Tens of thousands of people in India have taken to the streets in recent days to protest the deletion of 130 million names from the voter rolls, a large majority of which are believed to be opposed to Narendra Modi’s ruling BJP party. The demonstrations, joined by leaders from India’s opposition parties, are being led by students and the youth-led “Cockroach” movement. Tens of thousands of security forces, including paramilitary and police, were out on the streets over the weekend cracking down on the uprising, detaining protesters en masse, including lawyers, journalists and protest leaders.

The demonstrations “represent an outpouring of anger, of frustration at what many Indians feel is the fact that their democracy has been taken away,” says Shoaib Daniyal, political editor of Scroll, who was arrested on Saturday along with 7,000 other protesters. He points out that “the deletions have affected Muslims far more than they have affected other Indians.”

On Monday, in one of largest recent protests in India’s capital of New Delhi, India’s main opposition leader, Rahul Gandhi of the Congress Party, led a march to the Supreme Court of India. “This march has become a people’s march, with all of them heading towards this constitutional authority, which they feel should safeguard the rights of Indian people, especially this very basic right to vote,” says Jahnavi Sen, managing editor of The Wire.

Transcript

ANJALI KAMAT: In India, the right-wing government of Narendra Modi is facing its biggest challenge yet in 12 years in power, as tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets to protest what they call vote theft. At issue is the deletion of 130 million names from the voter rolls, and the vast majority of those deletions are believed to be opposed to Prime Minister Modi’s ruling BJP party.

The protests are being led by students and the youth Cockroach movement and joined by leaders from the opposition parties. They’re demanding the resignation of the chief election commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, and an overhaul of the electoral system. The Cockroach movement started after the chief justice of India’s Supreme Court compared unemployed youth to cockroaches earlier this year.

Today, in one of largest recent protests in India’s capital of New Delhi, India’s main opposition leader, Rahul Gandhi of the Congress Party, is leading a march to the Supreme Court of India. Speaking to reporters earlier today, Gandhi reiterated the call for the election commissioner to resign.

RAHUL GANDHI: Narendra Modi is blocking the whole town, is putting 30,000-40,000 police people outside. For what? Because the opposition is asking one question: Prove to us that you have not cheated in the election. Prove to us that you’ve not cheated in the election.

AMY GOODMAN: The Modi government put New Delhi in lockdown ahead of Saturday’s protests, canceling trains to the city, shutting down metro stations, even suspending mobile internet in large parts of Delhi. Tens of thousands of security forces, including paramilitary and police, were mobilized across the city, and at least 7,000 people were detained Saturday alone, including protest leaders, lawyers and journalists. This is a protester speaking to reporters from inside a van where he was detained.

PROTESTER: [translated] The Modi government is scared of us. That is why we have been picked up from halfway. We didn’t even know where they were trying to bring us. [in English] This is just fear. And they are afraid of us because they have done something wrong, and you cannot do something wrong with the people of this country, man.

AMY GOODMAN: Several Cockroach movement leaders were also arrested right off the plane as they arrived in Delhi for the protest Saturday morning. After being released the next morning, Saurav Das, one of the leaders of the Cockroach People’s Party, vowed protests would continue.

SAURAV DAS: The protests are on. The protests will go on. [translated] The youth of the country have woken up. The youth of the country are asking for accountability. The peaceful protests will go on until they fix accountability. And now the protests will not only happen in Delhi, but in the whole country.

ANJALI KAMAT: On Saturday, the United Nations human rights spokesperson expressed concern over the mass detentions in India. In response, the Indian Mission in Geneva responded on X that the U.N.'s concerns were, quote, “misplaced and constitute an unwarranted interference in the internal affairs of India,” asserting that “India is the world's largest democracy.”

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by two guests in Delhi. Jahnavi Sen is the managing editor of The Wire, an independent news website in India. And joining us from the streets of New Delhi, Shoaib Daniyal, political editor of Scroll, another Indian independent news website.

Shoaib, you were arrested on Saturday. You are out now. Describe what’s happening in the streets and why these massive protests are happening, and also the response to thousands being arrested.

SHOAIB DANIYAL: The protests are happening over one issue, Amy, which is the rigging of the voter rolls that Anjali pointed out. A hundred and thirty million Indians have got kicked off the voter rolls in a process that could, at best, be described as arbitrary. The deletions have affected Muslims far more than they have affected other Indians, so there is a very, very racial element in what this program represents. And these protests are coming after months of this exercise going on, and they represent an outpouring of anger, of frustration at what many Indians feel is the fact that their democracy has been taken away. We fought really hard for our democracy in 1947, and it feels like the right to vote has been taken away, and really everything else is downstream from that.

On Saturday, we saw something unprecedented in India. Delhi was locked down, as you very correctly phrased it. There were tens of thousands of policemen, paramilitary forces on the streets. The entire city was barricaded. The entire city center was barricaded. Internet was shut off. The police unleashed violence on these — you know, most of the protesters are actually kids. It’s very much a Gen Z protest in many ways. The bulk of the protesters are young kids. I just met a couple of kids who are 18, who are in first year in college. They’ve come here. And again, they were brutalized. They were arrested. This happened yesterday and the day before.

And today, we’ve had a kind of turning of the tide, so to speak, where the Congress Party, which is in the main opposition, has actually put its bulk, has actually put its strength, got its strength out onto the street. And we’ve seen some pretty remarkable scenes of — the very same parts of Delhi which were completely barricaded, which were completely blocked off, which were completely empty, they’re filled with protesters today. And the police today have not or cannot do anything about it.

ANJALI KAMAT: I want to bring Jahnavi Sen into the conversation, managing editor of The Wire, another independent news website in India. Jahnavi, you’ve also been out in the streets. Can you explain why protesters are marching to the Supreme Court of India right now?

JAHNAVI SEN: This began by a call from the leaders of the opposition who wanted to submit a memorandum to the chief justice of India about their concerns with what’s happening within the Election Commission of India. And as you were mentioning earlier, you know, one of the chief demands — though, of course, not the only demand — has been the resignation of the chief election commissioner, and the opposition has been trying to go to different constitutional authorities about this. They first tried to meet the Election Commission itself. They were underway. They have had a meeting with the president of India, Droupadi Murmu. And then they wanted to go to the chief justice of India, who sits in the Supreme Court, to submit a memorandum to him. He has denied them a meeting. And that is why now this march has become a people’s march, with all of them heading towards this constitutional authority, which they feel should safeguard the rights of Indian people, especially this very basic right to vote.

ANJALI KAMAT: And, Jahnavi, there’s also concerns about excessive brutality from police and other security forces who were on the streets over the weekend, particularly on Saturday. Can you talk a little bit about this? And you were on the streets, as well. What you witnessed?

JAHNAVI SEN: No, absolutely. I think it was, in fact, both on Saturday and Sunday, very heavy-handed behavior from the police, police and the paramilitary of different kinds, detaining people, putting them into police buses. And then, they were — several people were hit. They were mistreated. Women were manhandled. There were also allegation — not even not just allegations; we saw this happen — women protesters being taken into buses where there were no women constables, which is illegal, women protesters being detained after dark, which is also illegal. And then, another tactic that the police has now perfected is to detain protesters and then to drive them around in these buses for hours and drop them off in extremely far-flung corners of the city, from where it’s very difficult to make it back. Often it’s difficult to contact people that you know. They have also tried to take people’s phones and make them delete footage.

One of the very concerning things that we’ve been seeing is also the detentions of journalists. You were mentioning how Shoaib, too, was detained. On Saturday, my colleagues and I almost faced a similar situation. And so many journalists, both yesterday and today, despite wearing press cards, saying again and again that they’re from the media and they’re here to cover what’s happening, have been treated in this way, as have senior leaders of opposition parties. There were very stark and troubling visuals yesterday of a member of Parliament from one of the left parties, the CPI, John Brittas, who was — who said he was pinned down by paramilitary personnel inside one of these detention buses, and then had trouble breathing. He had to be taken to the hospital.

So, really, yes, we have been seeing very heavy-handed behavior on the side of the police and the paramilitary forces. And they seem to be able to do this despite the Supreme Court having a hearing early yesterday morning, where they said that, you know, no illegal detentions should take place; journalists and lawyers doing their job should not be detained. Despite that, we have not seen a change in that behavior over Sunday, as well.

ANJALI KAMAT: Shoaib, I wanted to get your reaction to what the Indian Mission in Geneva posted on X in response to criticism from the U.N. Human Rights Office expressing concern over the mass detention of protesters. And the response began by saying, “India is the world’s largest democracy,” and “the right to peaceful assembly is guaranteed by our Constitution and safeguarded by robust institutions, an independent judiciary and a free media.” Do the people on the streets agree with this?

SHOAIB DANIYAL: I think now increasingly, what was a banal fact about India is now not true. And this is exactly what the protest’s about. We’re seeing, I think — and I think this is true for democracies across the world. We have — India still maintains a veneer of democracy. We’re still wearing the clothes of democracy. But inside, there is something rotten. So, elections are held. The elections are multiparty elections. On paper, everybody has a right to contest. But, of course, we are seeing right from things which are actually legal, which I think are there in other democracies, like the U.S. also, the fact that the BJP has so much money. So, even if everything were above the board, the BJP just starts, you know, a hundred meters ahead on the starting line when the race starts, just on money. They have so much money. But they also now have institutions.

You know, you asked why people are marching to the Supreme Court today. Now, these voter roll deletions were contested in the Supreme Court as they were happening, and the Supreme Court just did not do anything. It spun this incredibly legal, complex lawyer’s web, but eventually it did not do anything to stop it. It gave a carte blanche to the Modi government. And there is a lot of anger actually on the streets against the Supreme Court. As you pointed out, you know, this is one of the greatest ironies, is that the Cockroach movement actually arises from a stray comment made by the chief justice of India. So, there is anger against the Supreme Court for not doing its job. The Supreme Court is the guardian of the Constitution. It’s meant to protect our rights. And again, like in other democracies — I think American viewers would also empathize — the Supreme Court is just not seen to be doing their job. And the SIR, the voter roll revision, is seen to be a really egregious part of that. So, in a way, this march to the Supreme Court is really, really interesting, because Rahul Gandhi and other protesters are trying to politicize the Supreme Court’s role in this matter.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, it’s really interesting, what’s happening around the world, Jahnavi. You have these mass protests in France, led by the youth, around issues of affordability and education. You have mass protests in Spain that have led the prime minister to call for a snap election November 29th, and he’s dissolved the parliament. And now you have these mass protests in India. I’m wondering what you think this means for the Modi government.

JAHNAVI SEN: I think these protests are going to be impossible for the government to ignore, even though it seems to be trying really hard. All the messaging we’ve seen coming from leaders of Modi’s party — that’s the Bharatiya Janata Party — have been attempts to show that this is just the opposition trying to get — trying to make this an anarchic situation, that they don’t have an agenda, that they’re just, you know, trying to create chaos. But it’s not sitting. And I think one of the reasons why we also saw the targeting of journalists was that they realized that building that narrative is not working.

We have a chief election commissioner who faced some pretty damning — a pretty damning exposé in a very big newspaper about the way he was functioning. And since then, we have heard absolutely nothing from him. We don’t know where he is. And, of course, this is in a country where the prime minister has not given a press conference ever since he was elected as the prime minister of this country, so perhaps the chief election commissioner is simply following in his footsteps by quickly disappearing from public sight when things become a little difficult.

But I think, yes, this tactic of ignoring, this tactic of trying to suppress narratives and suppress people has not been working. We are seeing how today so many more people have gathered. The rally that Shoaib is at right now is —

AMY GOODMAN: We have 10 seconds.

JAHNAVI SEN: — very, very large. And so, I think, you know, no matter what narrative they try to build, this is not going to go away.

AMY GOODMAN: Jahnavi Sen of The Wire, Shoaib Daniyal from the Scroll, both independent news websites in India. Daniyal was one of those thousands arrested on Saturday. And we’ll continue to cover these protests.

Coming up, it’s Indigenous Peoples’ Day. We’ll speak with the Native American activist Leonard Peltier, who spent almost 50 years behind bars. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: Sonny Singh in our Democracy Now! studio.