Shashi Tharoor writes: When the streets burn, Parliament cannot act blind

The true measure of a constitutional democracy lies not in the authority it wields to enforce compliance, but in the humility with which it engages dissent. A secure republic treats peaceful protest as an opportunity to look into a mirror reflecting the anxieties of its citizenry. A fragile executive, by contrast, treats that same mirror as an enemy, shattering it with lathis and turning a blind eye when the glass pieces fall on the streets outside the gates of power, cutting the veins of its citizens.

What the nation has witnessed in recent days on the streets of the national capital is a deeply troubling demonstration of democratic atrophy. Citizens, primarily young students and peaceful activists, many inspired by the symbolic leadership of the fasting Sonam Wangchuk, gathered to demand accountability on issues touching their very futures. The response from the apparatus of the state was not a dialogue, but a crackdown, silencing their voices with violence and detentions.

Lathi charges broke through crowds of non-violent demonstrators, sending nearly a hundred young men and women to hospital emergency wards with fractures, contusions, and trauma. The sight of police officers wielding batons against unarmed youth, while internet blackouts and closed metro stations throttled the flow of both information and people, felt less like the routine maintenance of public order in a constitutional republic and more like the heavy-handed oppression of a police state. I spoke to a young man at Jantar Mantar who had been hit on the head and below the eye with a lathi and still wore a large bandage to stanch the bleeding. My heart broke to see what the custodians of law and order had done to a youth who was peacefully distributing water to the protestors.

Equally jarring has been the government’s disgraceful manhandling of the protesting Leader of the Opposition and the environmentalist-educator Sonam Wangchuk’s hunger strike. For three weeks, Wangchuk sat in quiet, disciplined fast at Jantar Mantar, a historic venue designated precisely for the public expression of grievance. His method was classically Gandhian: Self-abnegation as an appeal to the conscience of the state. The smart thing for the government to do would have been to send a minister with a glass of nimbu-pani and the assurance of a discussion in Parliament, to urge him to break his fast.

Yet, rather than engaging in a spirit of constructive conciliation, the state chose the path of coercion. Under the cloak of medical necessity, police forces descended upon the protest site to forcibly remove the frail 59-year-old activist to a government hospital. The line between medical intervention and state custody became dangerously blurred, and even here the government was found wanting in basic humanity. The appalling treatment of Rahul Gandhi, who was bodily lifted and dragged into detention, was a betrayal of the democratic compact.

A state that fears the moral authority of an unarmed protestor reveals a profound lack of confidence in its own narrative. The pattern of suppression, the targeting and arrest of student leaders, and the physical intimidation directed at protest organisers speak to a broader political strategy: Render the movement leaderless, criminalise its protests, and wear out public outrage.

The scene on the streets represents a failure of governance; the response inside the halls of Parliament represents a systemic failure of legislative duty. As central Delhi burned with frustration and tears, one might have reasonably expected the sacred precincts of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha to reverberate with urgent debate. The Opposition moved numerous notices demanding a suspension of business to discuss the breakdown of law and order, the grievances of the protesting youth, and the excessive force used by law-enforcement.