Demonstrations against the SIR process underscore the importance of peaceful protest, electoral transparency and constitutional freedoms in a democracy. (PTI Photo)

When the writ of government is disregarded, which is how the Cockroach Janta Party and knots of non-aligned young people reacted through organised flash protests on October 13 against the “denotification” issued on October 12, banning protest demonstrations at New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar, the message was crystal clear. The unprecedented scale and presistence of protesters, both civil society-led and political party-mobilised, from October 2 and even now, is a significant shift.

It has changed the equilibrium that enabled Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance to dominate and steer not just the political discourse, rather inappropriately on occasion described as “the narrative,” but the conduct of politics in large parts of India. Neither Mr Modi, nor his trusted henchman Amit Shah, nor even the BJP, not even the fountainhead of the party’s existence, the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh have any control over the conduct of politics, the language and the content of the discourse, any more.

Of how the invincible BJP and its helmsman lost control will be a matter of enquiry over the next several years; for now, it is enough to note that Mr Modi and the Home minister, Amit Shah, misunderstood and miscalculated and mismanaged the unbreakbale bond between the idea of freedom and the right to protest. The Modi administration began by slamming protest as “anarchy” fomented by the Congress and its leader Rahul Gandhi, after he climbed atop a barricade on October 6. Ever since, it is both lost for words and for decisive action against the steady escalation of protest.

Dissent does not disappear by inconveniencing protesters, determined to be heard and seen, demanding that things must change. The priorities of the dissenters-protesters have been clearly articulated. Nevertheless, listing them is necessary to understand that the demands are neither insurrectionist, portends of anarchy, or to be honest, even remotely illegitimate.

The demands are simple — the face that launched the special intensive revision that threatens to disenfranchise 13.37 crore voters, that is, Gyanesh Kumar, must go; all elections post SIR are illegitimate; therefore, they must be rolled back. The Modi government has spent years campaigning against the illegitimacy of elections won by the Opposition, especially the Congress and the erstwhileunified Trinamul Congress, accusing them of establishing “vote banks” by illegaly enfranchising “infiltrators”.

The idea that elections can be externally manipulated to produce results by the government in power has thus become “real” through the frequency of BJP’s messaging. That same idea of external manipulation by the Election Commission at the behest of Gyanesh Kumar, directed by what the Congress, the Opposition and the CJP believe to be Mr Modi and Mr Shah is, therefore, not farfetched or illegitimate. It merely makes the other side the villains in the same story.

That the demand has turned into a popular struggle for fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution in Article 19 and Article 14 — the first protecting freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and hence protest, forming associations and unions, and the second, protecting equality and equal protection under the law — is not the protesters’ fault. The escalation of the struggle is entirely on account of the panic reaction of the Government of India. It resorted to the use of barricades, manned by paramilitary and police forces, to physically enclose itself within a safe zone by creating a fortress around Parliament and adjacent buildings, residences and offices, including the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi’s new fortified home on Lok Kalyan Marg.

Why would a legitimately elected government, claiming that its actions are above board and right, find it necessary to insulate itself from the miniscule fraction of protesters?

How can a demand for the chief election commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation, after news reports on why decisions of the Election Commission were made in contravention of the law, be considered illegitimate? Nor can the demand for annulling all elections that used the electoral rolls after these were processed through the new minted special intensive revision method be illegitimate. If the process of revision under SIR is suspect, it is perfectly within the rights of Indians, all 13.37 crore whose names are currently deleted, to demand that the revision be cancelled.

As matters stand, the beleagured Modi administration is defending itself by hunkering down inside the security cordon it has thrown up to shut out the Opposition even as its lawyers struggle to explain why Paresh Salgaokar and six of his family in Goa have been stripped off their right to choose who will represent them.

If elections are not free and fair then 13.37 crore erstwhile voters, because their names are deleted, need to be represented in a fight that the Modi government has irreversibly chosen to make its own, instead of doing what canny politicans do, pass the buck and sacrifice the CEC to protect themselves.

Dissent and the right to express it, inside Parliament and on the streets, is at the heart of democracy, where the rulers in power must necessarily be challenged by the Opposition, organised as political parties or as civil society. The Modi government ought to have known better than to confront dissent in the way it is doing now.

The government forgot that it was helpless against the organised protest of farmers; it used iron spikes, razor-edged barbed wire, concrete blocks and massive police and paramilitary deployment, to barricade them in. The Modi administration forgot that there was Shaheen Bagh and, too, the Seelampur-Jamia Millia protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act. This time, it has barricaded itself in to shut out the protesters, implying that those outside the barricade are stronger than the rulers inside.

The BJP’s, or rather Mr Modi’s, problem is inexperience in knowing what a protest is that takes to the streets. That explains, in part, Mr Shah’s reduction of the nationwide eruptions of protest, conventions and demonstrations as a move by Rahul Gandhi to defend “infiltrators”, meaning Muslims, as “vote banks”. The misplaced confidence of BJP in manipulating the “narrative” by insinuating that all dissent or protest against it is an assault of the Hindu majority and the idea of Hindutva reveals how beseiged it feels in such unprecedented circumstances.

Are the youth, comprising about 48 per cent of India’s population, one part of which is represented by the Cockroach Janta Party and others, “infiltrators”, or “vote banks” of the Congress and the INDIA bloc Opposition?

Neither the Congress and other parties of the INDIA bloc, nor the CJP have shown signs of retreat in the face of the abuse of power by the Modi administration. The dissenters have gone to court and opened up another front to pursue the fight against repression and against what they allege are illegalities in the conduct of electoral roll revision.

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