by Revati Laul
It’s funny that we live in times where I cannot spell out clearly the one winning protest signboard from Jantar Mantar’s barricades without asterix. `F*** Fascists’ it said, loud and proud. The one thing that can be said without disguise though is this – what the right-wing is most scared of and rightfully so, is the left. In India, after the left lost power In Kerala, we have no ostensible left party in power. But when power is usurped by the state that is tone-deaf to anything but the person at the helm, when the police is an instrument of repression and courts incarcerate protestors with no bail in sight for years on end; then the only place for such a regime to fear is that of the ideologically committed.
Therefore, on the streets of Jantar Mantar, what I saw, beyond Sonam Wangchuk and Abhijit Dipke, was the steely and effective presence of the ideological left. The only reason a student could brandish a @@@@ fascists banner is because those from the Student Federation of India, the All India Students’ Federation and the All India Students Association – 21 of them were on hunger strike for over 20 days. Their tents in a quiet corner were fronted by banners of Bhagat Singh and Che and pamphlets, circulars on the New Education Policy, on revolutionary ideals and on ideas that have stood the test of time.
Their corner was flanked by celebrities from the progressive movements – Prakash Raj and Shabana Azmi and committed left leaders like Brinda Karat, Nivedita Menon, the ever-more fabulous and committed writer Arundhati Roy and Ambedkarite leader Chandrashekhar Azad.
The police and paramilitary did their draconian duty – beating some students till their heads spilled with blood. They tried everything – put up barricades 8 feet high and welded them together. The crowds managed to break them down. They beat people up.
A man with a fountain of blood gushing from his head was filmed talking back to the police – “Hum toh shaheed hain, har yug mein Janam lenge.” We are martyrs, we will be born in every generation. “Hur yug me Janam lenge tumhari aukad bata denge.” We will rise up in each generation to put you in your place. “Aap samajhte ho aapne maar diya, hum har yug me janam lenge, ghulam nahin, maalik hain aur har janam me aapko aapki aukaad bata denge.” You think you can kill us, we are and will always be your masters.
Meanwhile more tepid leaders who I shall not name, used the Cockroach Janta Party podium to trot out lectures on peace. Some amongst the media also went down this well-worn rabbit hole – “the peaceful protestors.”
I was at the protest one day before D day. There were over a lakh people and it was the most beautiful and civilized sight ever. Managed by well-heeled left cadres. By well-heeled I refer to ideological commitment. They had paper and plastic fans, they spotted grey-haired people and stated fanning us, passing bottles of water, chanas to eat, forming queues, making way for one another, writing slogans, being considerate, waiting for others to pass.
But then peace in draconian times is an ideal only the ideologically scared, unsure or wavering will put down as a first principle. When your skull is cracked and you are still staring down the police officer, this is not the definition of peace. It is a war of the state against the people. Peace cannot be held as the only ideal. It is the badge of status quoists too fearful of barricades, commitment, laying down of life.
And this is where students have shown that they are thirsting for commitment, ideological grounding. They’re coming to Jantar Mantar with copies of the Constitution and posters of B R Ambedkar. This is a commitment to an ideology first and at any cost. It’s not about tepidly made promises to show the other cheek. There are memes and photos that speak of students tired of having nothing to hold onto and nowhere to go. I asked a policeman yesterday if in his heart he wasn’t committed to the students. He looked away, then ahead at his boss standing some distance from us and said quietly – “I’ll answer that question when I’ve taken off my uniform madam.”
For now, some from the Cockroach Janta Party have been called to the negotiating table. There are all kinds of speculations in a country full of conspiracy theorists – this is front for the Aam Aadmi Party,’the protests will die down and the government will then come down harder’ `the government is too strong and the opposition in tatters so nothing much will change there.’ But the thing about protests like this are that the puncture time, they flip the fear directed at them and turn it back on the government. And they allow people to believe, briefly, that anything is possible. That moment is what the right fears above all. The loss of absolute control and the rupturing of the veneer that they are invincible or even popular.
Whatever the present holds – compromise, the end of a month-long stake-out at Jantar Mantar, what the country cannot unsee is the willingness of a growing and critical mass of young and restless to the ideals of the Indian Constitution, and especially of the right to question and to be defiant. This bedrock is most certainly left-oriented, organised, and unstoppable. It does not have to accrue power immediately or by the usual route of party, election and then power.
Power does not reside in a pliant police and institutions where there has been a hostile takeover. Power lies in the ability of a bleeding student to stand in front of a non-plussed police and say @#$@ you, I will show you your place. Taking my cue from the students at Jantar Mantar, I will add, that the draconian-in-charge may not have a taste for T S Eliot and the prophesy his poem East Coker holds out. But maybe, he should lean in to what the barricades are saying loudly, that Eliot evoked a century and more ago.
“And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.”
How terrible for the haves, for those who think they have arrived’ and havegot there,’ the frightening proposition of having to look at the barricades, at a future where they cannot stay where they now are.
Revati Laul is a journalist, activist, and author of The Anatomy of Hate. She lives and works in Shamli, Uttar Pradesh
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