By Rajdeep Sardesai
Anyone remember Hardik Patel? Just a decade ago, he was splashed across front pages and prime-time television. Hardik was only 22 when he became the face of the Patidar agitation in Gujarat in 2015. His rallies shook the state’s BJP government, exposed its political vulnerabilities and contributed to a crisis that culminated in Chief Minister Anandiben Patel’s departure in 2016. Today, the young man who once challenged Narendra Modi’s political establishment is just another BJP MLA, hardly the insurgent who once commanded the headlines. In July this year, a court allowed the withdrawal of one of the last criminal cases against him arising from the agitation.
Hardik’s journey, from rebellion to the ruling party’s ranks, tells us something about the Gujarat model of managing dissent. You could attempt to crush a movement with the force of the state, or absorb its principal leaders into the political establishment. The protester could become a partner; the agitator could become an insider.
But here is the question Narendra Modi must now confront as Prime Minister: Can India be governed the way Gujarat was — through a mix of coercion and co-option?
The recent crackdown on Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) protesters in Delhi offers a sobering illustration of the challenge. Ahead of a planned demonstration against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, Delhi Police detained protesters, picked up people before they could reach the protest site and took hundreds away to makeshift detention centres. Journalists covering the developments were also caught up in the action. The scale of the police operation was such that even the normally ambivalent Supreme Court reasserted the freedom to protest as a fundamental right. The Modi government may believe it is dealing with another unruly opposition protest, one that can be contained through police action, dismissed as politically motivated or neutralised by arresting its organisers. That assumption could prove dangerously misplaced.
This is not the anti-CAA agitation, when protesters were routinely branded anti-national and the movement became entangled with the communal politics of the day. Umar Khalid has been in custody since 2020; his prolonged incarceration without a trial reaching its conclusion has become emblematic of the debate over pre-trial detention and civil liberties. Nor is this the farmers’ agitation, when the government initially resisted the protesters, some of whom were labelled Khalistanis, before Prime Minister Modi announced the repeal of the three contentious farm laws in November 2021.
Those episodes demonstrated the government’s willingness to confront mass movements, sometimes for months or years. But they also revealed the costs of doing so. The question today is whether the government has understood that the nature of the challenge may be changing.
For this is not simply about how to handle the Congress, Rahul Gandhi or a collection of regional opposition parties. The BJP has a formidable electoral organisation and a record of winning elections over the past decade. Its leaders may reasonably believe that, come polling day, they have the resources to compete with their opponents, Gyanesh Kumar or no Gyanesh Kumar.
But what happens when the challenge comes not from a conventional political party but from a generation of young Indians who have little patience with the political establishment, little faith in conventional political alternatives and, crucially, much less to lose by confronting authority?
The Congress comes with its own baggage. The BJP can point to past governments and ask the familiar whataboutery question: didn’t you appoint your preferred bureaucrats as election commissioners? Opposition parties can be dismissed as desperate to regain lost political ground. But what happens when protesters are not primarily interested in electoral arithmetic or the lure of political office? What happens when their anger is directed at institutions they believe have failed them — whether the examination system, the police or the Election Commission?
That is a different kind of political challenge. And it requires a different kind of response. The problem for the Modi government is that it may have underestimated the force it is dealing with.
When CJP first crawled into public view in May, the government and its supporters could afford to dismiss it as a social-media fad. Its irreverent name and meme-driven politics made it easy to caricature. The authorities even permitted a protest at Jantar Mantar, seemingly confident that the agitation would remain marginal.
But the anger surrounding examination paper leaks and the broader anxiety over the future of young Indians were not going to disappear simply because the protesters were mocked. Memes spread, the criticism became more personal and the movement found an audience beyond its original circle. The government’s response to the examination controversy also had political consequences: Dharmendra Pradhan was removed as Education Minister, a notable development in a government not often seen to change course under public pressure.
Now the Election Commission has become the focus of the agitation. The government’s instinct may again be to wait for the opposition to run out of steam. But what of the images of unarmed protesters being hauled away by the police? What of the young demonstrators being assaulted by the Hindu Raksha Dal, a self-styled Hindutva group? Such incidents demand investigation and accountability, not silence. Images of confrontation travel rapidly across the digital universe, and even television channels generally sympathetic to the government have found it difficult to ignore the story.
There is also an unmistakable generational divide at play. Ministers and politicians trying to master Instagram reels are operating in a very different universe from young people who create, share and respond to political content spontaneously. A carefully choreographed message from a minister may reach an audience, but it cannot dictate how that audience responds. The digital public sphere is not a television studio in which the government can decide who gets to speak and when.
This is why the government needs a reset. It may be unwilling to abandon Gyanesh Kumar, and it may remain convinced that the controversy surrounding the Election Commission will eventually subside. But allowing the status quo to continue without addressing the underlying questions risks prolonging the confrontation.
There are other pressures that the government cannot afford to ignore. Inflation has risen to 5.54 per cent in September, its fourth consecutive month above the Reserve Bank of India’s 4 per cent medium-term target, with food inflation reaching 7.74 per cent. Global instability, including the widening conflict in West Asia, adds to an already uncertain economic environment. For young Indians, questions of democratic accountability do not exist in isolation from anxieties about jobs, prices, examinations and their prospects for the future.
Which is why the Modi government needs a very different approach this time. India is not Gujarat, and Neha Bora, the outspoken AISA activist associated with the student protests, is not Hardik Patel, whose journey eventually took him into the BJP. The Gujarat model was built around a highly centralised political command, with a dominant leader and party able to shape the political narrative. India’s scale, diversity and democratic institutions demand a more accommodating approach.
That does not mean accepting every demand made by every protest group. Governments have a legitimate responsibility to maintain public order, and protesters must be held accountable for violence where evidence warrants it. But there is a fundamental difference between enforcing the law and treating dissent itself as a threat. Dialogue is not capitulation. A willingness to listen does not diminish authority; it can make authority more credible.
The choice, then, is not between allowing every protest to dictate government policy and crushing every protest that causes inconvenience. It is between a model of political management that seeks to contain dissent and a democratic model that recognises dissent as an essential part of public life. The key question then is whether the government is prepared to listen before the next confrontation begins. Otherwise we could well be entering a chaotic period of protests and counter protests till the next major election cycle in 2027. And that is an ominous sign. Postscript: This week, Delhi Police denotified Jantar Mantar as a designated protest site, naming Ramlila Ground, Burari Ground and CBD Ground as alternatives. The geography of protest in the capital is changing. Moving demonstrations further from Parliament and the corridors of power may make them easier to manage, but it also raises questions about their visibility and accessibility. You can change the location of a protest; you cannot legislate away the right to dissent
(The writer is senior journalist and author. Email: [email protected])