By holding a mock Parliament on October 31, which saw the impeachment of the infamous Gyanesh Kumar, and then the humongous rally at Ramlila Maidan on November 1, the India Bloc threw down the gauntlet to the tinsel Vishwaguru and his gang, who have breached every canon of democratic functioning in the last decade. This is the latest face-off in the ongoing existential battle between a rogue regime and a people's movement for democracy.

Our country is in shambles. Having already wrested control of large tracts of our land in Ladakh, China is now an ominous presence in Arunachal Pradesh, a menacing situation that, typical of this regime's deceitful style, was kept under wraps until the former ITBP Director General recently blurted it out. Manipur is on the boil due to the protracted ethnic conflict, and several districts in Nagaland have been declared "seriously disturbed areas," a situation further inflamed by the covert actions of China.
On top of all this, communities in Arunachal, including Gen Z, are staging intense protests against the Siang Dam project, torching vehicles, damaging public property and even vandalising the homes of the local BJP president and two MLAs. It's a full-blown crisis in the North-Eastern region.

Elsewhere, the regime's naked crony-capitalist leanings, its overpowering "contract raj" focus, its extravagance on glitzy projects meant for the privileged few, and its embrace of a foreign policy hostage to Modi's personal frailties have ruined the economy, aggravated unemployment to an all-time high, and deepened inequality.

But Vishwaguru has turned his back on all these existential crises. He is busy cursing Rahul and the Congress party, lauding our successful Asian Games athletes, inaugurating garment factories, attending air displays and holding a road show in Varanasi—basically playing the fiddle as the country burns! But the haunted look on his face tells the story of a troubled soul. He knows he has been found out and will, sooner or later, be called to account. The Prime Minister of India is running scared!

Never before has there been such a devastatingly effective assault on Modi's persona as in the last few months. We have seen a precipitous diminution of the non-biological being and his bogus grandeur, meticulously choreographed over the last decade by his corporate and media minders.

The man who strode our world like a Colossus has been reduced to a chhota bandar. And we owe this potent dynamiting of the phoney Vishwaguru image to the clear-sighted Gen Z who saw through the humbug and relentlessly mocked and satirised him—easily the greatest takedown of an insufferably pompous public personality in recent history.

Rajmohan Gandhi, arguably the greatest Indian alive, put it with devastating simplicity: "Twelve years of high-voltage propaganda has been punctured" by these youngsters.

And mind you, credible allegations about his fake degrees and secret love life have not yet been seriously probed on account of judicial complicity. Today the emperor wears no clothes!

But backed into a corner, he is more dangerous than ever! The latest "Gyanu must go" protests have captured the public imagination and generated a groundswell of support among ordinary citizens. They have driven a desperate regime to unleash its repertoire of dirty tricks against peaceful protesting citizens.

The second round of peaceful protests that kicked off on October 2—the Mahatma's birth anniversary—was met with the unprecedented punitive might of the State. It is so obvious that the 56-inch weakling feared that, if allowed to assemble unhindered, the myriads of protesters could descend on him the way protesters barged into the mansions of the tyrants in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh! The Jantar Mantar ban, one suspects, was induced by the same dread. Modi has gone all out to protect himself from his own people.

Apart from imposing Section 163 of the BNSS across a large swathe of New Delhi, over 50,000 police and paramilitary personnel were deployed in the Capital, key Metro stations closed, mobile internet suspended, all arterial routes to Jantar Mantar blocked, drones used to monitor crowd movements, and a wave of preventive and on-site detentions effected.

Yet scores of protesters gathered around Jantar Mantar on that day.
What we have witnessed during the relay of protests this month is completely illegitimate police brutality designed to intimidate, beat and persecute protesters so that, under duress, they cede their democratic right to assemble and protest peacefully. Apart from the standard tactics of gratuitous beatings, abuse and detention, the police engaged right-wing goons, some dressed to look like Muslims, to attack the protesters. Women were dragged, beaten and molested.

On October 10, it is estimated that over 7,000 protesters were rounded up, roughed up, many taken to remote areas and abandoned, their access to legal counsel denied or severely restricted. Facial recognition, tools, acoustic devices and tracking technology were deployed to terrorise the youngsters.

India is living through a version of 1984!

Neha Bora, the iconic face of the courageous young protesters, has graphically recounted the ghoulish Kafkaesque treatment that she was subjected to during her night-long detention. How much worse must it have been for the scores of unknown protesters subjected to the brutality of the criminals in uniform!

From all appearances, the government has now adopted a two-pronged strategy that, according to the New York Times, "appears to be working." These are to continue to crush the Gen Z movement and then to direct public attention to its political rival: the Congress party and Rahul Gandhi (who have admittedly rarely been a match for Modi and the BJP juggernaut). While the youth leaders are being harried by the iniquitous police-judiciary nexus, the terrible twins, pulling out all the stops, have been attacking the Congress and Rahul, in particular.

The received wisdom is that the government has regained control of the situation and that it is now business as usual, punctuated by occasional protests that can be brushed off. Such a simplistic assessment ignores the fact that the polity has already seen a massive mutation. The Modi regime is no longer the fearsome beast that it was till a few months ago.

The greatest setback for the authoritarian has been the scandal over his henchmen plundering the Ram Temple coffers. As a consequence, he has had to forfeit his trump card—religion—as an instrument to rally around the majority community to foster schisms within society and divert attention from the life-and-death problems of the country. That sure-fire go-to option has been closed. After all, crooks spouting religion and religiosity would inevitably invite scorn even from the most devout believers!

Not only have Gen Z cut Modi down to size; these astonishingly brave and irreverent youth have restored free speech in the country. One might even venture that the cataclysmic Indian Express exposé on the CEC's shenanigans would not have happened without the lead given by Gen Z (and Sonam Wangchuk), who literally broke the shackles that had tied our tongues for more than a decade. A country that lived in mortal fear of the regime has suddenly found its voice!

In this context, the gossip that the Gen Z movement has gone cold under regime pressure is wishful thinking.

It's time Rahul is given his due. And shame on his carping critics who remain obsessed with his privileged family background and the string of electoral defeats (we now know why). And for stupidly echoing BJP-IT cell meanness, treating his trips abroad as high crime, conveniently ignoring the hard yards he puts in round the year.

Since the Maharashtra elections in 2023, he has been warning us about vote chori. He has fearlessly laid bare the crimes being committed against the Constitution and the people by Modi and the gang, for which he has paid a huge price. His leadership and conduct during this crisis have been absolutely brilliant. He has carried the entire Opposition with him, barring the perverts of the AAP, and held the hands of Gen Z in a show of genuine camaraderie. For months, he has maintained relentless pressure on the regime, which is at its wit's end over how to respond.

The quintessential social activist, Ralph Nader, described as America's "national scold," believes an equal and just society is not possible without the active participation of its main stakeholder, i.e., civil society. To quote his wisdom, "There can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship."

What we are seeing today is ordinary citizens revolting against tyranny and injustice. The current protests have drawn all sections of society to a common cause – the protection of our democracy. Let us acknowledge the heft this fight to reclaim our democracy has gained from concerned citizens from all walks of life – social activists, teachers, lawyers, housewives, journalists, trade unionists, farmers, celebrities, even the superannuated with one foot in the grave!

Let's face it! This is an existential battle between a tyrannical regime that will go to any lengths to hold on to power and a people's movement that seeks "regime change" in the form of an India for which our founding fathers sacrificed everything they had! We cannot afford to squander this godsend opportunity to consign the tyrant to the dustbin of history and get back our democracy. We won't get another chance, not for a long time! Guys, let's not blow it!

At this fraught time, oscillating between hope and despair, I recall those memorable lines of the great Irish poet, Seamus Heaney:
"History says, 'Don't hope 
On this side of the grave.'
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme!"