From memes to maidan

After much back and forth NCP SP spokesperson Anish Gawande and this writer finally get on a call ldquoThe mahaul in Jantar Mantar is electric right nowrdquo he tells us from Delhi ldquoI have never seen something like this before Thousands of people marched together on July 20 That morning we started the day by singing Maa Tujhhe Salaam by AR Rahman with the constitution in one hand and the Tiranga in the otherrdquoNaksi Timbadia a 22yearold Mumbai resident has travelled especially to Delhi to attend Jantar Mantarrsquos protests ldquoOn July 18 when I saw that Sonam Wangchuk had been picked up by the police I knew I couldnrsquot just sit I had to get there I flew the very same dayrdquo she saysNaksi Timbadia a Mumbai resident has flown especially to Delhi to protest at Jantar Mantar FILE PICSATEJ SHINDEHer initial plan was to attend July 20rsquos ldquoChalo Sansadrdquo march and fly back to Mumbai ldquoWhen I came here I saw the way people are coming together And the violence that is being unleashed on students is unbearable I knew I had to help in whatever way I canrdquo she says over a phone call from DelhiTimbadia has close to 40000 followers on Instagram naksimanicpixie where she grew to fame on a platform for social justice and feminism She has decided to use this platform to raise funds to sponsor food and travel for protestors at Jantar Mantar ldquoGen Z has long been told lsquoOh your activism is limited to posting storiesrsquo or activism has been labelled performative But right now we are at the brim of a revolutionrdquo Timbadia saysMaulik Sharma makes reels on his InstagramGawande affirms this point ldquoYoung people were told that we donrsquot care that we are lazy and unemployed Today young people have proved everyone wrong Today wersquore ready to bear the brunt of police lathis and FIRs And after all this we are coming back every day with good spirits and humourrdquoHow does a generation of ldquoperformative activistsrdquo take the streets What magic does this movement have that has compelled so many to come onground How does a meme movement even mobilise to become electric How does a social mediafirst movement gain momentum ongroundSamya Korde has been organising protests in Mumbai and has been detained for attending them PICSAYYED SAMEER ABEDIFormer student activist Anirban Bhattacharya who was arrested in the 2016 Sedition Case alongside student activists Umar Khalid and Kanhaiya Kumar has been observing the rise of CJP since its inception On June 6 Abhijeet Dipke arrived in India and the first protest happened ldquoWith the ripples the CJP made on social media it seemed very likely that just as many people would show up on groundrdquo Bhattacharya says ldquoBut that didnrsquot happen Mobilisation took timerdquoOn July 20 the Delhi Police launched a crackdown on the ldquoChalo Sansadrdquo march where they used tear gas and lathis against students PICPTIIt wasnrsquot until June 20 that a sitin could begin at Jantar Mantar ldquoThey had to use some very traditional methods of protest like hunger strike by Sonam Wangchuk and All India Studentsrsquo Association AISA members Neha Bora Ameen Amitoj and Manish Kumar to garner attention Even then the movement really gained attention only around the 16th or 17th day of Wangchukrsquos strike Finally on July 19 when Wangchuk was taken by the police the movement catapulted and spread nationwide So they still had to prove themselves on the ground for the movement to spreadrdquoAamir Kazi and Karishma RawatAlthough Delhi has found a sitin site at Jantar Mantar in Mumbai protests remain spontaneous and sporadic Since July 23 onwards Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita BNSS has been applicable to the city making protesting illegalAdvocate and activist Samya Korde founder of Dharavi Foundation whorsquos been organising the protests in the city had also visited Jantar Mantar on July 17 a day before Wangchuk was forcefully taken to a hospital ldquoWhen we saw that happen I knew Mumbai needed to show solidarityrdquo she says ldquoSo we organised a protest on July 20 which I could not attend because the police surrounded my house in Sion and put me in house arrestrdquo she alleges Korde has been detained multiple times since thenAnsh Mehta Gen Z protestorIn Mumbai she says ldquoThe protests are spontaneous There are multiple protests happening in one day organised by different people The movement has gone beyond the CJP or any political parties All of us organisers are interconnected and we are coordinating on how to organiserdquoWith multiple organisers information running haywire how are organisers ensuring that protestors receive the right information at the right time All India Studentsrsquo Federationrsquos Mumbai president Aamir Kazi who has also been organising protests says ldquoRight now a lot of the organisers get detained and their phones are being snatched which is making it harder to communicate The next step for us is to centralise this How do we take this under one roof The police can provide us a designated free place And we create a sitin protest site like Shaheen Bagh and Mumbai BaghrdquoGen Z protestors were seen holding hilarious tongueincheek signs PicTanisha BanerjeeKazi says that social media is like a second skin to this generation and theyrsquore utilising it very well to communicate and mobilise Korde too affirms this ldquoEvery generation has their own language to express themselves and social media is ours An Instagram story may last 24 hours but itrsquos a tool to spread information fast We will use our 3minute Reels to mobilise and spread our message It has only made communication fasterrdquoHow they will proceed with protests under Section 163 remains to be seen One such protestor who has become a useful source of information and mobilising is Oamkaar The 29yearoldrsquos Instagram page oamkaar chronicles and updates every piece of information in the cityrsquos protests ldquoI receive thousands of DMs a day asking me about where to come how to find lawyers to help what to do if you get detained Right now Irsquom trying to disseminate this information as well as possiblerdquo he saysOamkaar has been actively participating in protests for close to a decade ldquoIrsquove been a part of the CAANRC protests stray dog protests treecutting protests against the cutting of 45000 mangroves in the Coastal Road project and protests supporting Palestinerdquo Whatrsquos different about this movement to him ldquoWith CAANRC we had had visible figureheads of every protest who were mainly political first and then used social media to call for the protest With this one we see that the leaders were made from social media Dipke for example or Ashutosh Ranka spokesperson for the CJP mdash all of these people in Delhi were made because of social medialdquoBut in the other cities mdash Mumbai Pune Nagpur Hyderabad Bengaluru mdash there are no leaders or figureheads It is pretty much just people sharing that lsquoHey wersquore going to have a protest over here Pull uprsquo The CAANRC protest was seen as a topdown thing while this student protest is more of a bottomup grassrootslevel thing which is why it seems like itrsquos being organised on social media much morerdquo he notesThis of course comes with its own downsides Oamkaar gives the example of those detained in the protests Mumbai Police have booked around 400 people and registered 13 FIRs so far ldquoThe reason people were detained on July 21 was because we trickled in The protest time was 430 pm By 445 to 5 pm we still had just disjointed groups Around 5 pm is when the group sort of fomented into a proper protest when people realised that if you outnumber the police the police wonrsquot pick you up If we had a proper person at the top to mobilise and disseminate information people wouldnrsquot have trickled inldquoI was wearing comfortable home clothes for the protest intentionally so it looked like I was a walker at Dadar and wouldnrsquot be picked up before the protest startedrdquo Oamkaar says ldquoBut anybody who looked like a protester mdash somebody with a bag with a bandana on their head wearing fullcoverage clothes wearing a jacket or wearing black mdash was being picked up andtold to leaverdquoOther than mobilising social media is the only avenue to generate consciousness argues Gawande ldquoSocial media is the only alternative left for peoplersquos movements in India to reach ordinary Indian citizens There has been an almost complete blackout of these protests in the mainstream television media There are only reports of police officers who have been injured in the protests but no television channel has the courage to show the police brutality unleashed upon young protesters in cities across the country Spontaneous protests have broken out in more than eight capitals across the world outside Indian high commissions and embassies to ensure that the world recognises that the shameful actions of the Delhi police will not go unnoticed This has been made possible by the power of social mediardquoThe police speakBehind the riot gear and barricades are also officers caught in the machinery of the state Speaking to policemen on the ground many admitted they receive only limited instructions and are often unaware of decisions taken by senior officials Some said they had not been home for over a dayldquoYou canrsquot just lathi charge themrdquo one constable shook his head ldquoTheyrsquore just kids Even if we do itrsquos below the belt so they donrsquot get gravely hurtrdquo On asking how the antipolice sentiment at the protests affected them one officer paused before offering a weary smile ldquoI canrsquot even comment on it I am doing my duty they are doing theirs All I can do is watchrdquoThat humanity however exists alongside the far more visible image of policing that has defined these protests Evidence of protestors with pellet wounds has been found as well It was further underscored when an inspector from Mumbai was suspended after a video surfaced of him allegedly threatening three boys with false drug cases if they returned to the protests This serves us a reminder that while some officers are silent cogs in the system others actively become its instrumentsThe government treated protestors badly advocatePractising Advocate Sulbha Chakranarayan who has been providing legal aid to detained students says the arrests prompted her to step in voluntarily ldquoI saw how badly the government was behaving with them Irsquom not following any party I am only helping students understand their legal rightsrdquo She claims many detainees including minors were unfamiliar with the law ldquoOn July 21 20 people were detained in Sion police station six were minorsMany hadnrsquot even told their parents they were going to protestrdquo She further alleges ldquoPolice are taking advantage of the childrenrsquos ignorance of the law They are checking detained studentsrsquo phones to see if they follow CJP on Instagram You cannot do thatrdquo