Explained: This article explains the political background, key decisions, and possible outcomes related to Explained : Who Now Says India Must Choose Between Protest and the Rule of Law? and Its Impact and why it matters right now.
Once a beneficiary of mass protest, the Modi government now treats dissent as a threat to national security. The about-turn could hardly be more stark.
Our tyrant, who now loathes protests of any kind, rode to power on the back of Team Anna’s India Against Corruption (IAC) movement that exploited popular discontent against a venal, dithering government and brought it to its knees. Remember, though it now seems it happened aeons ago? A revealing snapshot of the faint-heartedness of the ruling dispensation in those tumultuous days was the picture of Pranab Mukherjee, finance minister, receiving Baba Ramdev, a prominent Team Anna acolyte, at Delhi airport.
But we now live in an Orwellian world where Comrade Napoleon is always right – whatever Modi and his government do is lawful, but dissent is criminalised as anti-national, even seditious. And to hell with justice! Last month, a peaceful protest organised by the Indian Youth Congress during the AI Summit met an over-the-top clampdown that included arrests of the protesters for up to 14 days. The legal cases against them are ongoing.
Contrast this with the response of the French authorities to the Greenpeace protesters who disrupted the March 10 Nuclear Energy Summit in Paris. Two protesters even stormed the stage before they were all escorted out of the venue – and that was it! For me, the unforgettable moment of that brief democratic interlude was when one of the protesters who barged onto the stage shouted, “Why are we still buying uranium from Russia?”
Unruffled, Macron coolly replied, “We produce nuclear power ourselves.”
French President Emmanuel Macron, left, and Rafael Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), center, react as a Greenpeace activist holds a sign in protest at the IAEA Nuclear Energy Summit in Paris, France, Tuesday March 10, 2026. Photo: Abdul Saboor/Pool Photo via AP.
By deigning to respond, Macron recognised the agency of a protester in a democracy. So unlike our 56-inch bully who, in a similar situation, would cower behind his minders. This apart, without the crutch of a teleprompter, Modi is at a loss for words in any public interaction.
Like all authoritarians, Modi has repeatedly stressed the criticality of safeguarding the rule of law by artfully yoking it to national interest and security. He has directed vitriol against protesters, whom he brands “andolanjeevis” or professional agitators or he describes them as anti-national, traitors, “urban Naxals” or agents of foreign powers bent on spreading anarchy and destroying national unity.
Modi has used the smokescreen of the rule of law to pervert justice.
His demonisation of protesters reminds me of an instance of gallows humour. At the height of the anti-Vietnam social upheavals in the 1960s, a Harvard law student addressed a largely conservative audience of parents and colleagues:
The streets of our country are in turmoil. The universities are filled with students rebelling and rioting. Communists are seeking to destroy our country… The Republic is in danger, danger from within and without. We need law and order! Without law and order our nation cannot survive.
His words were greeted with thunderous applause and when it died down, he fired his punchline: “These words were spoken in 1932 by Adolf Hitler!”
Gandhiji taught us the importance of Satyagraha or peaceful resistance as a legitimate, democratic weapon against oppression. He believed non-violent protests were a powerful moral tool to fight injustice and was clear that submitting meekly to injustice was a sin, a dereliction that most of us have been guilty of in the last decade.
To be clear, the right to protest is enshrined under Article 19(1)(a) and 19(1)(b) of the Constitution of India, subject to reasonable restrictions in the interest of public order, security and morality. Our founding fathers recognised that dissent and protests were the lifeblood of democracy.
From the very start, the Modi regime has severely restricted the fundamental right to protest. In the guise of safeguarding national security and the rule of law, there has been an all-out offensive against all forms of dissent. Even the cartoonist and stand-up comedian – the animating spirits of a vibrant democracy – are not spared.
In America today, comedians with deadly serious intent – Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers and John Oliver – are leading the resistance against Trump’s wannabe-fascist rule and his dangerous clownshow. So incensed has Trump been with the lampooning and criticism that the offending networks have been threatened with cancellation of their licenses. Under such pressure, Disney’s ABC network pulled Kimmel’s programme off the air but within a week it was back because of intense pressure from celebrities and the millions of viewers who threatened to end their subscriptions if Kimmel was sacked. After all, satire and humour are crucial elements of life.
The problem in our country is that we laugh at the witticisms and satire of our comedians and cartoonists but don’t take them seriously as social commentators. As for actively supporting them against a menacing government and its foot-soldiers… forget it! Munawar Faruqui, Kunal Kamra, Hemant Malviya and several others have faced harassment and legal action for making fun of Modi and a few of us have clucked in sympathy.
Meanwhile, the Vishwaguru’s lead factotum, ‘Deletion Baba’ (Siddharth’s sobriquet) Ashwini Vaishnav, has been reckless in using Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 to delete posts and cartoons that are critical of his thin-skinned Lord and Master. The silly guy doesn’t realise that deleted tweets get resurrected and take wing precisely because of the censorship.
This regime’s playbook is familiar. There is the formulaic imposition of the protest-emasculating Section 144 of the Criminal Code (now Section 163 of the BNSS); the corralling of protests within the confines of a completely barricaded Jantar Mantar and other designated areas; the ubiquitous police swoop down to disperse even the most benign protest; the regime’s extra-constitutional goon squads in saffron headgear ever-ready to intimidate peaceful protesters and vandalise protest sites.
There is also Modi’s version of ‘Newspeak’ propaganda: the recent manifesto for the hatchet men of the regime – the bureaucrats, which involved the mandatory recitation of the Seva Sankalp Resolution by all government employees, enjoining them to adopt the ideals of duty, service and dedication in order to fulfil PM Modi’s vision for nation-building. Full of pieties, there is not a word about justice in the verbose three-page resolution.
But the stifling of dissent goes way beyond such routine constrictive practice. For over a decade, a trigger-happy government has unleashed sedition and anti-terrorism laws against ordinary citizens protesting injustice. Of the unending litany of the heavy-handed offensive against legitimate civilian protests, the most heinous and definitely most unforgivable injustice has been the cold, systematic hounding and wrecking of the lives of our very best Indians, associated with the Elgar Parishad-Bhima Koregaon case of 2018.
Their crime was to protest against fascist Hindutva and discrimination against Dalits – the two gravest problems faced by the nation. This incipient movement helmed by our finest – scholars, poets, human rights activists, lawyers, even an aged Jesuit priest – posed a threat to the core of the regime’s ideological structure, and was therefore crushed using the full might of the state. What they have endured is a horror story, and even today, some are languishing in jail.
But this has not been a one-off. Apart from the state-sponsored bigotry targeting Muslims, many activists, journalists, students and scholars who have exercised their right to free speech to chastise the government have faced harassment, legal scrutiny, raids, and some have even faced prolonged incarceration. G.N. Saibaba, Umar Khalid, Siddique Kappan, Prabir Purkayastha, Harsh Mander and Sonam Wangchuk come to mind.
In the last four years, popular uprisings in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal have resulted in the overthrow of oppressive governments. In every case, the anti-government protesters were driven by a combination of corruption, economic mismanagement, high unemployment, rising inflation, authoritarianism, police brutality and nepotism that plagued their respective nations.
If these constitute sufficient justification for citizens to take the law into their hands and seek a change of government, then on all counts, we should have been the first off the block. (Lest bhakts mislead anyone, I would particularly flag the colossal, all-pervasive nepotism of the Sangh Parivar.) But this regime, by totally communalising the polity and undermining the camaraderie and unity of the working classes, has ensured against solidarity among people.
Concerned citizens are angered at the sheer injustice of what’s happening but such outrage is as useful as baying at the moon.
The writer is a former civil servant. The views expressed are personal.
This article went live on March eighteenth, two thousand twenty six, at twenty-eight minutes past four in the afternoon.
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