A protest is a liberating force, it is a site where you defeat your own demons, and learn to hate all the powers in the world; the school, the family, the college, the job market, the distraction superstructure, the government, the government’s protectors, the political parties, the hegemonies; everything that will try to destroy not just the individual but the capacity for the individual to be among a community of equals. It is where one learns to love in the most precious ways to love.
A protest is a memory of a thousand protests before. Those defeats after defeats, and they always return.
A protest is an after memory of a thousand tortured, killed, and imprisoned, and their voice that can barely whisper within walls.
There will be a countless things said about Cockroaches. But sometimes, images speak for themselves.
A city like Mumbai that had almost forgotten it’s political consciousness, now has a generation that knows more than most. And something else too.
This is a photo essay of a few days of rebellion in the city of Mumbai.
‘The people are not ready yet.’ says a Congress party worker a month ago.
‘The people just need the opposition onto the streets for their protection, and the people will come.’
It took the opposition time to realize this and they had their own ideas of what a protest would and should be, after days of detentions, intimidations, arrests. The Shiv Sena-UBT and the Congress called for national anthem marches, they called for flag-hoisting, but the students, the Ambedkarite groups, the queer community, and the Left groups had their own idea about spontaneity and Azadi slogans would eventually go with Bharat Mata ki jai as well as neem ka patta kadwa hai. And you know how this one goes.
Most of the police by Friday weren’t even carrying their lathis, they had to whistle at thousands of people who just ignored them.
The now famous grafitti by street artist Tyler was painted over within a week, but someone then printed it out and stuck it over the newly painted wall.
i
‘what are you going to do after the protest?’
‘i will come again on Sunday.’
ii
‘The Mumbai police is still better than the Delhi police.’
‘And who killed Stan Swamy?’
iii
‘we need a revolutionary party.’
‘we need a revolutionary era.’
‘whataboutery is really whataboutme.’
iv
‘From being the only anti-bjp person in a whatsapp group we’re now at only 1 pro bjp.’
v
‘Now that they have a scapegoat in Pradhan, do we call it a Bakra Janta Party?’
vi
‘As a woman, i have never felt safer anywhere, than at these protests.’
vii
A rickshawalla tells their passenger that everyone is still pareshaan, it doesn’t end. No one ignores that the price of petrol is now 111 rupees. There is also deficit rainfall this year in the fields. The protests at Ken-Betwa are also happening, as is the entire SIR exercise in disenfranchising an entire people. In Bihar’s Siwan district, the police fired upon students. And yet there isn’t a single part of the day-to-day, where people are not talking about cockroaches.
People try to think about reasons why they aren’t going. That they have to think of one, shows how powerful it was. And of course, there will be another round.
