On February 4, 1922, the people of Chauri Chaura, in Gorakhpur district of Uttar Pradesh, pelted stones at the police, which opened fire to disperse them. Furious, the crowd set ablaze the local police station, charring to death 23 policemen. The violence created what can be called the Chauri Chaura moment, which signifies the moral pressure that leaders come under when their decision to protest peacefully is flouted by some of their followers. Should leaders then withdraw their nonviolent stir? Yes, Gandhi said. He called off the Non-cooperation Movement.

Gandhi’s response threw open the possibility that a cynical state could always create a Chauri Chaura moment to nix peaceful protests. Nearly a century after Chauri Chaura, on this year’s Republic Day, there was an attempt to conjure that eponymous moment for the ongoing farmer movement: TV channels bemoaned the storming of the Red Fort even as they played on loop the hoisting of the Sikh religious flag. Bharatiya Janata Party leaders and trolls were quick to frame the violence as a threat to the nation. There was consensus that the Union government now had a justifiable reason to evict farmers from the protest sites in Delhi, in case they refused to suspend their stir or retract their demand for the repeal of the three new farm laws.