Jantar Mantar comes alive once again

As I key in these lines, the protest hunger strike at Jantar Mantar is on its tenth day. To begin with the hunger strike, one look at the composition of the hunger strikers will tell you about the unique nature of this protest. There is Sonam Wangchuk better known in his role as an innovator-cum-educator, climate activist and autonomy advocate for Ladakh. But here he is on fast to express his solidarity with students demanding resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan holding him to account for successive cases of paper leak.

There are six activists of All India Students Association, including the organisation's President Neha, an articulate and courageous champion of contemporary student struggles, Danish, Joint Secretary of JNUSU, a resolute activist who had to be unfortunately hospitalised on the seventh day of her fast, and four other leaders - Manish, Deepak, Aameen and Hrishikesh. There are more than a dozen other hunger strikers, all unaffiliated individual participants from different parts of the country, who just came and joined the sit-in and then the fast.

Preceding the hunger strike, Jantar Mantar witnessed eight days of sit-in demonstration. Jantar Mantar these days is a heavily barricaded area with dense deployment of security forces. It takes quite a lot of courage and determination for protesters and observers to enter the protest site. Yet fresh batches of students and their parents from the Delhi NCR and even beyond, from states like Rajasthan, Haryana, UP, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh and even the southern zone, arrive each day as do solidarity contingents of teachers, trade unionists, farmer leaders and women activists. There are book stalls, reading centres, poster workshops - all adding up to a vibrant atmosphere and upbeat mood defying the punishing Delhi heat and unmistakably hostile and intimidating environment for protests.

This shows the innate strength and organic nature of the protest. The emergence of the CJP signalled a digital explosion of youth anger, a veritable social media storm. This would not have happened had the CJI not used words like cockroach and parasite for young dissenting activists. This would not have happened had India's students not been reeling under serial paper leaks and growing mockery of the education-examination-recruitment systems. If the inversion of the symbolism of cockroach from a dehumanising and derogatory term to a proud badge of protest was creative and smart, the decision to go physical at Jantar Mantar was bold and courageous.

This combination of creativity and courage is now being tested in the punishing summer of Delhi. Unlike Nepal and Bangladesh, the Indian state did not risk adopting a policy of outright suppression of Gen Z anger and protest. On the contrary, the Modi government wants to tire the protesters out. For those who love to compare the ongoing protests demanding the education minister's resignation to the Anna agitation during the late UPA era, the biggest contrast is in the attitude of the dominant media to such protests. While the Anna agitation received the fullest backing of the mainstream media, the CJP protests are being ignored, if not maligned and subjected to media trial.

We have witnessed several powerful and sustained protests during the Modi era. The regime has responded differently to these protests. The student movement in the wake of Rohith Vemula's institutional murder was demonised as an anti-national conspiracy. A whole new term was coined to malign the movement: tukde tukde gang. The Shaheen Bagh protests were crushed by inciting and unleashing communal violence and incarcerating leading activists under UAPA. The farmers' movement succeeded in displaying remarkable strength, determination and resilience to carry on for one full year and forcing the government to repeal the anti-farmer farm laws. More recently workers' protests for increased wages have met with brutal repression with several agitating workers, and pro-worker activists and intellectuals dubbed anti-national and put in prison. For the CJP protests, the government has so far avoided a policy of outright crackdown, but given the track record of the regime, an early or direct resignation of the Education minister seems highly unlikely.

At a time when democracy, dissent and public protests face a deeply hostile environment, the CJP must of course be given due credit for having struck a chord and created a space to channelise the anger and aspirations of young India to hold the government accountable for its utter incompetence and neglect of the interests of the youth. The committed involvement of AISA and a few other student organisations and the solidarity expressed by several public intellectuals and civil society activists has helped the CJP protests continue for more than a month now. If the protests can be sustained and connected with other anti-corruption and pro-democratic initiatives, it will have played a great role in energising and empowering a whole new generation of awakened citizens who are mockingly called andolanjeevis, cockroaches and parasites by India's current lot of rulers.

Dipankar Bhattacharya

General secretary of the Communist party of India [Marxist Leninist] Liberation.