Months of simmering public anger have given rise to a season of discontent in India. In its latest iteration, the demand is for the removal of chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and the scrapping of a controversial electoral rolls revision that has struck 130 million people off the register. Protests have erupted every day over the past week, prompting a violent crackdown on dissenters in the capital.
Over the weekend, Delhi was effectively under lockdown, transformed into a militarised landscape of barricades, road closures and paramilitary forces marching through the streets. Ahead of a protest led by the Cockroach Janta party on Saturday, authorities deployed a massive dragnet: 245 trains to Delhi were cancelled, 45 metro stations were shut, liquor shops were closed, internet services were cut off in the heart of the city and activists were put under house arrest. The founders of the Cockroach party were removed from an Air India flight shortly after it landed at Delhi airport on Saturday.
Opposition leaders were held for more than eight hours in various police stations. Video footage showed students and activists being manhandled, beaten and dragged off the streets while some journalists were also swept up in the detentions. A supreme court lawyer assisting those detained was carried away by police, his shirt torn in the process.
The crackdown extended to Mumbai, where Tushar Gandhi, the great-grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, was whisked away by the police to prevent him from participating in a local demonstration. On Monday, the Delhi police denotified Jantar Mantar as a designated protest site, instead recommending three alternative locations. It was extraordinary by any stretch of the imagination,” political activist Yogendra Yadav, who was also detained, said of Saturday’s crackdown.
Despite what he described as “terror unleashed by the state”, he said, small groups staged flash protests in several areas of Delhi defying the heavy security presence. The crackdown was preceded by similarly aggressive police action against Congress party’s protests, led by Rahul Gandhi. Dramatic images of police personnel detaining Gandhi and his sister, Priyanka, amid scenes of chaos flashed across screens nationwide.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata party has defended its position, with spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad accusing the opposition of weaponising protests after electoral defeats. Two, the country will be governed by parliament, not by the streets,” he said at a news briefing. While suppression of protests is not new, what stands out this time is the scale of the crackdown in the capital.
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