Dialogue before barricades
Vijayesh Lal
It should not take a march on Parliament for a government to speak to its own young people.
That thought has stayed with me since yesterday. Much will be said about the barricades, the tear gas, the conduct of some protesters and the force used by the police. These questions matter and must be answered honestly. But one question comes before all of them. Why did engagement begin only after a month of peaceful protest had reached the point of confrontation?
Before any analysis, we must acknowledge the grief. Protesters were injured on Monday, some seriously, and a young woman was reported to be in critical condition. Delhi Police said that 118 police and security personnel, including senior officers, were also injured. Behind every one of these numbers is a family that waited in fear for news. A constable’s broken arm and a protester’s bleeding head are not points to be scored against each other. Both belong to human beings made in the image of God, and both accuse a confrontation that should never have become necessary.
The sit-in led by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) at Jantar Mantar began on 20 June. Young people gathered to demand accountability for examination paper leaks and failures in the examination system. Sonam Wangchuk joined the protest on 28 June and began an indefinite fast. On 18 July, as his fast entered its twenty-first day, police moved him to Safdarjung Hospital, citing medical advice and an earlier Delhi High Court direction for daily monitoring and necessary medical intervention if his condition deteriorated. Whatever one thinks of fasting as a method of protest, it is striking that medical intervention came before any meeting between the movement and a senior Union minister. Yet it was only on the morning of the march itself, with Parliament in session and thousands of police on the streets, that such a meeting finally took place.
Who proposed those talks first is now itself disputed. The minister says the proposal came from the protesters. The protesters say the government reached out through the police. I have no way to settle that question but notice what nobody disputes. For a month, no such meeting happened at all. Whoever extended the hand on Monday morning, it was extended only when confrontation had become almost unavoidable.
That sequence should trouble us, whatever our politics. In a democracy, dialogue should not be a prize extracted after citizens gather in numbers large enough to create a crisis. It should be among the first duties of public authority whenever a grievance is serious, sustained and peaceful. Governments rightly ask citizens to use constitutional means. Fair enough. But constitutional democracy is not sustained only by citizens obeying restrictions. It also needs institutions that answer when citizens petition and assemble. Wherever people find that letters go unanswered and peaceful gatherings draw no attention, they learn a dangerous lesson: power listens only when normal life is disrupted.
We tend to judge a protest by its most dramatic moment, the breached barricade or the raised lathi, and then pick a side and start arguing. Responsibility requires us to ask about the days before that moment. Was any channel of dialogue opened? Did anyone with authority meet these young people before things escalated? Were they treated as citizens, or managed as a crowd? Public order does not begin at the barricade.
Let me be clear about what I am not saying. The right to protest is not unlimited. Parliament has legitimate security needs, and routes, numbers, timings and locations can be reasonably regulated. Our Supreme Court has affirmed that peaceful assembly and expression are fundamental rights under Articles 19(1)(a) and 19(1)(b) of the Constitution, and it has upheld reasonable restrictions on where and how protests may be held, from the Jantar Mantar case of 2018 to the Shaheen Bagh case of 2020. Regulation is constitutionally permissible. What the State cannot do is use regulation to extinguish the right altogether.
Monday’s march did not have police permission, and the authorities were entitled to prevent entry into a restricted zone. The protesters had a duty to stay peaceful and to endanger no one. On the ground, news reports describe sections of the crowd breaching barricades, and police say stones were thrown at their personnel and two police buses damaged. The police answered with lathis, tear gas and detentions, and footage from the day raises serious questions about whether that force was necessary and proportionate. It is also on record that the police initially stated that no violence or detentions had taken place. That denial is difficult to reconcile with contemporaneous television footage and news reports of a lathi charge.
All of it deserves an impartial investigation: violence by anyone in the crowd, and excessive force by anyone in uniform. But the responsibilities are not equal. The State is not just another participant in a street confrontation. It holds institutional authority, superior resources and the lawful power to detain and to use force. It therefore carries the prior duty to prevent confrontation through engagement, and the higher duty of restraint when confrontation comes. Protesters and police both bear responsibility. Their power and their accountability are not the same.
There is a fear in governments that meeting protesters rewards agitation, that it looks weak. It does not. The government could have met these young people weeks ago and still disagreed with their central demand. It could have explained what investigations were underway, what reforms were coming, and where it believed the protesters were wrong. A confident government is not afraid of young people who are angry with it. Elections give the authority to govern, not an exemption from listening between elections.
I write in my personal capacity, not to endorse CJP or all its demands, but because the treatment of citizens by public authority is a Christian concern. Authority in the Bible is never mere possession of power. It is a trust, and those who hold it answer to God for how they use it. Scripture commands those who exercise authority to defend the weak, uphold the rights of the oppressed and rescue the needy (Psalm 82:3-4). And the peace the Bible speaks of, shalom, is far richer than the absence of visible disturbance. A road can be cleared and a crowd dispersed, but peace that is manufactured through silence and fear is not peace. It requires justice, truth and right relationship.
James tells us to be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry (James 1:19). We apply this to our homes and our churches. It is wisdom for governments too, because listening early can prevent the injuries and the hardened positions we saw on Monday.
The Church also has to examine itself here. We cannot ask others to stand with us when Christian freedoms are threatened and then remain distant when students, workers, farmers or other citizens struggle to be heard. We need not become partisan, and we need not endorse every movement or every demand. But we cannot be absent. We should be present where democratic space is shrinking, where people are injured, and where dialogue has broken down.
The responsibility is shared. Protest leaders must protect the young people who follow them, refuse exaggerated and unverified claims, and ensure that legitimate anger never becomes violence. Political parties must not appear only after the cameras arrive, hoping to harvest the anger of the young for themselves. But the greatest responsibility rests on those who govern, because only they can open doors before crowds start pushing against barricades.
The young people who came to Delhi did not share one story. Reporters at the site spoke to people who had travelled overnight from outside the capital to join the protest. Their circumstances differed, but a common fear ran through their testimonies: that honest effort will not be fairly rewarded. We may debate the movement’s leadership and its demands. We cannot dismiss the despair underneath them. A nation is in serious trouble when its young people begin to believe that examinations cannot be trusted and that peaceful appeals stay invisible unless they threaten disruption. That trust will not be repaired by public relations, but by transparency, accountability and the willingness to admit institutional failure where it has happened.
The confrontation may subside and the cameras will find another controversy, but the question will remain. Will our institutions create credible ways for citizens to be heard before their frustration reaches the streets?
May God grant healing to the injured, protesters and police officers alike, comfort to their families, wisdom to those who govern, and restraint and grace to all who protest.
Dialogue must come before barricades.
Note: this essay was originally published on the author’s personal website.