On Gandhi's Birthday, Godse-Following State Turns Its Forces on Protesters in Delhi
More than 1,100 people were detained, among them CPI(M) general secretary M.A. Baby and former Delhi chief minister Atishi. Opposition parties and student groups have launched a nationwide campaign to remove Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and scrap the revision of the electoral rolls.
On Oct. 2, the birth anniversary of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, New Delhi, Mumbai, and other major cities across the Indian Union saw two things at once: fascism flexing its muscle and a sweeping movement of students and citizens rising against it.
A coalition of mass organizations and political parties began a nationwide campaign on Friday, Gandhi's birthday. They are demanding the dismissal of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar, who has stripped tens of millions of people across the Indian Union of their right to vote.
They are also demanding the complete scrapping of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of India's electoral rolls. The coalition includes the Cockroach Janata Party, the All India Students' Association (AISA), the student wing of the CPI(ML) Liberation, the Students' Federation of India (SFI) and the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI), the student and youth wings of the CPI(M), the National Students' Union of India (NSUI), the student wing of the Congress, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), the Samajwadi Party (SP), Shiv Sena (UBT), and the Mamata Banerjee-led All India Trinamool Congress (AITC)
On Friday, leaders and activists of AISA, SFI, DYFI, and AAP set out for Jantar Mantar in the heart of Delhi. They were met, it is alleged, with a ferocious police crackdown. Protesters accuse the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which they call followers of Gandhi's assassin Nathuram Godse, of unleashing the assault. They say the BJP used the full force of the state, including a Delhi police force loyal to it.
The Delhi Police had already rejected an application to stage a sit-in at Jantar Mantar. Thousands of students and young people tried to join the demonstration anyway, in open defiance of the refusal. The left-wing student and youth groups were joined as principal organizers of the protest by AAP, RJD Rajya Sabha member Manoj Kumar Jha, and the lawyer Prashant Bhushan.
More than 1,100 protesters were detained. They included former Delhi chief minister Atishi, AISA leader Neha Bora, SFI leader Sharanya Verma, DYFI leader Srijan Bhattacharya, CPI(M) general secretary M.A. Baby, CPI(M) Politburo member Brinda Karat, AAP member of Parliament Sanjay Singh, Saurabh Bharadwaj, and the social activist Yogendra Yadav.
Police dragged them away, beating them as they went. Yet for all the mass arrests, the Delhi Police could not silence the protest at Jantar Mantar.
Speaking from inside a police prison van, Mr. Baby said, "Gyanesh Kumar is a murderer of democracy. Instead of arresting the officials who broke the law, they are arresting us."
Mahua Moitra, a member of Parliament from the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress, backed the protesters in a post on X: "Citizens do not need police permission to protest peacefully. Let the police do as they please. We are watching too."
Eleven metro stations in Delhi were reportedly shut to keep the protest from gathering. On the same day in Mumbai, students and citizens began large-scale demonstrations and a sit-in led by the Cockroach Janata Party. Protests and agitations are also underway in most of India's cities.
