Rattled by the Indian Express revelations about the ECI and SIR and the subsequent intensification of popular protests demanding immediate resignation of Gyanesh Kumar, scrapping of the SIR and repeal of the 2023 Act giving the government of the day a free hand to have an Election Commission panel of its own choice and granting the Election Commissioners lifelong immunity from any legal accountability, the Modi government has launched an all-out war on the protest movement against electoral fraud and mass disenfranchisement.
The most visible aspect of this war on democracy is of course repression. The kind of repression the Modi government has unleashed to stop the protests against 'vote chori' can only be compared to the colonial rulers' contempt for the Indian people. Deployment of tens of thousands of security forces, cancellation of trains, closing of metro stations, denotification of Delhi's best known protest site, violent detention and abduction of activists and even journalists covering protests, rampant sexual harassment of women protesters, and even the arrest of activists for unfurling the tricolour in a 'denotified' site - such a vicious application of a massive repressive apparatus to just stop a peaceful protest is clearly inspired, like so much of the Sanghi playbook, by the colonial model of governance.
The use of a whole range of diabolical policing techniques like house arrest, preventive detention, trying to force activists to sign 'peace bonds' and then treating those bonds as a voluntary surrender of the right to protest, police personnel hiding their identity while beating up protesters, strategic deployment of thugs in police uniform or in plain clothes to attack and beat up protesters indicates a new level of intensification of state repression and fascist terror. Alongside this repressive strategy, the Sangh-BJP establishment has also unleashed a massive propaganda offensive to discredit and delegitimise the movement. The two keywords of this propaganda war are 'anarchy' and 'regime change'.
Nothing could be more ironical than the 'anarchy' accusation against the movement. The chaos and mass inconvenience and harassment that people have had to suffer in Delhi and beyond because of cancellation of trains and closing of metro stations was all because of the government’s attempts to stop the peaceful protestors. In fact on the only day the government allowed the march called by the INDIA bloc to happen, there was little chaos or disruption in spite of the sizable presence of protesters in central Delhi. Big mass protests are a defining feature of democracy anywhere in the world. Before the arrival of the Mo-Sha regime, Delhi itself has often been witness to protest marches and rallies involving tens of thousands of people without causing any anarchic disruption.
By contrast, the Modi government today wants protests only to be held in designated sites and then denotifies sites close to Parliament building or various ministries and places all sorts of curbs on conferences and peaceful assemblies of protesters, and yet blames protesters for spreading anarchy when they are forced to find new venues and become mobile and flexible in their location. Some BJP leaders and RSS ideologues have started invoking Ambedkar in support of their anarchy accusation. Again, this is deeply ironical. In the same speech in which Ambedkar urged embracing constitutional rule of law and avoiding chaos and anarchy he warned against the danger of degeneration of democracy into dictatorship. He quoted Thomas Jefferson to argue that the Constitution must be receptive and institutions held accountable to the needs and aspirations of coming generations.
Citing the famous Jefferson quote "What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?..." Ambedkar remarked that Jefferson's statement was "not merely true, but is absolutely true". The focus for Ambedkar was on democracy and constitutional morality. Today people are having to protest peacefully precisely against the dismantling of democracy and violation of institutional accountability by the Modi government and its handpicked Chief Election Commissioner. And the government is busy suppressing and discrediting the peaceful constitutional protest by raising a bogey of ‘anarchy'!
The other bogey the government is frantically trying to utilise is that of 'regime change'. Because of the brazen American history of engineering serial 'regime changes' by toppling governments in sovereign states and installing puppet regimes, the term reeks of foreign conspiracy and imperialist intervention. From the Iraq war to the ongoing Iran war and from the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to continuing regime change threats against Cuba, American foreign policy is a chronicle of regime change plots. But why on earth would the US plan any regime change operation in India to destabilise a government which supports US regime change operations across the world, and is willing to mortgage India's strategic autonomy and national interests to serve the US-Israel axis in every possible way?
The demand for a change in government is growing in India today on the basis of the experiences and struggles of the Indian people. It is a most logical conclusion being drawn by the people from their own bitter experience with the Modi government, and its myriad 'double engine' versions across India, its record of total failure and betrayal, and the daily doses of hate, lies and violence being dished out by the Sangh-BJP apparatus. And this is not the first time the people, led by the youth, are talking about a change of government. From change of government to change of the system, the call for transformation has been the lifeblood of democratic politics in modern India. Inquilab Zindabad (long live revolution) has been India's most popular pan-India slogan for more than a century now. The call for Sampoorna Kranti or Total Revolution given by Jayaprakash Narayan in the mid-1970s triggered a major political churning that resulted in the defeat of the Emergency and the rise of India's first non-Congress government at the Centre.
The Modi government and the Sangh-BJP establishment are trying to mislead the people and discredit the movement against electoral corruption by raising the bogey of regime change and hinting at a foreign conspiracy. It comes from their fundamental fear of the people and disdain for dissent that makes them identify and arrest activists talking about increased wages or climate justice as threats to 'national security'. But for once the BJP's 'narrative war' is also failing like its strategy of repression. No amount of accusations of anarchy or the bogey of foreign conspiracy can stop the people from fighting for fair elections on the basis of universal adult franchise, for a responsive government and accountable institutions.
