It is funny that we live in times where I cannot spell out clearly the one winning protest signboard from Jantar Mantar’s barricades without asterisks.
“F*** Fascists,” it said, loud and proud. The one thing that can be said without disguise, though, is this: what the right-wing is most scared of, and rightfully so, is the left. In India, after the left lost power in Kerala, we have no ostensible left party in power. But when power is usurped by a state that is ready to ignore anything but the person at the helm, when the police is an instrument of repression and courts incarcerate protestors with no bail in sight for years on end, then the only place for such a regime to fear is that of the ideologically committed.
Therefore, on the streets of Jantar Mantar, what I saw, beyond [innovator and activist] Sonam Wangchuk and [Cockroach Janta Party founder] Abhijeet Dipke, was the steely and effective presence of the ideological left.
The only reason a student could brandish a ‘F*** Fascists’ banner is because those from the Students’ Federation of India, the All India Students’ Federation and the All India Students’ Association were on hunger strike for over 20 days. Their tents in a quiet corner were fronted by banners of Bhagat Singh and Che Guevara, and pamphlets and circulars on the New Education Policy, on revolutionary ideals and on ideas that have stood the test of time.
What started as a students’ protest over mis-administration of medical college entrance tests and the education system has morphed into one of the biggest challenges facing Indian premier Narendra Modi’s government. One journalist who visited Jantar Mantar, the site of the nearly month-long protest in Delhi, narrates what she saw on June 19, a day before protesters were brutally baton-charged by the police…
Their corner was visited by celebrities from the progressive movements — [actor and director] Prakash Raj and [actor] Shabana Azmi, committed left leaders like Brinda Karat and Nivedita Menon, the committed writer Arundhati Roy and Ambedkarite leader Chandra Shekhar Azad.
The police and paramilitary did their draconian duty — beating some students till their heads spilled with blood. They tried everything — put up barricades eight feet high and welded them together. The crowds managed to break them down. The police beat people up.
A man with a fountain of blood gushing from his head was filmed talking back to the police: “Hum tau shaheed hain, har yug mein janam lain ge [We are martyrs, we will be born in every generation].”
“Har yug mein janam lain ge, tumhari auqaat bata dein ge [We will be born in every era, we will put you in your place].”
“Aap samajhtay ho aap ne maar diya, hum har yug me janam lain ge, ghulam nahin, maalik hain, aur har janam me aap ko aap ki auqaat bata dein ge [You think you can kill us but we will be reborn in every era, we are not slaves and will always be your masters].”
Meanwhile, more tepid leaders, who I shall not name, used the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) podium to trot out lectures on peace. Some amongst the media also went down this well-worn rabbit hole — “the peaceful protestors.”
I was at the protest [on July 19, 2026], one day before D-day. There were over 100,000 people and it was the most beautiful and civilised sight ever, managed by well-heeled left cadres — and by well-heeled, I refer to ideological commitment. They had paper and plastic fans. They spotted grey-haired people and started fanning us — passing bottles of water, chana [chickpeas] to eat, forming queues, making way for one another, writing slogans, being considerate, waiting for others to pass.
But then peace in draconian times is an ideal only the ideologically scared, unsure or wavering will put down as a first principle. When your skull is cracked and you are still staring down the police officer, this is not the definition of peace. It is a war of the state against the people. Peace cannot be held as the only ideal. It is the badge of status quoists too fearful of barricades, commitment and laying down of life.
And this is where students have shown that they are thirsting for commitment, ideological grounding. They’re coming to Jantar Mantar with copies of the constitution and posters of Dr B.R. Ambedkar. This is a commitment to an ideology first and at any cost. It’s not about tepidly made promises to show the other cheek. There are memes and photos that speak of students tired of having nothing to hold on to and nowhere to go.
I asked a policeman yesterday [July 19] if in his heart he wasn’t committed to the students. He looked away, then ahead at his boss standing some distance from us and said quietly, “I’ll answer that question when I’ve taken off my uniform, madam.”
For now, some from the CJP have been called to the negotiating table. There are all kinds of speculation in a country full of conspiracy theorists — “this is a front for the Aam Aadmi Party”, “the protests will die down and the government will then come down harder”, and “the government is too strong and the opposition in tatters, so nothing much will change there.”
But the thing about protests like this is that they puncture time, they flip the fear directed at them and turn it back on the government. And they allow people to believe, briefly, that anything is possible. That moment is what the right fears above all. The loss of absolute control and the rupturing of the veneer that they are invincible or even popular.
Whatever the present holds — compromise or the end of a month-long stake-out at Jantar Mantar — what the country cannot unsee is the willingness of a growing and critical mass of the young and restless to the ideals of the Indian constitution, and especially of the right to question and to be defiant. This bedrock is most certainly left-oriented, organised and unstoppable. It does not have to accrue power immediately or by the usual route of party, election and then power.
Power does not reside in a pliant police and institutions where there has been a hostile takeover. Power lies in the ability of a bleeding student to stand in front of a nonplussed police and say, “**** fascists, I will show you your place.”
Taking my cue from the students at Jantar Mantar, I will add that the draconian-in-charge may not have a taste for T.S. Eliot and the prophecy his poem ‘East Coker’ holds out. But, maybe, he should lean into what the barricades are saying loudly, and what Eliot evoked a century and more ago:
“And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.”
How terrible for the haves, for those who think they have ‘arrived’ and have ‘got there.’ How terrible the frightening proposition of having to look at the barricades, and at a future where they cannot stay where they now are.
The writer is a journalist and activist from Uttar
Pradesh, India. She is also the author of the
non-fiction The Anatomy of Hate
By arrangement with The Wire
Published in Dawn, EOS, July 26th, 2026