The Pulse | Politics | South Asia

Hindutva Goons Unleash Violence on Anti-Modi Protesters

Activists of the Hindu Raksha Dal, an outfit that furthers the Sangh Parivar’s agenda, were caught on camera beating students and youth participating in the Delhi protests.

A screenshot of a News Capsule video showing Hindu Raksha Dal activists assaulting young women and men at the anti-government protests in New Delhi, India, Oct.10, 2026.

In recent weeks, New Delhi and other Indian cities have witnessed massive anti-government demonstrations and flash protests demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, over allegations of manipulating voter rolls to benefit the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

To prevent students and youth from gathering, the BJP government has used intimidation and force. In addition to arresting protesters, it has heavily barricaded roads, shut down metro stations, and deployed tens of thousands of police and paramilitary personnel, including the Delhi Police, Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), Border Security Force, Indo-Tibetan Border Police, and Sashastra Seema Bal.

Several of these forces are normally deployed along India’s borders or in insurgency-wracked regions. For example, the CRPF companies deployed in the Delhi protests were shifted from former Maoist strongholds in Chhattisgarh and parts of militancy-hit Jammu and Kashmir. In Delhi, these paramilitary forces are being used against unarmed youth activists of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), the All India Students’ Association, and other leftist organizations.

What makes the government’s crackdown particularly reprehensible is that un-uniformed men are being allowed to assault the protesters. These are not isolated incidents; several young women and men have come forward with horrifying accounts of the violence they faced at the hands of these thugs.

Importantly, these men are unleashing violence in full view of the police. They have the blessings of the ruling dispensation.

Photographs and videos circulating on social media show men sporting saffron scarves — saffron is the color of the Sangh Parivar, a family of Hindutva-espousing organizations, of which the BJP is a part — shouting slogans in support of the Narendra Modi government, chasing young men and women, dragging them and beating them up mercilessly with sticks. They are brazen about their violence, describing their victims as “anti-national elements” who “deserve to be thrashed.”

“Delhi Police tum lath bajao, hum tumhare saath hain” (Delhi Police, you wield the baton, we are with you), they chant, egging on the police to beat the protesters.

The police and paramilitary personnel in whose presence the vigilantes acted took no action to force them off the streets. None of them was packed into police vans the way unarmed students were dragged and pushed into buses.

A video filmed during the crackdown on October 10 in central Delhi showed goons beating up young men and women, even minors. When a woman intervened on a male victim’s behalf, the goons can be seen falling upon her, pushing her to the ground, and pulling at her clothes. All this was done in the presence of at least one policeman. The footage showed a policeman eventually intervening, but he did so not to stop the assault or restrain the assailant and........

© The Diplomat