Janta ka Mantar
Navayana is a fringe player, so our small team hung out at the fringes of Jantar Mantar. This is what we saw, heard, felt. What is said and done here—and across India at such sites—used to attract the wrath of the state if posted on any SM account. Here, the roaches experience a freedom that’s only whispered about. Even regime-critical media (Newslaundry, Wire, Scroll types) and mass SM handles fear reporting the ‘vulgarity’ of these protests. The lathi of their words and anger is more potent than the spiked lathis of police and paramilitary. The taunts are brutal, sexual, sometimes sexist—all limits off. Everyone loves to swear! Regimes aren’t overthrown with polished, HR-approved language. Yet, importantly—women here feel safe; Muslims, Sikhs, Dalits, Adivasi… everyone is part of this liquid flow. Freedom is on parade. Just look these images in the eye.
In twelve years of BJP rule, our joy and inventiveness were drained by an unmoved and seemingly immoveable regime. We thought life was a bundle of miseries—dukkha. Now, young people on the street lead us. The regime is crass, vulgar, hardheaded. The protesters are equally crass, vulgar, hardheaded. Crowds at JM offer sexually explicit slogans and posters—things CJP leaders cannot say. They reproduce the gay abandon of the internet in meatspace. Sure, the internet strengthens real-world prejudices, but we lost sight of freedom itself: that the goal is freedom, and getting there means charting a course through the dangerous, crass waters inundating society. If society is spectacle, we must become spectacular.
Who knows where this ends? But we get to rethink what fearlessness means. Years of self-serious bravery did not work; in this moment, a more effective grammar has emerged. Away from intellectualism’s devolution into nose-in-the-air, thought-taboo–ridden severity, the backbencher demanding as much dignity as the topper is unafraid to say what is on their mind. Unafraid of repercussions. The fantasy of ‘thought leaders’ is: ‘We’ll be better masters than those in power.’ This fantasy needs to be liquidated. The students are saying: ‘We don’t need any jhaant-ke-baal masters.’
Watch this video with visuals from the protest.