What happened at Jantar mantar on October 10 is a culmination of the State’s excesses since 2014. The country’s capital was converted into a fortress. The mobilisation of security forces was at a war footing. And the enemy was the Indian youth. In and around Jantar Mantar and Connaught Place just about anybody walking the footpath was picked up and thrown into the police buses. It didn’t matter if they were innocent passersby going about their daily work.
A state reveals its character not by the grandeur of its slogans, but by how it treats the powerless: the Muslim trader on a highway, the student in a university, the journalist with a phone camera, the voter whose name vanishes from a roll. In India today, the central question is no longer whether the state has power—it plainly does—but whether that power remains bound by the Constitution, due process and democratic consent. Power without restraint is not strength; it is the slow conversion of republican authority into something closer to arbitrary rule. The record of recent years is disturbing precisely because it is not a catalogue of isolated excesses. It is a pattern in which executive force repeatedly outruns judicial process, institutional neutrality and the presumption of innocence.
Cow-vigilante violence became a visible national pattern during the Modi years. Human Rights Watch documented that, since May 2015, vigilante campaigns linked to rumours of beef or cattle transport had killed at least ten Muslims, while police often filed cases against victims or their relatives under cow-slaughter laws rather than promptly pursuing the attackers. The cases are not abstractions. Mohammad Akhlaq was beaten to death in Dadri in 2015 after rumours that beef had been stored in his home; his son Danish was critically injured, the police still sent household meat for forensic testing, and the family eventually had to leave the village. Pehlu Khan, a dairy farmer, was attacked on the Jaipur–Delhi highway in 2017 while carrying cattle-purchase receipts; he died two days later. Rajasthan’s then home minister defended “gau bhakts” while blaming cattle trafficking, and the police initially registered a case against Khan and other victims under the state’s bovine law. Sixteen-year-old Junaid Khan was stabbed to death on a train in Haryana after communal abuse; witnesses said the attackers called the boys “beefeaters,” “anti-national” and “Pakistani.” Tabrez Ansari was tied up, assaulted and forced to chant “Jai Shri Ram” in Jharkhand in 2019; he died of his injuries.
The Supreme Court itself intervened in Tehseen Poonawalla v. Union of India (2018), warning that “the horrendous acts of mobocracy cannot be permitted to inundate the law of the land” and that a “recurrent pattern of violence” must not become “the new normal.” Yet impunity remained a recurring feature. In the Pehlu Khan case all six accused were acquitted in 2019; a later Rajasthan government alleged that investigative lapses had been left in place to protect them. The deeper failure is institutional. When a mob can kill on rumour, when ministers rationalise violence, and when the first FIR names the victim, the message to minorities is unmistakable: the law may exist on paper, but it will not always protect you. The state’s silence, or worse its selective zeal, converts private hatred into public permission.
“Bulldozer justice” became the emblem of a state that treats accusation as conviction. In Nuh, Haryana, after communal violence in 2023, demolitions removed homes, stalls, kiosks, around thirty shops and a four-storey hotel; mechanic Ali Sahud told reporters that “nobody was given time” because of the curfew. In Delhi’s Jahangirpuri, demolitions followed communal clashes in April 2022, again officially described as action against encroachment. Amnesty International examined 128 demolitions across Assam, Delhi, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh between April and June 2022, following communal violence or protests. It found that at least 617 people were rendered homeless or deprived of livelihoods, and described the actions as discriminatory punitive demolitions targeting Muslims without due process.
The Supreme Court’s November 2024 judgment was devastating in its language. It held that the executive “cannot become a judge and demolish properties,” called such acts “high-handed and arbitrary,” and described the spectacle of a bulldozer destroying a home without due process as reminiscent of “a lawless state of affairs.” It mandated prior notice, ordinarily fifteen days, and videography of demolitions. Yet judicial correction is not the same as justice delivered. In 2025 the Court criticised Uttar Pradesh authorities for the “unconstitutional” and “inhuman” demolition of five Prayagraj homes and ordered ₹10 lakh compensation for each owner, saying: “There is something called right to shelter, due process of law.” The question that remains unanswered is whether officials who ordered or celebrated such demolitions will ever face meaningful personal accountability. Compensation after the fact does not restore a home or erase the lesson that the state can act first and justify later.
The treatment of student activists exposes another danger: the use of serious anti-terror law not merely against violence, but against political association, speech and protest. Umar Khalid, a former JNU student, was arrested in September 2020 in the “larger conspiracy” case arising from the February 2020 north-east Delhi violence, which left 53 people dead and more than 700 injured. Sharjeel Imam, Gulfisha Fatima, Meeran Haider and others were also prosecuted under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. Khalid was discharged in one related case in 2022, but remained imprisoned in the UAPA conspiracy case. By 2025, Khalid, Imam and Fatima told the Supreme Court that charges had still not been framed, that hearings had repeatedly failed for want of time or the prosecution’s availability, and that no weapons or incriminating material had been recovered from Khalid. Fatima’s counsel asked the court pointedly: “Why has the trial not commenced yet?”
This is the essence of process-as-punishment: bail becomes exceptional, trial becomes remote, and the citizen’s liberty is consumed by the machinery of prosecution. Whatever the eventual judicial findings, a democracy must ask why people accused in connection with political violence can spend years in prison before trial. The presumption of innocence is not a technicality; it is the difference between justice and vengeance administered by the state. When the process itself becomes the penalty, the distinction between accusation and conviction collapses, and the courtroom is reduced to a delayed formality.
The Chandigarh mayoral election of January 2024 is a case study in how democratic forms can be hollowed out at the most local level. Thirty-six votes were cast. The presiding officer, Anil Masih, declared eight ballots invalid, giving the BJP candidate 16 votes against the AAP-Congress candidate’s 12. The Supreme Court examined the ballots and video footage. It found that Masih had marked eight ballots cast for Kuldeep Kumar, thereby creating a false basis to invalidate them. The Court held that he had made “a deliberate effort to deface” those ballots to alter the result, and declared Kumar elected with 20 votes to 16. Chief Justice D. Y. Chandrachud’s observation during the hearing was blunt: “This is a mockery of democracy and murdering democracy. We are appalled.” In its final judgment the Court said that the “little cross” on the ballot must be made only by the voter—“the metaphorical ‘little man’ walking into the ‘little booth’—and no one else.”
Chandigarh matters because it was not a rumour or a partisan allegation. It was electoral manipulation visible on video, corrected only because the Supreme Court intervened. Local democracy is the citizen’s first encounter with the state; when it can be subverted so casually, the damage travels upward. If the smallest elective office can be stolen in plain sight, the claim that larger institutions remain insulated becomes harder to sustain.
The claim that “more than 130 million voters have been disenfranchised” must be handled with precision. Reports on the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision say that around 130 million names were left out of draft electoral lists as the exercise expanded beyond Bihar. That is a grave warning sign—but it is not yet proof that 130 million eligible citizens have been permanently stripped of the franchise. The Election Commission says the exercise is intended to remove dead, duplicate or ineligible entries, and that wrongly excluded voters can appeal and re-register. Critics respond that document requirements may fall hardest on poor, mobile, marginalised and Muslim citizens who lack easy access to records. The fair formulation is therefore this: a mass exclusion from draft rolls creates a presumption of risk, not a proven fact of disenfranchisement. The burden is on the Election Commission to publish transparent, disaggregated data, ensure accessible correction and appeals, and demonstrate that no community is being selectively purged. Electoral rolls must be accurate; but accuracy cannot become a euphemism for exclusion.
The Jantar Mantar protests of October 2026, demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over the voter-roll revision, illustrate how quickly democratic dissent can be met with coercive policing. Delhi Police detained more than 700 protesters on 2 October, including former Delhi Chief Minister Atishi, after denying permission for the gathering and imposing restrictions on assemblies of more than five people. Three women journalists alleged sexual harassment by police personnel while covering the detention of student activist Neha Bora. Delhi Police said the complaints had been referred to the Crime Branch for a “fair and impartial enquiry”; it did not publicly respond to the specific allegation. The Press Club of India expressed “shock and dismay” and demanded swift action. Whether the allegations are ultimately substantiated or not, the pattern is familiar: protesters are detained, journalists are obstructed, and the burden of proving abuse falls on those with least power. A democracy that fears cameras, satirists, students and peaceful assemblies is not protecting order; it is protecting itself from scrutiny.
The Indian Republic was not founded on the idea that the state is always right. It was founded on the opposite premise: that the state is powerful, therefore it must be restrained—by courts, elections, federalism, a free press, and above all by citizens who refuse to be intimidated. The Supreme Court’s own words offer the standard. In the demolition case: “The executive cannot become a judge.” In the lynching case: mobocracy cannot become “the new normal.” In Chandigarh: the voter’s mark belongs to the voter alone.
Whether it was the British Raj or the Soviet State, people’s will prevailed ultimately. The state’s might may bulldoze homes, delay trials, invalidate ballots and clear streets. But it cannot permanently bulldoze the democratic imagination. The people’s rights will triumph only if citizens treat every assault on due process—not merely as someone else’s misfortune, but as an attack on the constitutional promise owed to all. Might without legitimacy is temporary. Rights without vigilance are fragile. The choice between them is still open, but only for as long as citizens insist on keeping it so.
#IndianDemocracy #HumanRightsIndia #BulldozerJustice #CowVigilantism #UAPA #DueProcess #SupremeCourtIndia #ElectoralIntegrity #ChandigarhElection #VoterRights #FreedomOfSpeech #PoliticalPrisoners #ConstitutionalRights #RuleOfLawIndia #StateVsCitizens
No comments:
Post a Comment