New Delhi, India — India’s main opposition leader, Rahul Gandhi, led dozens of lawmakers and thousands of other protesters in a tense march to the Supreme Court on Monday, submitting a petition demanding the resignation of the country’s election chief, even as tens of thousands of police followed them, preventing them from physically accessing the court.
Congress Party leader Gandhi was joined by his sister, Priyanka, who is also an MP, and other prominent leaders atop a truck that slowly made its way through a sea of supporters toward the court.
The police had erected a series of barricades to prevent them from accessing the Supreme Court. But some Congress Party supporters pushed past the first set of barricades after breaking through them. As they approached the second barricade, the police attempted to push back and clashes appeared imminent.
But Congress leaders then announced that Gandhi and others had succeeded in submitting their petition to the court, albeit not physically, and their truck turned around.
Yet leaders of the Congress, other opposition parties and the Gen Z-led ‘Cockroach’ protest movement indicated they were still deciding their next steps – their demand for Election Commission chief Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation unchanged. The Cockroach Janta Party movement had expelled Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan in July.
Rahul Gandhi, heir to India’s most influential political dynasty, is seeking to turn the summer youth uprising into a broader challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decade-long Indian political dominance, putting the Hindu nationalist government under increasing pressure.
At a press briefing on Monday, Gandhi said the Modi government had put the capital “in prison”. More than 30,000 police officers have been deployed on the streets of New Delhi.
“No constraints on Modi”
The Election Commission of India, a so-called autonomous body tasked with overseeing the world’s largest electorate, has come under fire after revelations that its chief, Kumar, frequently ignored concerns raised by the two other election commissioners about the integrity of changes to the voter database.
For months, India’s opposition parties have argued that the Election Commission was compromised, sabotaging elections at the behest of Modi’s Hindu-majority Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for its electoral benefit. The BJP denies these allegations.
Since June of last year, the commission has been reviewing and updating statewide voter rolls. Since then, more than 130 million names have been removed, which critics say has disproportionately disenfranchised minorities and other vulnerable groups in India.
Gandhi demanded that the chief election commissioner be tried for treason. “We will not spare you,” he said, referring to Kumar, during his press briefing on Monday.
Opposition politicians say protest rallies organized by leaders including Gandhi were met with violent and brutal force, videos showing their arrest show.
“(The protesters) came with love in their hearts, not hatred or anger,” Gandhi said, referring to a Saturday protest. “They were beaten up, both by cops and by BJP goons.”
“Narendra Modi…cannot silence the voice of India. These cowards cannot intimidate us. They will have to stand down,” he wrote on X, calling on people from all walks of life to join Monday’s protest.
Analysts say the circumstances this time are very different from those of the summer protests, when CJP-led demonstrators demanded the resignation of Pradhan, then education minister.
Asim Ali, a political analyst in New Delhi, told Al Jazeera that the broader opposition mobilization would not stop, but that the Modi government was unlikely to back down.
“This time, the crackdown on students clearly shows that the situation will be tougher for young protesters, and that students cannot be beaten and dragged violently on a daily basis,” he said. “In the future, opposition parties should be the front face of protests, and they must take the lead. »
Since 1975, when then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi imposed a state of national emergency suspending civil liberties, “India has seen more civil politics take hold, where opposition parties have been given space,” Ali said.
He added that after five decades, “these democratic achievements have disappeared – and there is no constraint on this government by independent institutions.”
Rasheed Kidwai, a political analyst, said he saw New Delhi at the center of “several large opposition political rallies, held in areas near parliament, hosting hundreds of thousands of people”, without police intervening, unlike this year’s crackdown.
Kidwai said the violent detention of parliamentarians, in particular, was concerning.
“We are seeing a big change from when politicians were more tolerant of dissent,” he noted.
Cat and mouse chases
With an unprecedented security deployment in central New Delhi intended to prevent protests, youth leaders are turning to new tactics.
Neha Bora, president of the All India Students’ Association (AISA), a left-wing group affiliated with the Communist Party of India, has often misled Delhi police into organizing protests in recent days.
Bora, a postdoctoral theater student, rose to national prominence through her fiery speeches during the July protests, becoming one of the leading faces of the Gen Z movement challenging Modi’s Hindu nationalist policies.
Aditi Thakur, a 23-year-old student in the capital, turned on notifications for all of Bora’s posts on social media. “A call to protest can come anytime and anywhere,” she told Al Jazeera.
Bora only reveals when and where she is going to demonstrate 30 minutes before, to avoid being arrested by the police. Her supporters are alerted via social networks to join her at a given location in the capital.
On Sunday, she chose a congested street near central Delhi and managed to pass through several barricades to reach the heavily secured Parliament Street before being chased and dragged into a police van.
Even Thakur couldn’t catch her, she told Al Jazeera with a laugh. “We live in times of guerrilla warfare, but peacefully. If the government represses us, we must also adapt,” she said. “It’s a fun cat and mouse race every day. I’m addicted to it.”
The Gandhi-led Congress also adopted similar measures, holding flash rallies at unannounced locations and then fleeing the police.
The mood changes
One of the defining features of the July protests – a watershed moment in the fight against government concessions – was Gen Z’s humor in the face of police brutality.
Now, protesters are bracing for a more serious confrontation, even if the demonstrations remain peaceful, analysts say.
“We see that humor turning more into anger this time,” Asim Ali said.
The biggest challenge for the government lies in the disruptions in central New Delhi, which, Ali said, the government cannot allow on a daily basis. The region is home to most federal government offices and is also a major business center.
The protesters know this too, and it gives them an advantage.
“We see this movement transforming into a larger anti-government, anti-Modi movement,” Ali said.
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