Watching the spiraling student protest in the heart of India’s capital from 12,000 km has been a deeply upending experience. Having reported many agitations and protests in India in my 45-year-long career there is, on the face of it, a superficial sense of sameness about the indefinite fasting by members of the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) and their affiliates. However, that sameness disappears quickly on a closer examination.

The most striking feature for me was several instances of students in their teens and 20s standing defiantly as the police mercilessly caned them indiscriminately. So many police personnel looked as if they were redirecting their life’s accumulated frustrations on the largely peaceful protesters. There have been videos where young men and women did not even duck as the Delhi police personnel thrashed them in that uniquely ugly and cruel manner that the police in India tend to do.

Many students were heard saying, “Aur maro (Beat us more)” in what seemed like a remarkable case of mind over matter, signaling complete defiance. It reminded me of a scene from the multiple Oscar winning 1982 movie ‘Gandhi’ by Richard Attenborough where during the iconic 1930 Dandi Salt March, the marchers calmy offered themselves to be beaten by the police working under the draconian British rule. It was Gandhi’s way of subjecting oneself to pain and suffering in order to shame the perpetrators into rethinking a ruthless policy.

Sheer Brutality of Police 

The sheer visual impact of the brutality of July 20 Jantar Mantar police action revealed yet again a society in profound ferment. It is not clear whether the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi realizes the lasting damage such unbridled brutality does to India’s image. Irrespective of the merit of the cause of the protest—and it is obvious that this one is grounded in a legitimate cause—government at every level in India desperately needs to completely transform policing. 

Rather than becoming gleeful enforcers of the ideological prejudices of the government of the day, they need to develop standards and practices that are becoming of a professional police force. The sight of a teenage girl sobbing and pleading with the police for mercy and another weeping and asking the police “Don’t you have children?” powerfully accentuated the collapse of civility.

As happens with all such protests, there is, of course, the danger of it being hijacked by established political parties. Videos and photographs of Rahul Gandhi, the Leader of the Opposition in Parliament, his sister and Member of Parliament Priyanka Gandhi, both belonging the Indian National Congress, and Member of Parliament Akhilesh Yadav, belonging to the Samajwadi Party of which he is also the president, being roughed up and arrested may temporarily lend some weight to the student protest. But their support is equally fraught with the prospect of the movement getting subsumed into a culture of entrenched interests.

An Inflexion Point?

While it is inevitable that a largely emasculated political opposition to the Modi government would latch on to the opportunity provided by the student protest, it is crucial for student leaders to ensure that they do not get helplessly co opted. Rahul Gandhi and a handful of others do appear to have genuine concern for some of the same issues raised by the student community. 

However, unless the movement under the broader umbrella of the CJP carves out a distinct space for itself to represent the country’s increasingly restive young population, they run the risk of getting bogged down in the morass that is Indian politics.

The CJP has taken the relatively obvious first step of making an impact via a method pioneered by Gandhi but even he was aware of the limited efficacy of fast unto death. Students will now have to shape their movement in a manner that it becomes a powerful pressure group that can force the government to fundamentally reform India’s education system and its many chronic failures, the case of the leak of question papers being the most egregious recent example.

It is tempting to call the Jantar Mantar protests an inflexion point for not just the Modi government but even the way India’s politics has evolved since 2014. It is easier to start a revolution than to sustain it long-term.

(The author is a Chicago-based journalist, author and commentator. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached at mcsix@outlook.com)