On Gandhi Jayanti, ‘Jail Bharo’ returns as a weapon of protest

Today, October 2, 2026, marks Gandhi Jayanti. Mumbai’s Shivaji Park is, for now, lined with police barricades. Authorities say this is because, under a 2013 Bombay High Court order and a 2016 Maharashtra government order, Shivaji Park is a “silence zone”, and the police do not have the authority to permit gatherings there. But the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) is refusing to accept the restriction. CJP founder Abhijit Dipke wrote on X:

“This tactic of suppressing the voice of citizens is unacceptable. If our right to protest is taken away, then the Jail Bharo Andolan will begin in Mumbai on Gandhi Jayanti.”

CJP has made its position clear: on Gandhi’s birthday, its members will fill the jails. The “Jail Bharo Andolan” is a direct legacy of Gandhi’s civil disobedience movement. During the Quit India Movement of 1942, Gandhi described prison as a “school of Satyagraha”. Throughout August that year, a “Jail Bharo Month” was observed, during which more than one lakh people were arrested. For Mahatma Gandhi, the willingness to go to prison was one of the most powerful instruments of non-violent resistance.

The logic was simple: when people willingly accept imprisonment, the very justification for the ruler’s repression comes under question. After the violence at Chauri Chaura in 1922, Gandhi withdrew the Non-Cooperation Movement, saying:

“Non-violence is the first article of my faith and the last article of my creed.”

CJP has brought that tradition to the centre of its current campaign. “Jail Bharo” does not simply mean getting arrested. It is a political declaration that says:

“We are willing to go to prison because our right to protest has been taken away.”

Gandhi believed that such voluntary sacrifice could weaken the moral authority of those in power. It could, in the minds, bodies and consciousness of ordinary people, break through the iron gates of an authoritarian, fascist or colonial prison.

At the heart of CJP’s current campaign is Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. The organisation alleges widespread irregularities in the “Special Intensive Revision” (SIR) of electoral rolls. CJP has three principal demands: the resignation of Gyanesh Kumar and criminal proceedings against him; suspension of the SIR process and restoration of the January 2025 electoral rolls; and greater transparency and civil-society participation in the appointment of Election Commissioners.

An investigation by The Indian Express journalist Ritika Chopra has reported that the two Election Commissioners, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, formally raised objections at least 14 times over the past 10 months, alleging that decisions concerning electoral rolls had been taken without their knowledge. The SIR process across 30 states and Union Territories has resulted in more than 130 million names being excluded, according to reports. The figure amounts to roughly 14 per cent of India’s electoral roll.

Tushar Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi’s great-grandson, has expressed support for the movement. On August 19, he reportedly visited Abhijit Dipke’s residence, where the two discussed the issue at length. He said:

“I can see the reflection of Mahatma Gandhi’s Satyagraha in the movement at Jantar Mantar.”

Tushar Gandhi further said:

“The Cockroach Janata Party’s movement has become a national movement, and it cannot be stopped. We too will play the role of supporters in this struggle for rights.”

Dipke said:

“Mahatma Gandhi is the soul of this nation. The Cockroach Janata Party’s peaceful and non-violent protest follows the path shown by Gandhi.”

CJP’s plan is to take the movement beyond Mumbai to Goa, Bengaluru, Kolkata and Ranchi. After these protests, the campaign is expected to culminate at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi later this month. CJP had already announced that the October 2 agitation in Mumbai would mark the beginning of a nationwide campaign.

The movement has already reached Bengal. In July, 16 people were sent to judicial custody following a CJP protest in Kolkata and were later granted bail following a Supreme Court order. CJP’s “Jail Bharo” campaign can be seen as a contemporary invocation of the spirit of Gandhi’s “Ekla Chalo” journey in Noakhali in 1946.

In the final chapter of My Days with Gandhi, Nirmal Kumar Bose wrote that after Gandhi’s death, Indians came to realise:

“The killing of Gandhi was our own defeat.”

According to Bose, Gandhi was a personality who learnt the lessons of politics through the depth of his relationship with ordinary people.

Today, as young members and supporters of the Cockroach Janata Party gather at Shivaji Park carrying images of Gandhi, a question inevitably arises: can Gandhi’s non-violent weapon of “Jail Bharo” work against alleged electoral irregularities in the twenty-first century?

The answer remains unknown.

But one thing is clear: the Satyagraha and “Jail Bharo” tradition that Gandhi regarded as among the most powerful forms of resistance has not disappeared. CJP’s movement demonstrates how Gandhi’s ideas can continue to be invoked beyond the pages of history — on the streets, in prisons and in the hands of a new generation.

Gandhi, therefore, belongs not only to the past.

He also belongs to the future.