It is funny that we live in times where I cannot spell out clearly the one winning protest signboard from Jantar Mantar’s barricades without asterisks.

“F*** Fascists,” it said, loud and proud. The one thing that can be said without disguise, though, is this: what the right-wing is most scared of, and rightfully so, is the left. In India, after the left lost power in Kerala, we have no ostensible left party in power. But when power is usurped by a state that is ready to ignore anything but the person at the helm, when the police is an instrument of repression and courts incarcerate protestors with no bail in sight for years on end, then the only place for such a regime to fear is that of the ideologically committed.

Therefore, on the streets of Jantar Mantar, what I saw, beyond [innovator and activist] Sonam Wangchuk and [Cockroach Janta Party founder] Abhijeet Dipke, was the steely and effective presence of the ideological left.

The only reason a student could brandish a ‘F*** Fascists’ banner is because those from the Students’ Federation of India, the All India Students’ Federation and the All India Students’ Association were on hunger strike for over 20 days. Their tents in a quiet corner were fronted by banners of Bhagat Singh and Che Guevara, and pamphlets and circulars on the New Education Policy, on revolutionary ideals and on ideas that have stood the test of time.

What started as a students’ protest over mis-administration of medical college entrance tests and the education system has morphed into one of the biggest challenges facing Indian premier Narendra Modi’s government. One journalist who visited Jantar Mantar, the site of the nearly month-long protest in Delhi, narrates what she saw on June 19, a day before protesters were brutally baton-charged by the police…

What started as a students’ protest over mis-administration of........

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