It’s easier to say what the current students’ protests are not than what they are. Judging by the events of the last week, they are not a straightforward rerun of the so-called India Against Corruption movement. They are not as well organised. There are no RSS-manufactured crowds. Nobody at Jantar Mantar would welcome Sadhvi Ritambhara in the way Anna Hazare and his puppet-masters did in 2011. There is no individual trying to use the movement as a personal promotional advertisement in the way Arvind Kejriwal did with the IAC.
Nor are the parallels with student movements in Nepal and Bangladesh valid. The aim there was regime change. The protesters were violent and determined to destroy government property and draw global attention to the blazing fires they had lit. That is clearly not the intention of the Jantar Mantar protesters. They don’t want to bring down the Indian government or burn down Parliament.And of course they are not anti-nationals, no matter what the so-called godi media tells you. They are not part of some vast ISI conspiracy. They have not been funded by the CIA or China.
So what is an appropriate parallel to what we are seeing? It’s hard to say because the protests are not about strategy or grabbing political power. Nor do they follow a linear progression. The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) started as a social media phenomenon inspired by anger over the Chief Justice of India’s remark calling a section of the country’s youth “cockroaches”. A mass protest movement against the education system and the NEET paper leak followed. But once Sonam Wangchuk merged his own cause with the protesters and began a hunger strike, it became something else. And now, in the face of the government’s lathis and pellet guns, it has shape-shifted again.A palpable anger
