Well begun is half done

AT first look, it struck one as a politically conjured Woodstock, its unhurried gait like a cloud walk along a gurgling brook of piercing humour, cackling laughter and tuneful parodies, with Faiz and Fahmida Riaz making their mandatory appearance as they often do in youthful Indian protests. The event kindled muzzled memories of what the idea of India was conceived as. In a word, the event was magical, too good to be true. An Urdu verse comes to mind that nicely captures the disbelief of joy with a habit of apprehension. Yet, it was the news one had been aching to hear for more than 12 years, probably more. “Wo ghareeb dil ko sabaq miley ki khushi ke naam se dar gaya/ Kabhi tumne hans ke jo baat ki, to hamara chehra utar gaya” (‘parched by a drought of joyous tidings the heart is scared of happiness/ If you smile at me perchance, I feel a creeping wariness’).

The songs and memes from the Jantar Mantar protest rang across the country’s myriad regions. A lasting image lingers in the form of a hijab-wrapped woman who could have come from an Iranian street march to challenge imperialism’s colluders in India. She held a placard that spelt the Indian prime minister’s name with an acid slant. ‘MODI — Murderer of Democratic India.’ A similar poster replaced ‘qazi’ with ‘Nazi’. Qazis unite Muslim couples in matrimony, but they can’t do much for a Hindu and a Muslim duo who want to be together without reference to religion or ritual. There’s a secular law for those marriages in India, and they have become a bane for Hindutva. The thought of inter-religious marriage could land anyone in Narendra Modi’s jail.

Hindutva’s aversion to marital licence put it in the a crosshairs of some agitators, who likened it to the Nuremberg laws which assigned people of different races and religions to hidebound mutually exclusive identities. A Jewish man could not marry a German woman and vice versa under Hitler’s laws. Hindutva seeks to perfect the Nuremberg perfidy to align it with its own hateful purpose. The poster rejected the attempt. “Jab Hindu Muslim razi/ To kya karega Nazi?” There were many such quips. The temple heist in Ayodhya was projected as post-Mughal ‘atma nirbharta’ (self-reliance).

A duo from Mumbai took the Delhi subway with their own version of a futuristic poster. “Dharmendra today; Devendra tomorrow; Narendra the day after.” Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan was forced to resign as per the students’ wishes. His name rhymes with those of the BJP’s chief minister in Maharashtra, Devendra Fadnavis, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The couple were not alone in sequencing the future following the weeks-long agitation against an evidently corrupt education system.

India’s trajectory as a democracy has been obstructed and challenged by the Hindu right since independence.

A notable feature of the protests was the social mix. The students were predominantly from urban Hindu middle classes who came from different states of the northern Hindi-speaking belt. Maharashtra and southern states, together with West Bengal and Manipur and some others, held equally impressive demonstrations. Parents of some of the students in Delhi confessed to having voted for the BJP in the past. But they said they were now thoroughly disillusioned. Leftist students, also from Hindu families but with a greater Muslim component, shored up the syncretic element.

The formal face of the agitation was hemmed in by its limited objectives and equally limited gains for now. It was also not the first forced resignation of a minister. Junior external affairs minister M.J. Akbar had to go in 2018 after a MeToo agitation waged by women journalists. In political terms, the Sikh farmers seemed more surefooted than the students when they campaigned outside Delhi for a year to win the annulment of three laws they deemed toxic. Although 12 students lost their lives, mostly by suicide, triggering the students’ agitation, the farmers lost around 700 during the agitation, with many succumbing to harsh Delhi weather.

India’s trajectory as a democracy has been obstructed and challenged by the Hindu right since independence. Its agitation for a Hindu rashtra didn’t begin with Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination. It guided the country towards a bitter and hate-filled Partition, having first declared that Hindus and Muslims could never live together. In their endeavour, they found an unlikely ally in some Muslim leaders.

Bearing the past in mind, it would help to remember that the last time a student rebellion broke out in India was in Gujarat in 1974, with Narendra Modi reportedly playing a major backroom role. The movement found traction in Bihar and turned into a ‘Total Revolution’ against Indira Gandhi’s moribund democracy and her sloppy, if also corrupt, administration. Some claim it was a drop in the ocean given today’s gargantuan standards of corruption. The students aligned with Indira’s left and right opposition and threatened to uproot Congress rule for the first time since independence. When a section of the judiciary joined the drive, Mrs Gandhi responded by clamping the nefarious Emergency. She asked the media to bend, but it preferred to crawl. So recalled L.K. Advani of the RSS/Jana Sangh after watching the crackdown from prison. Could another student revolt, this time against a much more motivated and highly organised fascist system, lead to a different outcome?

By most accounts, Modi has successfully installed a system that channels the anger from widespread inequality, particularly among the youth, into an institutionalised culture of hate. With support extending from the election commission to the heads of the two houses of parliament, as well as strategically placed pliant judges, Modi’s party has been likened to the invincible mythical demon Bhasmasura. Mrs Gandhi was roundly defeated in the elections she called in 1977. Defeating Modi, though, demands Lord Vishnu’s support, to stay with the mythical metaphor. This challenge will truly test everybody riding the crest of the students’ impressive success. Yet, well begun is half done, as the students must have learnt in school.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.

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Published in Dawn, July 28th, 2026