more than three decades, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India has cultivated a political mystique sustained by fear, awe and reverence, giving rise to one of the most formidable cults of personality in the democratic world. That image has disintegrated.
“What began as a scattered outcry by students over the leaking of questions on medical school entrance exams morphed over several weeks into the most politically consequential mutiny against the prime minister of his 12 years in power....
“A broad coalition of students, recent graduates, unemployed workers, farmers and a handful of celebrities rallied behind the movement... Police officers armed with batons and tear gas descended on protesters. But last weekend Mr. Modi, forced into a corner, ultimately acquiesced to the resignation of his education minister — the unlikeliest of concessions from a man whose defining political trait has been his unwillingness to yield...
What is the thinking inside the engine of India’s Gen Z protest? Some of it has been revealed by Abhijeet Dipke, the 30-year-old founder of the CJP, while speaking in media or YouTube conversations from his parents’ home in Maharashtra’s interior, in the city of Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar, the new name for Aurangabad. Abhijeet is recovering there from typhoid contracted during the protest.
Others in that protest engine include Neha Bora, Ashutosh Ranka and Saurav Das, all of them young leaders now being sought out and interviewed by the media.
No Matter the Price
These young leaders, who seem well aware of major currents in Indian and world affairs, have clarified that for now at any rate they see the CJP as a political pressure-group, not as another political party. At least for now, these young protagonists seem united among themselves, which is not a minor thing. Their stamina, whether physical or mental, seems impressive. And they’ve shown no hesitation in voicing their commitment to an India where liberty of speech, equality of rights and goodwill towards all, none excluded, would prevail.
Speaking to Ashutosh of Satya Hindi, a courageous YouTube channel, Ashutosh Ranka, who on June 6 had taken Dipke from New Delhi’s international airport (where he had arrived from Boston) to Jantar Mantar (the only site where, with prior permission, protests may be held in India’s capital) said, “He and I were seeing Jantar Mantar for the first time. We were not seasoned protesters. [However, from] day one we decided we would not fear anyone and be prepared to pay any price. We knew there was great and widespread anger (over the examination scams).”
After listening to Abhijeet Dipke in three lengthy interviews (with Manisha Pande of Newslaundry, Rajdeep Sardesai of India Today and Barkha Dutt of The Mojo Story) and a shorter but equally interesting one with Shrikant Bangale of BBC Hindi, I jotted down these reactions.
For one thing, young Dipke is knowledgeable and smart. Alert to the gameplans of autocratic and supremacist forces, he won’t be easy prey. Secondly, his repeated references, usually within a single sentence, to the visions of Babasaheb Ambedkar, Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, each of whom called for equality and unity among all Indians, are helpful. Heartening, too is Dipke’s insistence that Gen Z should be looking not for individual heroes but for new national priorities.
Also interesting, and revealing, is this conversation between the CJP’s Saurav Das and the independent Chennai-based journal, Frontline. Here Das speaks frankly (as his colleagues Neha, Dipke and Ranka too have done) of unhappiness in India’s Gen Z with how India has been governed in recent years.
