October 10th witnessed a massive display of state repression in the national capital. Brutal violence was unleashed against journalists, students, activists and citizens who wanted to protest at Jantar Mantar, seeking Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation.
India’s Opposition parties have united over the demand that Gyanesh Kumar must go and the SIR must be annulled. Even as the government responded by denotifying Jantar Mantar as a protest site, the Congress has vowed to ‘reclaim’ Jantar Mantar.
The Opposition’s overarching political plank, as of today, is to ‘save Indian democracy’, and ‘save the Constitution’, by fighting to protect the ordinary Indian’s right to vote. It has announced plans to continue this protest campaign until the demands are met.
This raises some key questions: does the SIR issue resonate with the masses? Can we really be sure that today’s protesters, despite all their grievances, will not go back and vote for the BJP come election time? Can we read bigger and bigger protests as a setback for the Hindutva project? Or, is the BJP-RSS juggernaut resilient enough to survive expressions of large-scale dissent?
Joining us today is Ajay Gudavarthy, Associate Professor in Political Science at the Centre for Political Studies, JNU.
Host: G Sampath
Producer: Shiksha Jural
Video: Jude Weston
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