Thousands of anti-government protesters were arrested in New Delhi over the weekend in a shocking show of force by the Indian government. Authorities did not say how many people were detained but on Sunday released the leader of the protest movement Jantar Party. Narendra Modi’s government and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have faced widespread unrest over the past few months, with massive demonstrations by India’s youth demanding reforms to the country’s education system, leading to the education minister’s resignation in July.
Recently, however, the CJP’s protests have focused on the government’s shocking decision to remove over 100 million people from the electoral roll. The government claims this is to eliminate discrepancies and duplications in the rolls, but it leaves the process to the Election Commission, whose head is actually chosen by Modi. I recently had a phone call with activist and political scientist Yogendra Yadav, who is also the national convener of Bharat Jodo Abhiyaan, a civil society group formed to protect democratic groups in India. In our conversation, we discuss whether the Modi government should be worried about the protests, the uncertain future of Indian democracy, and Yadav himself being arrested during this weekend’s protests. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
How are the protests of the past few days different from previous protests against the Modi government?
What is most different is the participation of youth who do not belong to any organization or any ideology. Sporadic protests in the past have been largely sectoral. Minority groups protested against the Citizenship Amendment Act in 2020. Farmers protest in 2021. Lower castes and adivasis also protested. But these are all sectoral protests, led by sector-specific organizations. All of them are full of energy. Some of them are very mobilized, such as farmers. But none of them are cross-sectional.
It is cross-sectional because it spans geography. It crosses social boundaries. It particularly appeals to young people. In many ways, it also crossed political lines, as the protesters did not necessarily come from anti-BJP backgrounds. In fact, the BJP’s biggest concern is that a large proportion of the protesters come from families that have long supported Modi. These are the middle-class, upper-caste young people who have been the bastion of the BJP. This development is what worries the BJP the most and is what makes this moment so different.
You mentioned the middle-class and upper-caste identities of many of the protesters. Are there concerns that the protests are focusing too much on the concerns of people with these identities?
No, I should clarify what I said. What I am saying is that the protests include young people from the middle and upper castes, who were almost completely absent in the past. This does not mean that it is dominated by so-called middle-class and upper-caste protesters. In fact, Abhijeet Dipke, one of the key leaders of the Cockroach Janta Party youth protests, is a Dalit, that is to say a former untouchable. His being a Dalit actually ensured massive participation of the Dalit community. If you look at the participation of street youth, it includes people from the middle to the bottom of the lower middle class.
The reason for the lack of meaningful participation of the bottom third of Indian society is that most of them cannot travel to urban areas to participate in protests. However, the fact of heavy participation from this middle-class segment is of great concern to the BJP as this middle-class segment has been a bastion of the BJP. It’s not that other sections that have long been opposed to the BJP have disappeared, they’re just not the only ones now, and that makes all the difference.
The protests of several months ago, many of which focused on reforms to the education system, appear to have blended seamlessly with the more recent protests, which are more focused on the large number of Indians being removed from the electoral rolls. Can you talk about the electoral roll issue and how it motivates people?
First some clarification is needed. Yes, the flashpoint for the July protests was education, but, as most observers have noted, education issues were only the actual focus of a minority of protesters. The demonstrations became a manifestation of wider anger and anxiety over education, employment and general livelihood issues. So the drive is much deeper.
Likewise, in the current protests, the conduct of the Chief Electoral Commissioner, the functioning of the Electoral Commission and disenfranchisement actions known as Special Intensification Revisions (SIRs) have once again stoked wider anxiety, anger and dissatisfaction with the regime.
I don’t think everyone who joins really understands what SIR is. The election was widely believed to be unfair. So this is a broad movement about election integrity, and SIR happens to be the focus of that.
Now, specifically about the SIR: in sheer numbers, this was one of the largest campaigns of disenfranchisement in the history of the world. If you look at the major practices of disenfranchisement, one example that comes to mind is post-Civil War America in the nineteenth century. But the number of people involved then was very small compared to what is happening in India now.
Can you explain specifically what was done?
The exercise, known as the SIR, pretends to be a routine revision of election rules. But under the guise of this routine procedure, an extraordinary mechanism was set in motion that completely upended the structure of Indian voter registration and disenfranchised millions of voters. In recent history, India has been a country where the state initiated voter registration. The burden is not on the individual. So, someone comes to your house, puts you on the voters’ list, does physical verification and you are on the voters’ list. This version of the SIR shifts the blame. For the first time in Indian history, you are required to fill up a form and submit it by a specific date within a month. If you do not do this, you will automatically be removed from the electoral roll. This has never happened before in India. In India, if you are already on the electoral list, you will continue to be on the electoral list unless you are removed or die. Now, even if you’ve been on the Electoral List Committee for the last fifty years, it doesn’t have any influence. You must re-register.