Is street protest justified in a constitutional democracy? This question has been thrown at this columnist over the last fortnight, provoked by the argument advanced in this column that peaceful and democratic resistance rather than electoral contestation is the way forward for the Opposition. The entire ecosystem of the ruling establishment — the head of the BJP IT cell, the anchor-in-chief of darbari media and their academic spokespersons — has unleashed its fury at this argument and this author. The usual slurs follow: Anti-democratic, anti-constitutional and, of course, anti-national.

This criticism must not be dismissed with quick rebuttals. It is easy to point out that this attack stems from frustration, in the face of the largest youth protest in our times that has brought down the “pall of fear”. Much of this critique is dishonest, too, for it conveniently omits the phrase “peaceful and democratic” in the original argument. There is staggering hypocrisy as well, when those who rose to power riding the most divisive rath yatra on the streets, bypassing the legal-constitutional order, start lecturing on institutional propriety. And then there is the delightful irony that those who opposed reservation and the very idea of social justice now invoke Babasaheb Ambedkar’s plea against civil disobedience in independent India. Such retorts may be effective. But they are not good answers to a real question.

So let us formulate this question and respond to it at its logical best. In a democratic setup, is it justified to mobilise people for street protest to raise an issue, bypassing democratically elected representatives and constitutionally mandated institutions? Is this not an invitation to mobocracy — crowds that replace elected representatives, threaten institutions, hold decision-makers at ransom and........

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