A protest going unheard was a common trope in the news stories we wrote in India before 2014. After Narendra Modi became prime minister, this changed – a protest taking place itself made for a story.

The unspoken question was: who is brave enough to come out on the streets to protest? Many demonstrations later, the question has changed: who is powerful enough to protest and go home unscathed?

In a democracy, citizens have the right to protest and the government must listen to them.

India has always been a flawed democracy. Many of its citizens were never allowed to exercise their right to protest without consequences. Whether it was Adivasis resisting encroachment of their lands in the name of development, or people from Kashmir and the North East demanding some form of political autonomy, their peaceful protests either went unheard or were met with state violence, pushing these communities into armed resistance.

But the Modi era has expanded the state’s dominance and lowered its tolerance for any expression of dissent by citizens – unless you are from a dominant social group like the Marathas in Maharashtra, electorally important for the ruling regime.

This week, the Maharashtra government came to the rescue of Manoj Jarange-Patil, the leader who has been demanding that all Marathas – not just the Kunbi sub-caste – be allowed to access backward caste reservations in jobs and colleges. As he staged his umpteenth hunger strike, thousands of his followers came streaming into South Mumbai, irking judges of the High Court who asked the government to vacate the protest site.

Loath to be seen as cracking down on the powerful Marathas, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led state government instead persuaded Patil to call off his strike by meeting six of his eight demands.

There is nothing wrong with a government engaging with protesting citizens. But what rankles are the double standards.

In Delhi, ten activists protesting against the discriminatory Citizenship Act of 2019 have spent five years in jail on charges that they conspired to bring down the government by instigating Hindu-Muslim riots in the city. As Scroll has written extensively, the case against them – made under the draconian anti-terror law – is built on sand. There are no signs of the trial commencing against them. And yet, this week, the High Court denied them bail.

The judgement is Kafkaesque. One of the activists, Gulfisha Fatima, was seen as unworthy of bail because she had created two WhatsApp groups that the court noted “revolve around coordination in protests and ensuring that as many women participate in the protests”. When did it become unlawful to coordinate a protest? And what is wrong with using WhatsApp to do that?

While mobilising women protesters, Fatima worked closely with two other activists, Devangana Kalita and Natasha Narwal, who were also arrested in the riots conspiracy case. Both got bail in 2021. What sets them apart from Fatima? Kalita and Narwal are Hindu. Fatima and the other nine activists behind bars are Muslim.

It matters who you are, if you want to protest in India.

A year after the citizenship protests took the country by storm, another group took to the streets. In the winter of 2020, farmers from Punjab and Haryana drove down in their tractors to Delhi. Stopped short of the capital, they pitched their tents at the border and stayed put for months, braving the biting cold.

It isn’t as if the ruling establishment took kindly to them. It tried to label them Khalistanis – separatists out to break the nation. But in an agrarian country, farmers have symbolic power. And the Sikhs are part of the Hindu imaginary of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the ideological parent of the BJP.

After a few months of standoff, the Modi government blinked. The prime minister made a speech announcing a withdrawal of the farm laws.

There was no such concession for the citizenship protesters, the vast majority of whom were Muslim. The protests had allowed them to reclaim space after years of being forced to live in the shadows, fearful of the next lynching.

Shocked at their defiance, the Modi government seems determined to ensure there is no repeat. Its case against the activists, outrageous as it may be, serves a political purpose. What is dispiriting is that the judiciary has gone along with it.

Here is a summary of last week’s top stories.

Will GST rate cuts drive consumption? The Goods and Services Tax Council revamped the indirect tax structure into a primarily two-rate system from the current four-tiered one. The new GST structure will have two slabs: 5% and 18%. But a 40% rate will apply to so-called sin goods and luxury products. The changes will take effect on September 22.

Opposition parties questioned the delay in the reforms. The Congress said that the measures came after eight years of economic strain on small traders, micro, small and medium enterprises, farmers, women entrepreneurs and the middle class.

The GST system took effect in July 2017, replacing several indirect taxes such as the Value Added Tax and the Central Excise Duty.

The Opposition also questioned the timing of the reforms, noting that Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had previously refused to acknowledge problems with the current GST framework.

The Manipur unrest. The Centre and the Manipur government signed an agreement with Kuki-Zo groups to renew the Suspension of Operation pact with revised rules. The Kuki-Zo groups have agreed to maintain the territorial integrity of Manipur under the re-negotiated rules and also open National Highway 2.

Under the Suspension of Operations agreement, the security forces as well as the militant groups are prohibited from launching operations. The militant groups must abide by the laws of the land and are confined to designated camps identified by the Union government.

NH2 has been blocked for Meiteis for more than two years since the ethnic clashes broke out in the state in May 2023. The Kuki-Zo groups had earlier demanded a separate administration for the community as a condition for peace talks.

The development came amid reports that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Manipur in September for the first time since the ethnic clashes broke out.

Political churns. Bharat Rashtra Samithi leader K Kavitha resigned from the party and stepped down as a member of the Telangana Legislative Council. This came a day after she was suspended from the party for alleged anti-party activities.

Kavitha was suspended after she accused her cousins, former minister T Harish Rao and ex-MP J Santosh Rao, of amassing assets while making her father and party chief K Chandrashekar Rao a “scapegoat” in the alleged Kaleshwaram project scam.

On Wednesday, the former MLC claimed that her father was forced to take a harsh decision against her due to pressure from Harish Rao and Santosh Rao. She said that she would not join any other political party.

Also on Scroll last week

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