Guest Post by PURANJAI

Image of June 6th protest in Delhi courtesy The Hindustan Gazette

The social media phenomenon Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) has been doing a series of protests now, its demand being the resignation of the education minister Dharmendra Pradhan. A lot of people have been writing on it, focusing on an analysis of its various features as well as the response of the state. It has opened interesting points for discussion. However, for this present space, I would be restricting myself to an analysis of the mirror it has held up to our society.

It is no secret, now that we are surviving Prime Minister Modi’s  third term that the government which quells any protest before it even really begins, gave a very tolerant treatment to the CJP organisers of as well as the protesters. While many have written their own explanations about it, I believe, considering the already initiated vilification and censorship campaign against Abhijit Dipke and the stationing of vast number of police forces at Jantar Mantar and Sansad Marg (I was there on 6 June) that the reason for such a tolerant treatment lies in numbers and content. The government could be said to be testing the translation of online resentment into physical spaces which would be a more precise gauge of the phenomenon. Without allowing the permission to even protest, it would have sent a very visible message of authoritarian tendencies.

The government couldn’t have risked denying the permission since it was being widely covered by the non-mainstream media and the middle-class was talking about it. This is in my opinion a very important aspect to note about it. The middle-class which has the necessary social capital to create narratives is very important to a government. It is this class which receives the media and political attention in moments of crisis. It is this class which is able to hegemonise empathy in a direction it sees desirable. Moreover, it does all of this without actively organising and politicising to a certain end.

This middle-class stays silent when bulldozers demolish homes of poor and the socially marginalised. Even when lakhs of names are removed from the electoral roll and subsequent attempts are being daily made to snatch citizenship of fellow human beings, it stays silent or gives active support to such actions. It stays largely regressive on the question of social justice and has a worldview of caring only for raising one’s own income levels. This section which should otherwise act as the one aggressively moving the country forward in all democratic aspects fails to do its duty to the country. It is this class residing in the strategic location of the capital and surrounding areas that the BJP could not afford to antagonise. Once it turns up in large numbers (much to the dismay of the dispensation), it chose to tolerate and perhaps might even accept the very minimum and technocratic demands in the future.

This section which is largely composed of socially privileged Hindus easily stakes claim to the ‘Nation’. The chanting of “Bharat Mata ki Jai”, “Vande Mataram”, the cricket team’s blue jersey, the A.R. Rehman version of Vande Mataram, the tricolour and above all the stress on the tool of peaceful protest; these all are symbols not created by the BJP even as it utilises these quite effectively. Today these are seen as visible symbols of nationalism (for most of which several people have been killed as well) and interestingly, their history predates the BJP’s history itself. Most of these symbols and mental frameworks are drawn from the Congress-dominated freedom struggle. It arose from a socially privileged  (and in some cases anti-Muslim) Hindu section of the population, came to occupy a hegemonic position across the country and stand in for a necessary sporting of the idea of nationalism.

This nationalism is comfortably sported by this middle-class that came to protest. Without the display of politics that challenges the establishment in some way and props up an alternative, the BJP finds it difficult to reply to this. For there are no Muslims as the face of CJP to be labelled as from Pakistan. Nor are there seemingly any “Khalistanis” to slander and arrest. Nor are there any structure-shaking demands being made by this middle-class and its CJP leadership. Till now, all the characterisations (of “exam-reform”) and the one single demand are all within the acceptable fold of nationalism that BJP is comfortable with. Yes, Ambedkar and Bhagat Singh are present in symbolic forms at the site as well, but without their radical challenge to the status-quo. It would be important to recall that the RSS-BJP has conveniently appropriated these symbols while invisibilising their message.

All of this, tells something about us constituting the middle-class. More than what it tells about the protest or the government, I believe this phenomenon displays an interesting aspect about us. Broken by caste, stunted by patriarchy and alienated by capitalism, we are not able to form an organic solidarity with the people of our country. While the social fabric of our country gets torn with every passing day, while class divide continues to dehumanise us every moment, we comfortably turn our eyes away (or perhaps some of us revel seeing these injustices continue). That we only gather together and wear the abstract concept of nationalism on our sleeves when our own economic interests are in peril is not a thing to be proud of.

Consider the revolutionary slogan of “Inquilab Zindabad” which I saw the people comfortably shouting at the site. But what is the content of this inquilab? Does it include the response to privatisation and centralisation of education, of the various caste and gender discriminations that happen in our educational spaces or even before one reaches (or not reaches) these spaces? Does it design a future for the adivasis and the Muslims? Do all of these figure in our idea of an alternative India?

Everyday, we see people getting lynched, kidnapped, tortured, maimed, discriminated against, silenced, assaulted, raped. No abstract concept of the nation is made available to these people within which they could wrap their concrete realities and thus show to the society for recognition and acknowledgement. It is really interesting to note that the tricolour and “Saare Jahan se accha Hindustan humara” did not save the protesters at Shaheen Bagh. For them was reserved the jail, the lathi, the bullet and the ultimate tag of “anti-national”. When the socially-privileged Hindus use it though, it is a different matter.

My pessimism only stretches till that of the intellect and I believe that however the past has been or the current limitations of the movement, one can transcend it if one desires. It has been long that the idea of India has been hegemonised by a select few. The far-right in India banks on it and creates an even unjust idea everyday through the mechanisms of the RSS. However, the present moment has provided an opportunity. As the establishment parties fail to provide any sustainable alternative to the status-quo, it has fallen on the people to design one. By being in dialogue with each other, the people of India can craft a democratic alternative. The government hates people talking to each other as fellow human beings. It would rather have us scrolling reels and liking the ridiculous Melody memes.

At a moment like this, physical mobilisations can be used to enter dialogue, rather than merely reducing the people to an audience which repeats outworn slogans. If one is able to imagine the protest site as something other than that of a unilinear flow of information, if one is able to design a setup other than the stage and the road, one might be able to move towards more just alternatives. By rallying around the cause of a more inclusive India, one can build solidarities that might not have been possible before. This present moment holds promise and one need not sit away from it. We must cautiously engage, if only to at least honestly try to enter a democratic dialogue with scope of emancipation. I maintain an optimism if not in the stage, at least in the people.

Puranjai is a PhD scholar at JNU