Never before has the country seen public protests on Gandhi Jayanti the way we did this year. As a pithy social media meme put it, 2 October is the day those who celebrate Gandhi’s killers are forced to pay homage to him.

Mahatma Gandhi, who inspired the world with his ideals of truth, non-violence and satyagraha, epitomised the power of peaceful protest by ordinary, unarmed people. That legacy came alive across India on his 157th birth anniversary as the youth lustily embraced his idea of non-violent protest.

Those who had started believing that Gandhi had lost his relevance were in for a shock. An image of a solitary woman standing with a portrait of Mahatma Gandhi on a makeshift stage at a street corner CPI(M) meeting in Kolkata even as a violent right-wing mob broke up the gathering deserved to be seen by many more people. As the mob threw chairs, tore up banners and posters and mouthed profanities, she stood still and defiant as a rock.

Hundreds of student activists and citizens, young and old, defied the intimidating deployment of security forces around a fortified Jantar Mantar in Delhi. The viciousness of their detention was no surprise (Jantar Mantar 1.0 is still fresh in our memories). Even as older citizens stoically marched in solidarity, the younger lot around Jantar Mantar chanted slogans, strummed guitars, raised questions, toppled barricades, slipped through police cordons, cracked jokes into camera. When put into buses, they simply jumped out of the windows and rejoined the protests. One young woman ran away with the ignition key of one of the buses in Delhi.

In Mumbai, Shivaji Park resounded with hundreds singing the national anthem, by choice, not diktat. While one viral video showed a policewoman abusing young women protestors calling them and their mothers besharam (shameless), another showed a protective circle of protestors fanning a woman cop who had fainted while on duty.

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Even as the youngsters invoked the........

© National Herald