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The kidnapping of Sonam Wangchuk by the Delhi police throws into sharp relief the defining feature of a government Indians have elected to power in the past three elections. This government does not know the D of democratic politics. It only knows how to rule through the exercise of rank coercion, and by casting a pall of fear over citizens. 

The idea that elections are but the continuation of a conversation between ‘we the people’ and a representative government on, for instance, why power should be handled with care, exercised with caution, limited by institutional checks and balances, and above all by popular opinion, is completely alien to this government. It has annexed the Enforcement Directorate (ED), the Election Commission (EC), the mainstream media, and sadly, at times, the judiciary to its own project of exercising raw, unmitigated power. 

And if ‘we the people’ dare to criticise the incompetence of the government – it cannot even hold a competitive entrance exam adeptly – we will be whisked away at dawn as Wangchuk was. The shameful aspect of the arrest is that the police did not have the courage to take him openly. This dastardly exercise had to be covered with white sheets. 

The police took away a man who was fasting for a laudable cause. Let alone a dialogue, the government does not even allow its citizens to go onto a peaceful fast in a land where Gandhi had transformed fasting into a supreme act of resistance. The government has learnt from history. The British simply did not know what to do with a man who wanted nothing for himself but for others, except to arrest him. 

These young people in Jantar Mantar, like Gandhi, engage in the supreme act of solidarity and fraternity with all students who merely want to pursue higher studies. They should be........

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