Does the Government Fear Its Citizens? The New Protocol of Dissent

This time, what is being asked of the protesters is much greater. But Delhi is prepared. Not to handle the chaos, but to fight back, it seems. To quash dissent before it even begins. But is this the stage of democracy we have reached now? Is Delhi really a city that fears, and is prepared to fight — its own citizens?

For much of history, fear has been one-sided. Yes, a government technically works for the people. But we’ve been taught — rightfully so — to never get on the wrong side of the government. File your taxes on time. Keep your SIR paperwork immaculate. Keep your driving licence and PUC papers within arm’s reach. The fear is that if you don’t comply with even the slightest of these requirements, you could fall into a deep hole of tiring bureaucracy.

But seeing the hostile-invasion-level measures taken in the national capital ahead of the protest raises an important question: Does the government fear us, too?

Barricades, blockades and a whole lot of pre-empting

Delhi Police put in place a 37-point security plan across the New Delhi district ahead of the October 10 protest. Trains to and from New Delhi and Hazrat Nizamuddin railway stations have been cancelled for 10 hours. Entry and exit gates at dozens of metro stations were ordered shut, hotels and guest houses were asked to restrict fresh bookings, and police prepared detention centres across districts. Authorities also kept a close watch on Delhi’s borders, with officers saying that people suspected of mobilising crowds could be stopped and detained. Around 23,000 Central Armed Police Forces personnel were made available to Delhi Police.

Heightened security ahead of a protest is hardly unusual. Liquor shops being shut, barricades going up, additional police personnel being deployed — these are all familiar features of protest days in the capital. A government has the responsibility to anticipate possible trouble, not just respond after it breaks out.

The police, for their part, say they have learnt from the July protest, when they believe there were lapses in their handling of the gathering. Their stated objective is to prevent crowd mobilisation and maintain law and order. That’s a legitimate responsibility. But anticipating a possible security threat and treating the possibility of mass mobilisation as a reason to restrict movement across the city are two different things. The question is whether every one of these measures is necessary and proportionate to the threat authorities anticipate.

And there’s another comparison worth making here.

Just days earlier, Congress leaders and workers, led by Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, protested in the national capital demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. The demonstrations were hardly uneventful. Police detained opposition leaders; the Gandhi siblings reportedly were manhandled as they were taken away.

Yet the sweeping restrictions now being put in place ahead of the CJP-led protest were not announced in advance of those demonstrations in the same form. The Congress protests saw barricading, a heavy police presence and detentions when demonstrators attempted to move towards their destination. The October 10 protests, however, saw a kind of Delhi preparing for war.

The comparison raises questions worth asking. What is it about this protest, and the people expected to turn up, that has prompted such an extensive security response? Why does the level of preparedness appear so different when ordinary citizens take to the streets, compared to when a political party leads a protest? Are ordinary citizens suddenly seen as a greater threat to national security than an opposition political alliance?

Does keeping peace mean quashing dissent?

There isn’t much left to say about protests of this scale that hasn’t already been said. Sides are picked early on. Social media will try its best to paint black-and-white pictures of what actually happened during the agitation, while separating facts from misinformation will become its own task.
What fascinates me most this time was the scale of the pre-emptive measures taken.

In The Hunger Games, the Capitol increased the presence of Peacekeepers in districts where people were routinely deprived of their rights, to quash dissent before it could take root. It was willing to bomb its own palaces if it meant making the people fighting for the basic dignity to live look like the villains.

And perhaps that’s what unsettles me most about this comparison. Not that Delhi is Panem, or that every security measure is an act of tyranny. But when a government prepares so extensively to contain its own citizens, we must ask: What, exactly, it is trying to contain?

A protest? The possibility of violence? Or the dissent itself?

Because a democracy cannot promise its citizens the right to protest and then make exercising that right feel like an act of defiance against the state. It cannot make us the villain even before the story has begun.

The writer is deputy copy editor, indianexpress.com. vaishnawi.sinha@indianexpress.com