'No Room for Bhagwat': Interfaith group blasts Hindutva leader's upcoming MSG speech

(RNS) — 'There is no room for Mohan Bhagwat and RSS hatred in our city,' said Brad Lander, Democratic nominee for Congress, of Bhagwat’s speaking engagement at Madison Square Garden.

Brad Lander, center, speaks during a demonstration against Mohan Bhagwat at City Hall on Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2026, in New York City. (RNS photo/Fiona André)

Fiona André

August 25, 2026 

RNS

NEW YORK (RNS) — A coalition of faith leaders and religious advocates gathered at New York’s City Hall on Tuesday (Aug. 25) to denounce the upcoming visit of Mohan Bhagwat, leader of the Hindu nationalist paramilitary organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) based in India.

Brad Lander, a New York Democratic Party nominee for Congress and former New York City comptroller, denounced what he described as an exclusionary and discriminatory ideology. 

“There is no room for Mohan Bhagwat and RSS hatred in our city,” he said, adding the organization “fomented violence and promoted hatred against Muslims, against Sikhs, against Dalits, against Christians.”

The press conference, organized by the progressive advocacy organization Hindus for Human Rights, included speakers from the Indian American Muslim Council, the Interfaith Center of New York, Riverside Church and the New York State Council of Churches.

Bhagwat, chief of the RSS since 2009, is expected to address 5,000 Hindu Americans at Madison Square Garden on Saturday (Aug. 29). His visit has prompted outcry in the U.S., including from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. Meanwhile, some Hindu American organizations have accused Bhagwat’s critics of leveraging opposition to Hindu nationalism, also called Hindutva, to spew anti-Hindu hate.

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat addresses students during an India International Movement to Unite Nations (IIMUN) event in Mumbai, India, Thursday, Aug. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

Founded in 1925 during British colonial rule, the RSS promotes a vision of India as a Hindu-first nation and describes itself as a cultural and social movement dedicated to strengthening Hindu society. The ideology also emerged as a response to the continent’s long history of Muslim conquests, which the RSS has presented as a period of Hindu subjugation. Its members formed India’s current ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and the organization has survived multiple bans to now serve as an ideological mentor and launching pad for several high-ranking politicians in the party, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi. 

Human rights groups have accused the RSS and BJP of orchestrating decades of violence against minorities in India, a claim the RSS has repeatedly denied, though their philosophy paints Muslim and Christian Indians as foreigners. Since Modi’s election in 2014, human rights organizations and watchdog groups have documented a sharp rise in state-sanctioned discrimination, hate speech and vigilante-led violence targeting religious minorities and critics in India. 

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Bhagwat rarely addresses American Hindus and hasn’t visited the country since 2018, when he attended the World Hindu Congress in Chicago.

The “Universal Oneness Celebration,” which will mark the RSS centenary, promises to emulate Sanskrit principles of unity and family. The rally is supported by 135 Hindu American organizations and is expected to draw temple representatives, yoga organizations and cultural groups. Bhagwat is then expected to attend two more private events in New York before heading to Canada.

American Hindus for Dialogue, which organized the event, addressed the outcry sparked by Bhagwat’s visit in a press release. 

The RSS “has also played a prominent and, at times, debated role in India’s modern history, making Dr. Bhagwat a figure of considerable interest to observers, supporters and critics alike. His New York remarks will offer a direct opportunity to hear his perspective on the unity theme anchoring this year’s program,” the organization wrote. 

Members of the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) during an event in Bhopal, India, in 2016. The RSS, parent organization of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, combines Hindu religious education with self-defense exercises. (Photo by Suyash Dwivedi/Wikipedia/Creative Commons)

Asif Mahmood, vice chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) who was born in Pakistan, condemned Bhagwat’s U.S. visit in a statement posted on the organization’s X account.

“India’s PM Modi is a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), an Indian umbrella organization whose sub-groups have perpetrated attacks on religious minorities, incl. Christians & Muslims,” he wrote in the post.

His colleague, Commissioner Gene Mills, also decried Bhagwat’s visit and urged American leaders not to receive him. His statement linked to the commission’s recent report, which found RSS members responsible for and tolerant of religious freedom violations. The report cited violent acts committed by Hindu nationalist mobs against Christians and Muslims. For example, in June, a Hindu nationalist mob attacked 20 Christian families in the state of Odisha after they refused to convert to Hinduism. The attacks, which did not prompt police intervention, left eight people injured and hospitalized.

“RSS leaders, even when affiliated with the Indian gov’t, should not be honored with high-level meetings or diplomatic courtesies. Instead, the USG (U.S. government) should focus on imposing sanctions on RSS members found responsible for FoRB (freedom of religion and belief) violations,” wrote Mills in an X post. 

In its annual report, USCIRF recommended that the U.S. freeze the assets of RSS members and bar them from entering the country “for their responsibility and tolerance of severe violations of religious freedom.” It also urged the government to designate India a “country of particular concern” for engaging in and tolerating religious freedom violations.

USCIRF has repeatedly rung the alarm about India’s turn to Hindu nationalism. In November 2025, it raised concerns that Modi’s BJP was enforcing policies aligned with Hindutva ideology, which have led to “disenfranchising members of India’s religious minority communities.” In recent years, BJP-majority states, such as Gujarat and Haryana, have introduced or strengthened laws criminalizing conversions to other faiths with prison sentences.

In response, the U.S.-based Hindu Policy Research and Advocacy Collective (HinduPACT) condemned USCIRF’s opposition to Bhagwat’s visit.

“USCIRF has disgraced its mandate. When its chair speaks about India and the RSS, he sounds less like the head of a pluralistic American commission and more like an advocate for a hardened anti-Hindu narrative,” wrote HinduPACT founder Ajay Shah. “Mohan Bhagwat leads one of the world’s most consequential Hindu organizations. He should not be met with slander scripted by … groups that have made a habit of treating Hindu self-assertion as extremism.”

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At the press conference, Lander, who is Jewish, said he felt compelled to stand in solidarity with Hindu organizers denouncing Hindutva’s weaponization of Hinduism and compared it to his denouncement of the devastation caused by Israel’s war in Gaza after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks.  

Similar weaponization happened around the world, he said, adding, “We see it in settler violence in the West Bank, and in genocide in Gaza, and we see it in what Hindutva is doing.”

A group with participants from an array of religions protests an upcoming visit of Mohan Bhagwat at City Hall on Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2026, in New York City. (RNS photo/Fiona André)

Danielle Williams, an organizer with the Interfaith Center of New York, denounced Madison Square Garden for hosting the event, saying it wasn’t “the first time that Madison Square Garden has hosted fascists, hate and supremacy,” alluding to the pro-Nazi rally held in the arena in 1939. Modi also spoke at the venue in 2014. 

Williams likened the anti-Hindutva advocacy to criticism of Christian nationalism in the U.S. 

“These movements are not the same; they come from different religions, histories, and political contexts,” she said. “But we know that the danger of any ideology that says one religious identity should oppress others — that is not religious freedom.”

Amin Zama, associate director of the Indian American Muslim Council, called on the State Department to deny Bhagwat’s visa to prevent his visit. “We are here to say clearly that New York must not become a stage for normalizing fascist and exclusionary politics,” he said. 

The founder of the Sikh Council NY, Japneet Singh, called on Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who was born in Uganda to Indian parents, to condemn Bhagwat’s visit as firmly as he denounced that of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In late July, the mayor called Netanyahu a “war criminal” and acknowledged that he couldn’t enforce an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court against him for crimes against humanity committed in the Israel-Hamas war.  

“If you believed Modi’s record demanded that you speak out, then how can New York remain silent when the ideological organization that helped shape the political worldview behind Modi is bringing its leader to our city,” Singh said. 

During his campaign, Mamdani criticized Modi and said he wouldn’t appear at a press conference next to him. Mamdani pointed to the 2002 massacre of Muslims in the Indian state of Gujarat, when Modi served as the state’s chief minister, and noted his father’s family were Gujarati Muslims. 

Saturday’s event will also coincide with the Hindu festival of Raksha Bandhan, which falls on Friday (Aug. 28) and celebrates the loving bond between brothers and sisters. 

 INDIA

One Sanitation Worker Dies Every Few Days, Zero Accountability

Sabrang India | 07 Aug 2026

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From disputed death figures to continuing caste-based labour, the Safai Karmachari Andolan protest at Jantar Mantar, saying India's sewer deaths are not accidents.

Image: Hindustan Times

For more than three decades, India has had laws prohibiting manual scavenging. For nearly three years, it has had a central scheme promising the complete mechanisation of sanitation work. The Supreme Court has repeatedly declared that no human being should be made to enter a sewer or septic tank, enhanced compensation for sewer deaths, and even directed a complete ban on manual sewer cleaning in six metropolitan cities. Yet sanitation workers continue to die inside toxic pits.

On August 4, hundreds of safai karmacharis (sanitation workers), families of those who died cleaning sewers and septic tanks, Members of Parliament, students, writers and civil society groups assembled at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi under the banner of the Safai Karmachari Andolan (SKA). Their demand was strikingly simple: that Prime Minister Narendra Modi publicly acknowledge the government’s failure to stop these deaths, apologise to the country, and end what they described as a continuing cycle of preventable killings.

The demonstration, organised under the slogan #STOPKILLINGUS, was not merely another protest against unsafe labour conditions. It was an indictment of a system that activists argue has normalised caste-based hazardous labour while simultaneously understating its human cost. As reported by Newsreel Asia, Protesters carried placards reading “Stop Killing Us! Stop Hiding Our Deaths!” and “PM Break Your Silence!” while submitting a memorandum accusing the Union government of concealing the true scale of sewer and septic tank deaths.

The missing dead

At the centre of the protest lies a stark dispute over numbers. According to documentation compiled by the Safai Karmachari Andolan, 593 people died while cleaning sewers and septic tanks between January 2021 and July 2026. However, the Union government’s response in Parliament acknowledged only 332 deaths during roughly the same period. That leaves 261 deaths unaccounted for, according to SKA.

The memorandum submitted to the Prime Minister posed a direct question:

“How did 593 deaths become 332? Where have you hidden the remaining 261 persons who were killed?”

According to the organisation’s records:

• 2021: 47 deaths
• 2022: 93 deaths
• 2023: 102 deaths
• 2024: 117 deaths
• 2025: 121 deaths
• January–July 2026: 113 deaths, including 15 in July alone

The trend demonstrates not improvement but escalation. SKA National Convenor Bezwada Wilson said that despite more than four decades of campaigning against manual scavenging, sanitation workers continue to be sent into sewers and septic tanks in violation of law, reported Newsreel Asia.

“If the government does not immediately stop these killings,” he warned, “the community will have no option but to organise a nationwide chakka jam.”

Not accidents, but illegal deaths

The language used by the movement is deliberate. The memorandum repeatedly rejects the official description of these incidents as workplace accidents. “These deaths are not accidents. They are caused by illegally employing and forcing workers to get inside septic tanks and underground sewer drains.”

The organisation argues that every such death violates Articles 14, 17 and 21 of the Constitution—equality before law, abolition of untouchability and the right to life. SKA National Leader Deepthi Sukumar argued that the persistence of these deaths reflects not only administrative negligence but the continuing reality of caste discrimination. “Because those dying are Dalits, the government does not seem to care,” she said, reported The Hindustan Gazette.

Rajya Sabha MP Manoj Kumar Jha described the deaths as “a matter of national shame“, while CPI(ML) MP Sudhama Prasad criticised the Modi government’s “Manuvadi mindset,” accused the government of attempting to hide fatalities instead of preventing them, reported The Hindustan Gazette. Congress MP Karamveer Baudh assured protesters that the issue would be raised in Parliament.

The human cost behind the statistics

Behind every disputed statistic is a family still waiting for accountability. Forty-two-year-old Satyawati travelled to Jantar Mantar carrying memories dating back to March 20, 2009. Her brother-in-law, Ashok Kumar, worked for the Municipal Corporation of Delhi collecting garbage. “He left home for work but never returned,” she recalled, reported Hindustan Times.

According to Satyawati, the family later received a phone call informing them that Ashok had been sent to clean a septic tank in Delhi’s Narela and died inside it. Seventeen years later, she says, nothing has changed. Her family’s story mirrors hundreds of others represented at the protest—families for whom compensation has often remained inadequate, prosecutions rare, and justice elusive.

The report by Hindustan Times also shared the story of another participant, Paleram, a 60-year-old daily wage worker from Rohini who migrated from Haryana, described entering septic tanks for nearly twenty-five years with almost no training or protective equipment. He began as a sweeper earning ₹50 a day before switching to septic tank cleaning because it paid marginally more.

“The only training I received was being told to climb down the slippery iron handles and clean,” he said, reported Hindustan Times. After recently fracturing his leg while slipping inside a septic tank, he continues working because there are few alternatives. “Sometimes NGOs give us gloves. Otherwise we go inside wearing almost nothing.”

These accounts expose the gap between official claims of mechanisation and the everyday realities faced by sanitation workers.

The caste system beneath the sewer

The protest repeatedly foregrounded what scholars and activists have argued for decades: manual scavenging is not merely an occupational hazard but a caste-based institution. A doctoral researcher studying caste and occupation at Ambedkar University observed that while governments celebrate cleanliness campaigns, the workers responsible for maintaining sanitation infrastructure remain among the least protected.

CPI(M) leader Brinda Karat, who joined the demonstration, remarked that sanitation workers remain invisible both in life and in death. “They are invisible when they are alive, and when they die, the government behaves as though they never existed,” reported Hindustan Times.

Manoj Kumar Jha similarly argued that the overwhelming concentration of Dalits in sanitation work reflects centuries of structural exclusion rather than individual occupational choice.

NAMASTE and the mechanisation gap

India has formally attempted to abolish manual scavenging for decades. The first national legislation prohibiting manual scavenging came in 1993. It was replaced by the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013, which criminalised the employment of manual scavengers, prohibited hazardous cleaning of sewers and septic tanks without adequate safeguards, and promised rehabilitation. Yet enforcement has remained weak.

No meaningful record of widespread prosecutions exists under the earlier legislation. The 2013 law itself has been criticised for leaving significant ambiguities, including failing to clearly define what constitutes adequate protective equipment and allowing hazardous sewer work under certain conditions. Government data has also remained contested.

The 2011 Census recorded more than 2.6 million dry latrines, while the Socio-Economic Caste Census identified over 180,000 households dependent on manual scavenging as a livelihood. The Safai Karmachari Andolan has consistently argued that the real number of manual scavengers exceeds one million. They have also repeatedly identified the Indian Railways as one of the country’s largest employers of sanitation workers engaged in manual cleaning through contractual arrangements.

Detailed report on how employement of sanitary workers in Indian Railway tracks is a problem may be read here.

In July 2023, the Union government launched the National Action for Mechanised Sanitation Ecosystem (NAMASTE), promising to eliminate hazardous manual sewer cleaning through mechanisation. According to government announcements, the programme was allocated ₹349.73 crore. Three years later, SKA argues that sanitation work remains overwhelmingly dependent on human entry into septic tanks and sewers. The organisation therefore describes the scheme as having failed to achieve its primary objective. Its memorandum asks the government to officially acknowledge this failure and fundamentally redesign the programme.

The Supreme Court’s growing frustration

On July 27, the Supreme Court sharply criticised state governments for failing to prevent sewer deaths despite repeated judicial directions. Hearing the long-pending public interest litigation filed by Dr Balram concerning manual scavenging and sewer cleaning, a Bench comprising Justices Aravind Kumar and Vipul M. Pancholi expressed serious concern over continuing fatalities.

Senior Advocate K. Parameshwar, appearing as amicus curiae, informed the Court that deaths had continued despite its landmark 2023 judgment and subsequent monitoring orders. Referring to data placed before Parliament, he submitted that 54 sewer deaths were officially recorded in 2024 and 46 deaths in 2025, with Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh among the affected states.

Detailed reports on the judgments may be read here, here and here.

The Court responded by issuing show-cause notices to the Chief Secretaries of five states, asking why contempt proceedings should not be initiated for failing to comply with its earlier directions.

As reported by LiveLaw, Justice Aravind Kumar made the Court’s frustration unmistakably clear: “If deaths have occurred subsequent to our orders, we are going to summon your Chief Secretaries… We are making it very clear that we are going to initiate suo motu contempt… This can’t go on… We will fix the responsibility. Somewhere it has to stop.”

The Bench noted that despite repeated directions issued since October 2023, including enhanced compensation of ₹30 lakh for sewer deaths and the January 2025 ban on manual sewer cleaning in six metropolitan cities, fatalities continued “in larger numbers”, indicating that the Court’s orders had failed to translate into administrative action.

A detailed look into the jurisprudence governing manual scavenging, researched consistently by Citizens for Justice and Peace, can be accessed here.

A demand for political accountability

The memorandum submitted by SKA asks for more than compensation. It demands:

• A national apology from the Prime Minister.
• Disclosure of the actual number of sewer and septic tank deaths.
• Immediate elimination of manual entry into sewers.
• A Parliamentary Standing Committee to investigate continuing fatalities.
• A time-bound national plan to eliminate sewer and septic tank deaths.

The memorandum also notes that similar representations were submitted to the Prime Minister’s Office in March 2025 and March 2026, yet received no response.

The memorandum to the PM is attached below:

An old practice the law still has not ended

The protest at Jantar Mantar exposed more than the continuing existence of manual scavenging. It highlighted the widening gap between constitutional guarantees, legislative promises, judicial directives and everyday governance.

Every sewer death occurring after the 2013 Act, after the launch of the NAMASTE Scheme, and after repeated Supreme Court orders raises difficult questions about implementation rather than legislative intent. When governments continue to describe these fatalities as isolated workplace accidents while workers are illegally sent into toxic pits without adequate protection, accountability shifts from individual contractors to the institutions responsible for regulation and enforcement.

For families like Satyawati’s, whose wait for justice has stretched across seventeen years, the demand is no longer simply for compensation. It is for official acknowledgement that these deaths are neither inevitable nor accidental, but the foreseeable consequence of a system that continues to rely on caste-based labour despite laws enacted to abolish it. Until that acknowledgement is matched by enforcement, mechanisation and prosecution, every new sewer death will remain not only a labour rights failure but also a constitutional one.

Courtesy: Sabrang India

India’s “Cockroach Movement” Woke Up a Nation. But Is It Already Asleep Again?

India’s Gen Z-led movement confronted Modi, but some see it as a missed opportunity for transformational change.

By Ashish Malhotra ,

Truthout

July 30, 2026

Clad in a black T-shirt and sporting slightly unkempt hair, Abhijeet Dipke conducted the massive crowd in front of him. As they waved a sea of Indian flags to the beat of the music, he stood over them waving one back. The song they were all singing, “Maa Tujhe Salaam,” is one of India’s most patriotic, released by A.R. Rahman in 1997 to mark the country’s 50th year of independence. And when it reached its bridge and chorus, Dipke held up a little red book: the founding document of that independence, the constitution of India.

It was a poignant moment. Not just because the past 12 years of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rule has threatened that constitution’s integrity on multiple levels. But also because it constituted an act of resistance against how Modi’s party has pushed a Hindu nationalist project that has marginalized the country’s minorities, as well as its secular fabric.

Rahman is Muslim, and his song “Maa Tujhe Salaam” evokes memories of the pre-Modi years — a more inclusive time, when India’s diversity was celebrated rather than beaten down.

The collective invocation of Rahman’s song became one of the more iconic moments of the largely Gen Z protest movement in India this summer, which has grown into what many feel is the most significant challenge Modi’s government has ever faced.

“I think that was what was so beautiful,” said Aarti Neharsh, a protester who traveled from Mumbai to the capital New Delhi to be a part of the movement. Neharsh told Truthout that it stood out to her how many people were making overt displays of patriotism — something that in recent years has come with connotations of right-wing Hindu nationalism.

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Organizers are leaning into the library as a crucial institution in broader movements for social and political change. By Emily Drabinski , Truthout  January 2, 2025

“People were not shying away from it,” she said. “It genuinely felt like a reclaiming of these songs and phrases … I think that reminded people [the country] is worth fighting for, and this is what India should be.”

What Started as Satire Grew Into a Movement

But the movement that Dipke has been leading, which over the weekend forced the resignation of India’s education minister, was not sparked by these big-picture battles over what India represents. That story begins with a disparaging remark by Surya Kant, the chief justice of India’s Supreme Court, who in May referred to unemployed youth as parasites and cockroaches.

Kant’s remark led Dipke, who was just a student in the U.S. at the time, to write on X: “What if all cockroaches come together?” The post went viral, and Dipke responded by jokingly creating the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) — a play on the name of Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The CJP website said membership was open to the chronically online, lazy and unemployed — as well as those with “the ability to rant professionally.”

But what started as satire then grew into something more because it tapped into genuine frustrations. Modi first won power based on a promise that “acche din” (good days) were coming. Over a decade later, many are still waiting.


Almost 40 percent of graduates between the age of 15 and 25 in India are unemployed.

And nobody feels more in limbo than India’s 370 million youth, who make up more than a quarter of the country’s population. As more of them have had access to education in recent decades, the job market has not kept up.

According to a recent report, almost 40 percent of graduates between the age of 15 and 25 in India are unemployed. For many, the fact that Kant chose to malign Gen Z with his cockroach comment rather than do anything to fix the problem was emblematic of a government that doesn’t work for them.

“The name cockroach wouldn’t have been there if the CJI (chief justice of India) wouldn’t have compared us with the cockroaches,” Dipke told Reuters in May, pointing out that cockroaches “exist in a place which is rotten,” and reasoning, “So is the system so rotten, that the cockroaches are coming out in such a huge number?”

Students celebrate the resignation of India's Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, in Amritsar, India, on July 25, 2026, amid an ongoing protest by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) at New Delhi's jantar Mantar over alleged NEET examination irregularities. India's Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned on Saturday after mass youth-led protests demanded his ouster in anger over a string of irregularities in potentially life-changing exams.

Narinder NANU / AFP via Getty Images

Mishandling of Medical School Entrance Exam Stokes Despair Among Youth

But what really fueled the movement was news in mid-May that questions on India’s medical school entrance exam had been leaked before students had taken it a few weeks earlier. In response, the government announced that the results would be invalidated, and the more than 2.2 million students who took the test would have to retake it.

In a country with high levels of inequality and poverty, education is seen as many people’s best shot at social mobility. Poor families spend life savings and take out ruinous loans to pay for years’ worth of test preparation for their children, in hope that passing exams like the medical entrance one will give them a better life. For the kids, studying can dominate entire childhoods.

As journalist Manu Joseph wrote in the Indian business newspaper Mint: “For decades, there has been a covenant between India and its young — pass these entrance exams and you are set … In return, the young wasted their youth in the gloom of preparing for life.”

But even at the best of times, the odds are stacked against them. Fewer than 130,000 undergraduate spots existed for the 2.2 million students who took this year’s medical exam.

It’s incredible pressure. And having to go through the process all over again was too much for some to take. In the months since the exam was invalidated, the Cockroach Janta Party said 21 students committed suicide. Their families’ emotional journey has been unbearable.

“She triumphantly told me she had aced her papers,” Jafar Hussain, the father of 19-year-old Sana Shaikh recently told the People’s Archive of Rural India. “I told her to celebrate with her mother or go to a hotel and enjoy a meal.” A few weeks later, after the blow of the results being invalidated, Sana Shaikh hanged herself.

Her mother, Habib-un-Nisaa Sheikh, who traveled roughly 1,000 miles to join the protests, told the People’s Archive of Rural India that she holds those in power responsible: “My daughter died because of their decisions. You are supposed to protect us, not ruin our lives.”

Rana Ayyub, a journalist based in Mumbai, also said she spoke to protesters on the ground there and in Delhi who had traveled from all over the country to voice their pain.

“These are people coming from rural areas — villages where there’s not even electricity, where parents are taking loans on their small piece of land and sending their kids for education because it’s an aspirational country. Everybody wants their children to be an Indian Administrative Service or an Indian Police Service officer,” Ayyub told Truthout, referring to two sought-after government jobs that require competitive placement exams.

Protests Gather Steam in the Face of Brutal Treatment by Police

Dipke was a student at Boston University in the United States when he started the Cockroach Janta Party. But when he returned to India on June 6, 2026, he went straight to Jantar Mantar, New Delhi’s main protest site for the movement’s first street protest. From the outset, he and his fellow protesters demanded the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan, the country’s education minister.

The movement built over weeks, getting a boost when Sonam Wangchuk, a 59-year-old activist, came to Jantar Mantar in late June to start a hunger strike in solidarity with the Gen Z protesters. Hunger strikes have great resonance in India dating back to its independence struggle. Mahatma Gandhi went on hunger strike 18 times, for as long as 21 days on two occasions, during India’s fight for freedom.

And so when Wangchuk was forcibly removed by police, three weeks into his hunger strike on July 19, it was seen as an attempt to silence his message. What followed was the biggest day of protest the movement had seen until that point, with tens of thousands showing up at Jantar Mantar.

Among them was Neharsh, the protester who flew in from Mumbai. “I was following what was happening,” Neharsh told Truthout, “and I just had this feeling that there is some hope because of the number of people that were standing up for this.”

Protesters were met with extreme force — police using tear gas, batons, and pellet guns, injuring over 100, including one woman who ended up on a ventilator.

But protesters were met with extreme force — police using tear gas, batons, and pellet guns, injuring over 100, including one woman who ended up on a ventilator.

“Because the police were using so much force, there were constant stampedes … there was nowhere to move … people were fainting because it was claustrophobic,” said Neharsh, who was tear-gassed.

“We saw a bunch of people coming — one by one injured on their heads and arms.”

Organizing Amid a Climate of Fear

Among the many characteristics that have marked the Modi years is a climate of fear. Dissent is rare, and often punished. In 2021, the Sweden-based V-Dem Institute downgraded its classification of India from an “electoral democracy” to an “electoral autocracy,” highlighting “the diminishing of freedom of expression, the media and civil society.” The few major protest movements that have taken place during Modi’s 12 years in power have generally petered out without achieving much.

A compliant mediascape that has been increasingly bought up by government-friendly businessmen has only added to the sense that Modi is untouchable. And when it came to the protests, that initially seemed to be holding true.

“If we still relied on mainstream media, we wouldn’t have known the kind of police brutality that students faced on July 20, because mainstream media didn’t document it,” said Priyanshi Sharma, a journalist who co-founded Peek TV, a short-form, independent media outlet, last year.

But what the Cockroach Janta Party protests fostered was a groundswell of Gen Z activity on social media expressing solidarity with protesters, documenting police brutality, and taking aim at Education Minister Pradhan and even Modi himself. Their critiques flooded the internet, bypassing traditional media as a main artery of information.

“ Many people thought that this protest will not become big because mainstream media is not covering it. But that wasn’t the case. Mainstream media were not covering it, but this became an ‘Insta’ revolution,” Sharma told Truthout.


“ Many people thought that this protest will not become big because mainstream media is not covering it. But that wasn’t the case. Mainstream media were not covering it, but this became an ‘Insta’ revolution.”

Ayyub said that a difference between 2026 and previous years is that the emergence of independent news platforms like Peek TV have also helped push back against mainstream media discourse.

“I think one of the biggest victories of this protest is to show the irrelevance of the mainstream media,” she told Truthout. “They tried really hard to create a narrative that [the protests] were funded by George Soros or outside forces. It didn’t stick.”

As the momentum built, both online and on the streets, the government lost control of the narrative, and Gen Z protesters found a new level of defiance. Crushing dissent didn’t work in the way it usually does.

“The police brutality actually removed whatever bit of fear was still in the minds of people,” Sharma said. “After that they thought, ‘We’ve seen the worst that can happen.’”

Neharsh agrees: “For the first time, a lot of us experienced what living without that fear feels like.”

For the first month or so of the protests, the government had barely paid them any attention. But now they were desperately scrambling to keep up.

“The government realized that this protest is not happening on the horizontal screens of television, but it’s happening on the vertical screens of mobile phones in people’s hands,”said Sharma.

On July 24, the government held a cabinet meeting where it emphasized the need to start connecting with young people more on social media. The night before, Modi had made his own first attempt at this — a selfie video addressed to protesters that was roundly mocked for numerous reasons, including his face being too close to the screen.

The efforts were ineffective and too late. Pradhan resigned on July 25, becoming the first full cabinet member to resign from the Indian government during the Modi years. The Cockroach Janta Party immediately ended its protest movement.

A Missed Opportunity?


One of the most noticeable ways in which fear subsided during the protests was the way people spoke up about how Modi has used religion to divide.

“I never thought I would hear something like … ‘Jab Jab Modi Darta Hai, Hindu Muslim Karta Hai’ (‘Whenever Modi Is Afraid, He Divides Hindus and Muslims’),” Ayyub told Truthout.

“That was heartening [and] a uniting sentiment across the board … it just goes to show that people have seen through Modi’s majoritarianism.”

And though the Cockroach Janta Party’s biggest demand throughout the protests was the resignation of Pradhan, as the movement grew, Gen Z began to take aim at Modi too. And they did it in a way Ayyub said she hasn’t seen before.

Though the Cockroach Janta Party’s biggest demand throughout the protests was the resignation of Pradhan, as the movement grew, Gen Z began to take aim at Modi too.

“The language used in these protests — there was no fear. The kind of abusive words used for the prime minister himself, the memes, the T-shirts, the merchandise that was selling on the streets.”

The strength of the movement was enough to get the government to agree to a list of demands — not just the resignation of Pradhan. But in the days since that victory, many are questioning whether calling off further protests was the right move.

The Cockroach Janta Party has already threatened to resume protests because the government has not implemented one of its demands: that those involved in the movement would not face retribution. Police cases have been filed against protesters in multiple states led by the ruling party, and the Cockroach Janta Party said more than 100 people have been arrested.

Another action promised by Modi — a fast-track court to investigate the exam leak — has already hit a roadblock after the government’s lawyer failed to show up for the first hearing.

While Ayyub recognizes that forcing the resignation of a cabinet member was a huge achievement, she also said the government acceding to the Cockroach Janta Party’s demands was a “token” gesture to end the protests. As a result, she’s been left feeling disappointed, and wishing the movement had kept its momentum going to achieve more.

“Modi’s myth-making has been shattered. His image has been punctured … [but] I don’t see [Pradhan resigning] as a big victory,” she told Truthout, adding that the Cockroach Janta Party “could have consulted senior lawyers, intellectuals, and people who have seen movements like this, and asked for systemic changes.”

Comparisons have been made between the Cockroach Janta Party and other recent Gen Z–led protests in the region that have led to the total fall of the governments in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Nepal. That outcome was always going to be unlikely in India, which has seen close to 80 years of democratic, peaceful transitions of power as an independent nation.

But what’s interesting to note is that the Cockroach Janta Party itself was quick to distance itself from those movements when it started.

Ayyub was surprised by that.

“I understand there was violence involved [in those other movements] … and violence should never be a part [of a protest]. But I didn’t like that framing, that somehow we are different from them,” Ayyub said. “Gen Z rage is coming from the same space as what’s happening in those countries, so I felt like there were many similarities.”

But given they’ve now ended, Ayyub is not hopeful that the protests in India will create transformational change.

“There’s nothing really that’s going to change,” Ayyub said. “The country lost the momentum when it was really going in a direction where we could have sought some accountability.”

Note: A correction was made to clarify that the Cabinet meeting occurred on July 24 rather than June 24.


This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

Ashish Malhotra

Ashish Malhotra is the host of “The Soccernomics Podcast,” and the series creator of “The Dark Side of The World Cup” for Zeteo. He was previously a producer for Al Jazeera English programs such as “The Stream,” “UpFront,” and “The Take,” and was a correspondent based in India where he wrote for The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times, The Times of London, and others.

GenZ Protest: A Beautiful India is Possible

Manan Kumar | 30 Jul 2026

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The microcosmic replica of real India seen in Jantar Mantar, has awakened and will rise again, until it shakes off the accumulated dirt of inequality, communalism and nepotism.

Image Courtesy: Manan Kumar

During my 13-day pilgrimage to Jantar Mantar beginning June 6, including seven consecutive days starting July 19, I increasingly felt that besides being a singular entity, I also belonged to a larger ‘Being’. This ‘Being’ was slowly growing organically into a remarkably beautiful creature of myriad and vibrant colours by attracting the best available souls from all parts of India. The organic process of evolution did not allow any vicious or self-centric soul to be a part of it. 

Initially, it seemed that the protest might derail the blitz campaign launched by the Indian Youth Congress, at Rahul Gandhi's call, against the NEET paper leak. Perhaps, that was the original idea of the Narendra Modi regime, which is why it allowed the Cockroach Janata Party or CJP to stage a sit-in at Jantar Mantar. But the organic evolution of the ‘Being’ didn't allow this.

The protest grew, slowly gaining momentum after it was joined by famous climate change activist Sonam Wangchuk. It grew bigger when the man from Ladakh went on an indefinite fast along with many other student activists. It grew even bigger when the regime, afraid of its beautiful evolution, kidnapped Wangchuk and unleashed brutal repression on hapless students, not sparing even the minors, women and girls.

Volunteers and strangers formed a human chain in Jantar Mantar to successfully thwart a kidnapping attempt of the rest of the student activists on hunger strike. Similar replicas of the ‘Being’ evolved in major cities across India with a similar sense of urgency and purpose. The pictures and videos of the raw violence unleashed against the unarmed protesting youth travelled the world via social media and foreign press, leading to sporadic protest rallies by Indians in various cities across Europe, Canada, the US, Sri Lanka and Australia.

What shocked the State and its security apparatus was that the badly beaten and bruised students with broken limbs returned and looked straight into the eyes of their attackers. 

"Police uncle, this time tell us 10 minutes in advance before the lathi-charge," one protester said in humour with a typical GenZ smile emoji, lowering her tormentor's eyes.

"Uncle, ye maarne se pehle ye helmet de dena," (Please lend us your helmet before you start baton-charging us) came another gem sporting a GenZ heart emoji.   

The fear had ended. As more people poured into Jantar Mantar after the news of repression, police presence also swelled. But a tired security apparatus finally gave up when GenZ broke loose into dances on their own creative songs like Police Wale Babu Mujhe Danda Laga Do and Mujhe Apne Bank Ki Kitaab Dijiye, Desh Ki Tabahi Ka Hisaab Dijiye. The scene left many young policemen with heavy gear and batons, squirming. Their hearts and feet seemed to want to break free and join in, but the compulsion of a job kept them in check.

Meanwhile, the ‘Being’ kept evolving, growing bigger and more beautiful. 

As a reporter of 30 years' vintage and now unemployed, I was awestruck by the tenacity of the ‘Being’. During my long hours of visits, the thought of capturing it on video and starting my own YouTube channel crossed my mind but the cost was very high. I would have failed to live the moment and absorb the nectar flowing abundantly from the pure souls of hundreds of people like, Neha, Aameen, Manish and Amitoj, who were staking their lives through an indefinite hunger strike; selfless individuals like Junaid, Anuj, Suraj and hundreds of nameless individuals arranging and distributing food, water and snacks; volunteers and sewadars from Gurudwara Bangla Sahib and nearby mosques; dozens of young beautiful volunteer students cleaning littered trash; volunteers fanning the sweat-drenched crowd and trying to bring order; young doctors with first-aid kits and important medicines; and young lawyers painstakingly jotting down the accounts of victims of State-sponsored brutality. Like my younger daughter and her friend, I also became a part of the ‘Being’, doing whatever small tasks we could find to keep the protest healthy, happy and vibrant. 

An important factor that sustained the protest was the slogans and songs of struggle, revolution, courage and hope sung by the young comrades of the Left parties. Under a banner reading, "Yuva Rakt Ki Garmi Se, Barf Ki Ghati Pighlegi (The heat of young blood will melt the valley of ice)," activists from the All India Students Association (AISA), the student wing of the Communist Party of India Marxist-Leninist (Liberation); the Students Federation of India (SFI) of the Communist Party of India-Marxist; and the All India Students Federation of India (AISF) of the Communist Party of India, kept providing ample dosage of glue and adrenaline to keep the ‘Being’ in high spirits.

Groups of young and old could be seen having animated discussions on the key issues troubling India and the world: education, environment, E20, crony capitalism, climate change, rights of Dalits and Adivasis, constitutional rights, and the Brahminical order.

On July 24, my daughter decided to stay at the protest site with her friend for the night. I was scared, as I couldn’t have stayed. After braving several days of heat, dust and rain, my body had given up. I had fever. That night between 12:30 a.m and 6 o'clock, I called my daughter four times. Each time she seemed perfectly fine, doing some work or talking and listening to the struggles of newly made friends -- young boys and girls from villages, small towns and ghettos. Letting her spend a night at Jantar Mantar was a decision that I will always feel proud of. One night at the protest site made her wiser, more informed, and more humane.

Protest sites are great teachers indeed. These cramped places, teeming with people, teach you at no cost and much more quickly what you cannot learn in the best universities that teach behavioural science, psychology, human relations, politics and civic sense. It teaches you things even beyond any curriculum: love, camaraderie, empathy, care, brotherhood, bravery, unity, resoluteness and fraternity. 

When my daughter returned home on the morning of July 25, she angrily prophesied us not to worry as the protest would not end even after Wangchuk’s “climbdown” from the main demand during midnight.  She was unhappy that the main face of the protest had agreed for unsigned “paltry demands” and accepted juice from the State that had beaten students black and blue. 

I decided to go back to Jantar Mantar to mark our family’s attendance. I was expecting another showdown as the police presence had increased to unprecedented levels. 

My daughter proved correct. Ending the fast by the Ladakh man on lesser terms had met with a royal ignore by the ever-expanding ‘Being’.  

Aghast at the raw courage, the haughty and adamant regime ultimately bowed down. Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned.

The ‘Being’ erupted in joy when Abhijeet Dipke of CJP announced the news of Pradhan's resignation. Soon these souls started leaving Jantar Mantar, feeling mixed emotions: joy from the shared struggle and victory and grief over the separation. I too became a part of it. 

As I left my pilgrimage centre and retreated home, there was a feeling of longing but I was also brimming with newfound hope that the beautiful ‘Being’ is here to stay and will only grow bigger and bolder. Suddenly it occurred to me that the popular name of this ‘Being’ is Bharat Mata. Not the one personified by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay and first painted by Abanindra Nath, but as described and immortalised by India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in his book The Discovery of India. 

At Jantar Mantar, I had seen only a microcosmic replica of Bharat Mata. It has awakened and will rise again and again, until it shakes off all the accumulated dirt of opulence, inequality, communalism and nepotism. 

The writer is a senior independent journalist based in Delhi. The views are personal.

A Dent in Impregnable Wall of ‘Elected Autocracy’: Youth Show the Way

Ram Puniyani | 30 Jul 2026

We should hail and salute the youth and hope the bigger challenges of indirect attacks on our Constitution will be taken up in due course.

Image Courtesy: Deepak Jha

The formation of the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) and the protest demonstration at Jantar Mantar is too well known by now. The torture of youth, lathi-charge by uniformed police and doubtful elements, the use of pellet guns and even AK-47 was totally against the norms of democratic values.

The other side of the protest was youth singing and dancing, making posters collectively, laughing and singing, reminding one of Karl Marx’s famous adage, ‘Revolution is the festival of the masses’, though the degree and context of the Jantar Mantar protest and many other protests all over the country were totally different.

The autocratic government, which is totally unresponsive to the valid cry of the people, buckled after a long time, as the pattern of protest was picking up city after city. The inhibitions imposed by the dictatorial stance of the government was melting into thin air. Earlier, we have seen the same government was impervious to the farmers’ protests lasting as long as over 12 months and withdrawn only after the laws were rolled back when elections were to be held. The government has encouraged troublesome elements to disrupt the Shaheen Bagh movement against the Citizenship Amendment Act or CAA. The prolonged voices against exam leaks were totally ignored.

This time the matters were different. The government tried to look the other way but could not and had to accept the demands, the key among which was the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. He has been replaced by Pralhad Joshi. who again belongs to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or RSS background. His persona can be judged from his approval of the release of rapists of Bilkis Bano

Now, a committee has been formed to look into the leak of examination papers, and the committee interestingly includes the likes of those who “specialise in cow urine”, as per Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi, and some others who don’t know the alpha and omega of the education system.

While currently the student leaders are struggling to ensure that the government fulfils its written assurance, we also need to understand the ‘success’ of this student uprising. It is nowhere close to the student uprising in France in 1968, or the happenings of our neighbouring countries -- Sri Lanka, Bangladesh or Nepal. But it has contributed a lot in changing the perceptions created by the IT and media cell of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the ‘Godi Media’ and the word-of-mouth propaganda by RSS through its shakhas and hundreds of schools and other subordinate organisations. The sense of fearlessness in speaking against the government is likely to return gradually.

While the CJP and its leader Abhijeet Dipke acted as the precipitating factor of this protest, the ground for it had been in the making over the past many years. Rising unemployment, the rising cost of living and destitution had been the base on which all this stood. While falling indices of freedom of expression, freedom of religion, hunger index, happiness index are dismissed by the ruling dispensation, they do reflect the worsening social situation in the real sense.

While the mainstream media has reversed its role to be the eulogiser of rulers and critics of the Opposition, the collapse of this Fourth Estate was reflected when the youth hooted at journalists from Godi Media. Though this should not have happened, it does reflect the image of Godi Media among the youth, as it has deserted its role and has become the handmaiden of the rulers.

The spirit of the protesting youth was very much on display and very heartening, as it tried to lift some embargos on democratic freedoms.

Has the protest achieved its goals in total? Depends on what we see the totality as. The change of the Education Minister, though significant in smashing the ego of our ‘non-biological’ ruler, will not change the situation much, as Tweedledum has been replaced by Tweedledee. The core cause of the exam paper leaks -- corruption in the society -- has not been ended in any way, which can be curtailed only by making the system more transparent and accessible to society’s audit.

On the issue of corruption, though RSS did plan the Anna Hazare movement, leading to formation of the Aam Aadmi Party, to undermine the United Progressive Alliance-led Congress (which was then in power), the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance never made any move toward eradicating corruption. Neither was it an issue of concern for the ruling government. Heavy investment in some roads and bridges have been washed away, as these structures built by the BJP government, were probably riddled with heavy corruption.

One has to concede that a large amount of the ground for success, to whatever extent, was also prepared by Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi’s multiple meetings exposing the government's callous attitude toward social issues.

One is not yet sure if communal polarisation created by RSS-BJP has become weaker due to the impact of the July Jantar Mantar sit-in protest. The problems that have seeped into the system need to be tackled in a broader sense.

Can this movement, in the long term, remain away from electoral politics and pick up the core issue of communal forces, derailing the national agenda of peace and progress? The ‘idea of India’, as visualised by the freedom movement and embodied in our Constitution, has been cleverly by-passed to push the country toward Hindu Rashtra. The issues of building the nation have been substituted by demolishing mosques and universities. The State has gradually been infiltrated by those who have taken the divisive training of RSS shakhas, or are fed by the Godi Media and social media, popularly called ‘WhatsApp University.’

The students’ sit-in protest came as a breath of fresh air. What is still needed is that the youth march continues to bring us back as Indian citizens, rather than as Hindus or Muslims. This country belongs to the people, to all the people, while communal politics asserts Hindu Rashtra based on Manu Smriti. Their agenda is to impose Brahminical values with the relegation of Muslims, Christians, Adivasis, Dalits, Workers and women to second grade citizens.

One is enjoying the high spirits and pleasantness spread by this youth dharna. But, to presume that it has totally achieved its goals, will be self-defeating. Till we can contain, if not totally defeat, the communal forces, we will be inflicted one after the other by injustice from the ruling dispensation. We should hail and salute the youth/students and hope the bigger challenges of indirect attacks on our Constitution will be taken up in due course.

The writer is a human rights activist, who taught at IIT Bombay. The views are personal.

A Celebration That Should Never Have Been Necessary

Shirin Akhter | 29 Jul 2026

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Citizens were celebrating the eventual arrival of something that should have been routine in any constitutional democracy.

Image Courtesy: AISA Facebook

Students embraced one another at Jantar Mantar. Slogans filled the air. Flags were raised. Sweets were distributed. There was relief, joy and celebration. A Union Minister had resigned.

Yet nothing extraordinary had happened.

The resignation came after nearly 34 days of sustained nation-wide protests, widespread public outrage, reported loss of lives linked to the examination controversy, repeated police action against demonstrators and the deployment of coercive state power against students demanding accountability. What should have been an institutional response became the outcome of a prolonged political confrontation.

That this resignation became an occasion for celebration is itself an indictment of the present state of democratic accountability. In any functional democracy, ministers are expected to accept political responsibility for serious institutional failures. Democratic accountability is not a concession or a favour that must be extracted through prolonged public struggle. It is an ordinary constitutional expectation.

The question, therefore, is why the resignation was anything to celebrate at all.

The picture is much larger than the resignation of a minister. It reflects a deeper crisis in the relationship between the State, public institutions and India’s youth.

For years, young Indians have been told that education remains the principal route to economic mobility. They have been urged to acquire more qualifications, develop new skills and prepare for an increasingly competitive economy. At the same time, access to quality public education has failed to expand in proportion to demand. Public investment has remained inadequate, recruitment in public institutions has slowed and the growing dependence on private educational institutions and the coaching industry has shifted an increasing share of the financial burden on families themselves.

The consequences of this shift extend well beyond the education sector. Families have accepted rising private expenditure on schooling, university education and coaching because they believed these were investments rather than expenses. Students have accepted years of uncertainty, intense competition and delayed entry into the labour market because they believed the system, however demanding, would remain fundamentally fair.

Competitive examinations, therefore, perform a function far greater than selecting candidates for jobs or university admissions. They sustain the belief that effort, ability and perseverance continue to provide a legitimate route to social and economic mobility. Repeated examination irregularities begin to erode this belief. A paper leak undermines confidence in the institutional mechanism through which opportunity is allocated.

Every compromised examination, every delayed recruitment and every cancelled selection process weakens the credibility of the promise that merit will ultimately be recognised. The immediate consequence is the loss of a job or an admission. The deeper consequence is the erosion of trust in public institutions themselves.

Further, a paper leak is not one single grievance, it is a compendium of complaints. An examination controversy ultimately evolves into a discussion about unemployment because delayed or cancelled recruitment postpones employment. Unemployment, in turn, raises questions about the State’s developmental priorities, the shrinking availability of secure public employment and the increasing precariousness of labour markets.

What begins as a demand for a fair examination soon becomes a wider interrogation of governance, institutional accountability and democratic responsibility. Students connect these issues because they experience them not as separate policy failures but as different manifestations of the same broken promise. One that stifles their aspirations and hopes.

This is why student movements possess a distinctive political significance. They speak not only for the candidates but also for their families who have invested their savings, their aspirations and years of sacrifice in the belief that education remains the most reliable pathway to a better life. When confidence in that pathway begins to collapse, the crisis is no longer confined to the education system. It becomes a crisis of developmental legitimacy itself.

History shows that this transformation is neither unusual nor accidental. Student movements rarely remain confined to campuses because they articulate anxieties that extend far beyond students themselves. The movement led by Jayaprakash Narayan drew much of its initial energy from students before developing into a nationwide challenge to political authority. The May 1968 protests in France began in universities before spreading to workers and eventually becoming one of the largest general strikes in modern history.

Student activism played a decisive role in South Korea’s democratic transition during the 1980s. More recently, protests over public recruitment in Bangladesh evolved into a much broader questioning of state legitimacy. Across countries and historical periods, the pattern is remarkably similar. Student movements become politically significant when society begins to recognise its own anxieties in the demands of its youth.

This is also the point at which governments face a choice. They can respond by restoring confidence in institutions through transparency, accountability and reform. Or they can seek to restore order through policing, restrictions and coercion. Political economist Antonio Gramsci described this as the distinction between governing through consent and governing through coercion. Democratic governments derive their legitimacy primarily from consent, from citizens believing that public institutions remain fair and responsive.

Coercion becomes increasingly prominent when that confidence begins to erode. It cannot resolve the underlying crisis. It merely suppresses its immediate expression.

The significance of Jantar Mantar, therefore, lies not in the resignation itself but in everything that preceded it. A ministerial resignation, which should have followed naturally from institutional failure, came only after weeks of sustained protests, public anger, police action and mounting political pressure. Accountability became something that had to be wrested from the state rather than something the state willingly embraced.

That is why the celebrations at Jantar Mantar deserve to be remembered. They were expressions of relief, not triumph. Citizens were celebrating the eventual arrival of something that should have been routine in any constitutional democracy.

The paradox is difficult to ignore. The more jubilant the celebration, the more serious the failure that made such a celebration necessary. Democracy has not performed an extraordinary act. It has merely delivered, after enormous resistance, what should have happened in the ordinary course of democratic responsibility.

The writer is Associate Professor at Zakir Husain Delhi College, University of Delhi. The views are personal.

Why Delhi Police’s July 20 crackdown transgressed Law on Use of Force

Edgar Kaiser | 31 Jul 2026

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A deluge of videos document the Delhi police resorting to pellet shots, nail-studded lathis, tear gas, and even assaulting women protestors on July 20. By every metric, it impinged the principles of proportionality and minimal use of force.

On July 20, when thousands of youth marched towards the Indian parliament, the police cracked down with tear gas, pellet guns and nail-studded lathis, leaving more than a hundred injured, with a 22-year-old man losing his eyesight. While most evidence shows that it was a peaceful protest and later, the Rapid Action Force chief conceded to the excessive use of force, what exactly does the Indian law say on the rightful use of force to contain assembly?

The law of peaceful assembly and Jantar Mantar

Jantar Mantar's status as a dedicated protest site itself is a product of constitutional adjudication. In 2017, the National Green Tribunal (‘NGT’) banned peaceful assembly, protest or any gathering at Jantar Mantar, citing noise pollution. This takes us to the constitutional limitations on peaceful assembly, which include public order, sovereignty, security and integrity of the state, and friendly relations with foreign states, among others under Article 19(1)(b). The Supreme Court then, in Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (2018), overturned NGT’s decision where the Union’s defence was that demonstrations leave a negative impact on foreign dignitaries to the country and tarnish bilateral relations. Justice A.K. Sikri had commendably declared that the right to protest "strengthens representative democracy by enabling direct participation in public affairs” and “exposes the flaws in governance and demands accountability" and also directed the Delhi Police Commissioner to frame guidelines. Demanding accountability was exactly what the ‘cockroaches’ were attempting to do, this summer.

The guidelines that followed limited the site to a thousand participants and interestingly prohibited the use of lathis and firearms by protestors but had no word about the use of force or weapons by the police. The guidelines also note that no marching from the designated spot is allowed unless specific written permission from the police is obtained. In the Shaheen Bagh case (2020), in the aftermath of the Delhi riots, the Court clarified that the right to protest does not extend to the indefinite occupation of public roads or to unrestricted disruption of public life. While the no-marching rule in the guidelines does have a legal effect on the July 20 Chalo Sansad, does it justify the excessive force used by the RAF?

Justice A.K. Sikri had commendably declared that the right to protest "strengthens representative democracy by enabling direct participation in public affairs” and “exposes the flaws in governance and demands accountability".

The legality of the restriction imposed on July 20

Before delving into the use of force, the specific prohibitory order that was in effect on July 20 and its legality needs to be disentangled. The evening before the proposed march by the protestors, the Delhi Police issued an order under Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita for the entire New Delhi district, disallowing any gathering or march outside the designated protest site at Jantar Mantar, and clarified that they had received no permission for the march. DCP Sachin Sharma also announced that the protestors violating the order would ‘be liable for legal action’, which is a fair restriction under the settled law. 

Nonetheless, the order itself should be legally tested because in Madhu Limaye (1970), the Supreme Court had held that this provision should be carefully applied only where the specific material facts signal ‘a likelihood of being able to prevent some harmful occurrences’ or  ‘disturbance to public tranquillity’. The first day of protest at Jantar Mantar was June 6, and it was already more than a month of peaceful protest, and there were no signs of any apprehension of violence. There were no weapons carried by the protestors as prohibited by the city guidelines. There were only flowers, slogans, pieces of artwork, books and the Constitution of India that the students held in their hands. If there was any danger that the Delhi Police could have apprehended, perhaps it was the copies of the Constitution of India carried by the protesters. Perhaps that is what they feared the most. 

In Ramlila Maidan (2012) too, the Court reinstated that the prohibition should be proportionate to the threat apprehended based on material facts and not on the state’s mere assumption. There is another layer to this brutal labyrinth. In Mazdoor Kisan, the Supreme Court pulled up the Delhi police for routinely renewing the prohibitory orders and virtually imposing a blanket ban on the right to protest. Eight years later, the Delhi police continued to do so, and this time, when the Gen Zs were actively coordinating their protests through digital space, the government imposed several internet shutdowns a few days before July 20 and even after.

How much force is ‘lawful force’?

The 1985 Code of Conduct for the Police in India mandates that “the police should, as far as practicable, use the methods of persuasion, advice and warning” and use ‘irreducible minimum force’ only when it is inevitable.  In Ramlila Maidan, the Court held that even an assembly that had ceased to be lawful did not forfeit the protection against disproportionate force and held that the crackdown was not "proportionate to the exigency". Standing orders 72 and 309 of the Delhi police clarify the use of force: it should be only used for crowd dispersal in a controlled manner with ‘utmost restraint’. This is also only in the case of the crowd turning violent, when the police should, only with the advice of a senior officer, use minimal force and videograph the entire use of force. Before using the force, the police should announce and declare the assembly unlawful, should constantly liaise with the leaders of the protest and only then resort to minimal force with the single aim of dispersing the crowd. 

At Jantar Mantar, it was the protestors who captured videos of brutal violence on protestors, pellet shots, nail-studded lathis and tear gas, which impinges the principle of proportionality and minimal use of force as elucidated above. There were even videos of women being slapped and sexually assaulted by the Delhi police. “I was leading protesters, and I had my hands folded when they fired,” said the boy who lost his eye, describing a gesture of peace towards the security forces.

What about Pellet guns? It has been treated as a Kashmir-specific weapon due to the unique insurgent situation in Kashmir as a "non-lethal" alternative to live ammunition during crowd control operations. Although the Central Reserve Police Force calls it the ‘least lethal weapon’, it is not a non-lethal weapon as per international standards. It has been a subject of legal dispute since the 2016 unrest after Burhan Wani's killing in Kashmir. The usage of pellet guns in farmer protests and Manipur riots were condemned, but its legal history dates even further back in history.  

The Supreme Court in 2016 had refused to ban the weapon but directed the Centre to convene an expert committee on alternatives and ordered it not be used indiscriminately. The Committee recommended resorting to shells and grenades, STUN-LAC shells and grenades, all to disperse violent protestors, failing which they could use pellet guns. The Jammu and Kashmir High Court’s rationale to retain pellet guns was the presence of unruly mobs creating an insurgent situation, which is not even remotely relevant to July 20 and Delhi, in general. There was no insurgency or violence whatsoever. What was required was a mere crowd dispersal with a proportionate and minimal use of force.

An international human rights report noted that pellets, colloquially known as ‘bird shot’, are hunting rounds fired as a single group of hundreds of high-velocity metal balls, which could be lethal if fired from a close distance. While the Standard Operating Procedure in India sets a minimum distance of 500 feet to fire pellets, the Delhi police were much closer than that, which led to the blinding of a boy. The report accurately notes this: ‘pellet guns have the ballistic capacity to penetrate some organs, such as the eyes, causing blindness’. While the police are factually contesting the usage of pellets, there is clear documentary evidence, and if it gets proven in court, this would be the first documented use of the weapon against protesters in the National Capital Territory. 

A weapon whose legality was tolerated only within the specific security context of Kashmir infiltrated an ordinary crowd control strategy in the national capital. There is no place in law for the usage of nail-studded lathis, which were also found to be used on July 20. The UN Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials (1977), UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms (1990) and UN Guidelines on Less Lethal Weapons (2020), all international guidelines, well align with the Indian law on minimal, necessary and proportionate use of weapons.

“I was leading protesters, and I had my hands folded when they fired,” said the boy who lost his eye, describing a gesture of peace towards the security forces.

Where do the injured cockroaches go now?

In J&K High Court Bar Association (2020), the Jammu & Kashmir High Court while dealing with the question of excessive use of force, held that the court can only determine the lawfulness of the force used if a ‘competent forum’ concludes its finding on the facts. The court concluded saying, “the persons alleging use of excessive force, due to which death or injury has occurred, can very well approach the appropriate forum to establish the same and seek redressal.” Now what is the competent and appropriate forum becomes the deciding question. For the July 20 violence, the National Human Rights Commission (‘NHRC’), now in a rare occasion, has taken suo motu cognizance of the excessive use of force. 

Interestingly, the NHRC has raised several legal questions discussed above and asked the Delhi police to submit the facts of July 20 violence, the justification for the prohibitory order, details of the usage of lathi charge, tear gas and pellets used and the injuries sustained by the protesters including the proportionality and the SOP followed during the crowd control. Ordering the Delhi Police to investigate allegations against their own colleagues might render it futile, a criticism that is not new for the apex human rights body. This also hinges upon the Supreme Court’s consistent concern on the independence of investigation on police excess - the connivance of colleagues. Does this truly in spirit and practice fulfil the appropriate forum illustrated by the Jammu & Kashmir High Court? The ‘cockroaches’ wouldn’t leave it easily as they are stern on their demands. At least, they shouldn’t!

DCP Sachin Sharma warned against ‘legal action’ on protestors who violate the order, but never said they would be blinded and molested. The law is settled, and the use of force has comfortably transgressed the necessity and proportionality test, and the internet shutdown and sexual assault only worsen it. Besides the NHRC’s intervention, the Supreme Court on July 28 ordered the release of all minors, restrained the police from taking coercive action against “protesting students” without criminal record and is considering the constitution of a high powered investigation committee after hearing the Union. Hence, it is ultimately upon the top Court, which was also inadvertently the trigger for this whole movement, to assert whether it is unlawful use of force to protect the constitutional rights of the youths who exercised their democratic right to ensure ‘accountability and transparency’ as Justice Sikri, noted in Mazdoor Kisan.

The views are personal.

Courtesy: The Leaflet