Step 1: The loss of fear. What’s next?

Perhaps the most significant achievement of the recent Gen Z protest in Delhi is the breach it has opened in the climate of fear and submission. Equally, it has exposed the Modi government’s vulnerabilities. A regime that positions its obduracy as resolve — ‘resignations do not happen in this government’ — was forced into an embarrassing retreat.

The ‘world’s largest political party’, backed by its formidable IT machinery, suddenly looked comical and ineffectual, both online and on the ground. Even the damage-control exertions of the ‘non-biological’ prime minister, jerked out of his preferred 8.00 pm television slot to try his hand at Instagram reels, backfired and became more fodder for gags and memes.

The larger Hindutva project has also suffered a tremendous blow. Both the Modi government and some top functionaries of the RSS were ticked off by Parivar patriarch Mohan Bhagwat, who laboured the point at a youth conference in Mumbai that the Gen Z protesters were “not anti-nationals”, that the government must engage in dialogue, i.e., avoid its usual ‘my way or the highway’ approach.

The Congress party, Rahul Gandhi in particular, had been raising students’ grievances for some time, but their efforts were not getting media attention, thanks to the long arm of the PMO. In fact, hoping it would take steam out of the Congress campaign, the government was initially quite soft on the Cockroach Janta Party protest. Its calculations hadn’t budgeted for the support the CJP would get from those not drawn to ‘party politics’ but keen nevertheless to make common cause with a movement that gave voice to their own frustrations with a brutish, self-righteous government.

The Congress protest, moreover, was in the standard political idiom. The Jantar Mantar protest, on the other hand, offered young Indians the freedom to articulate their feelings in a way that comes to them naturally.

Gen Z turned laughter into a disarmingly effective weapon. Sarcasm and satire were put to imaginative and powerful use, perhaps for the first time in the history of modern India. Even the much-talked-about profanities were, in fact, a great antidote to the hypocrisies of a regime that has normalised abusive language and innuendo in Indian politics; they spare nobody, not even revered and long-dead national leaders such as Gandhi, Nehru and Maulana Azad.

Those offended by teenage girls and young women using abusive language at the protest should take a tour of the H-pop space online. They should watch videos of young women under the spell of political Hindutva, gyrating provocatively and hurling the most obscene words at anyone opposed to their politics and their Supreme Leader.

Before expressing shock over the profanities used at Jantar Mantar, the prime minister would have done well to recall his own choice expressions during election campaigns in Bengal, Rajasthan and elsewhere. He would have sounded a little more convincing if he had even once expressed the same shock at the language used by his supporters.

The cracks this protest has made in the Great Wall of Fear do offer hope. Perhaps because the Gen Z protests are largely focused on education-related issues, attempts to create fissures along caste and religious lines have so far been unsuccessful. We are witnessing the emergence of a constituency defined not by a particular mindset as much as common sense.

Led by the tactical smarts of its organisers, this motley crew is demonstrating that people of different, even conflicting, opinions can come together for a common cause — those for and against reservations, for instance. In fact, there were initially some Modi admirers among them as well, whom the government, to the delight of its opponents, lost through its self-righteous obstinacy.

It is becoming clearer by the day that young Indians confronting real problems in their lives are increasingly drawn more to empathic and rational communication rather than emotional provocation. This is an important historical moment, and one that may be lost if it is not used wisely.

To his great credit, Rahul Gandhi has shown remarkable political maturity. He did not visit the protest site, wisely avoiding the charge of ‘politicising’ it or trying to take credit, and instead continued consolidating the Congress outreach. He has been careful to underline the non-partisan character of the demands and concerns surrounding the state of education today, and has mastered the art of rational communication with young Indians. His approach has the potential to turn the immediate protest into a long-term, future-oriented resistance to the totalitarian designs of the RSS-BJP.

Caste, community, gender and language issues are no doubt realities of Indian politics, and they are constantly exploited to sabotage popular movements of resistance. No political programme or action can afford to ignore these realities. The challenge, therefore, is how to create and sustain the maximum possible unity among people.

Let us also not forget that the present government is rigidly self-righteous and driven by an RSS ideology incurably opposed to an inclusive and democratic idea of India. It has captured mainstream media so completely that its political agenda and bigotry are promoted 24x7. In any authentic historical account, India’s lapdog media would be held largely responsible for the avalanche of stupidity unleashed upon citizens.

The euphoria generated by the protest can be translated into sustained political action only if there is a convincing alternative to the designs of the present government and its ideological fountainhead, the RSS. A sustained response to its agenda of hatred and a full-bodied alternative to the Hindutva vision of India must be articulated in a contemporary context shaped by AI and virtual reality on the one hand and the rise of sectarian politics of many hues on the other.

The Congress, with its historical legacy of leading the national struggle and articulating an inclusive idea of India, has the most crucial role to play in this exercise. Alongside this theoretical exercise, it must also accommodate the expectations of potential allies.

All this is easier said than done. But it is the only way out of the present mess; otherwise, this will be another lost opportunity.

Purushottam Agrawal is an author, most recently of Majbooti ka Naam Mahatma Gandhi, Rajkamal Prakashan