DISCUSSIONS are happening about how so many of the young protesters that rocked the Modi government recently came from families that have been faithfully voting for the right-wing prime minister. A crucial fact that seems to elude the discussants is that liberal or communist or fascist ideologues are not hatched in hatcheries. Unlike Narendra Modi, they are not ‘non-biological’ beings that gatecrash our earthly world.
To begin with, it would be useful to bear in mind that the jailed left-wing student leader Umar Khalid had transcended to secular left politics from circumstances in which his father was a member of a major Muslim revivalist body.
Likewise, Neha Bora, president of the pro-communist All-India Students’ Association who fasted for 23 days at the protest, tells you sans demur that she broke away from a family tradition of voting for the Muslim-baiting BJP. The flow can be in the opposite direction too. Howard Fast, as the despairing chief of the US Communist Party, famed for writing the story of Spartacus, the slave rebel of Rome, became a Buddhist seeker after abandoning Marxism.
Numerous such examples abound in the Indian intellectual pantheon of progressivism and regression, which we can discuss. A scene is vivid from my childhood in which the migration to progressive politics would seem facile despite the good intentions. It was a balmy morning in Mustafabad, a village of erstwhile Shia taluqdars in the heart of Uttar Pradesh.
Some young men and women in the joint family had recently got the first university degrees. Marxism was in the air in university campuses in the 1960s. That morning the tea was of just the right temperature, its bouquet flavourful. Three bespectacled young men from among the learned ones were steeped in a discussion that straddled Marx, Nehru, Josh and Neruda.
The men were wrapped in embroidered woollen shawls over spotless white muslin kurta-pajama attires when the mehtrani, the woman carrying human refuse in an open reed basket, walked past. Other than putting the handkerchiefs on their faces briefly, the men remained unabashedly unperturbed in their intellectual chatter.
A follower of Dalit politics would have reacted differently to the brutal absurdness of the frame. Indian communists added B.R. Ambedkar and the sickening caste angle to their class analysis grudgingly, only recently harnessing it to the dialectical quiver. These early activists had the theory but not the praxis, which would take years to arrive, or perhaps not.
It’s not clear that most of the youth who defied the fierce police assault the other day had, in fact, crossed the tipping point from their social reality.
Thus, it’s not even clear that most of the youth who defied the fierce police assault the other day to scare the hell out of a stubborn authoritarian government had, in fact, crossed the tipping point from their social reality. A Buddhist would call the migration nirvana — the blowing out of greed, hatred and ignorance.
Collectively, the youth displayed a healthy mix of all three characteristics. When and if they reassemble it could be a different variety of mix. Arvind Kejriwal had held out a similar promise when his Aam Aadmi Party stopped the Hindutva juggernaut in Delhi in 2015.
The ‘Modi wave’ had taken care of Maharashtra and Haryana state polls in quick succession. Kejriwal stopped the BJP chariot in Delhi. Then something equally important occurred. He rejected the offer of support from the Shahi Imam of Jama Masjid, and people were emboldened to believe that the time had come to separate religion from politics as the constitution ordains. Then in a crude display of regressive religiosity, he started holding election campaigns from Hindu temples and wooed senior voters with offers of free Hindu pilgrimages.
One doesn’t have to agree with T.S. Eliot who says: “Youth is cruel and has no remorse. And smiles at situations it cannot see.” But youth is a handy demographic factor with an uncertain political trajectory. Not long ago, taking on the same Modi establishment, a courageous woman had single-handedly instigated the downfall of Modi’s minister accused of sexual transgressions. But the same charges failed to secure the conviction of a BJP muscleman.
However, there again is the unforgettable instance of determined and seasoned farmers who forced the cancellation of Modi’s prized anti-farm laws. It is heartening to remember, therefore, that the Cockroach leaders have committed themselves to deter violations of citizen’s voting rights by a wayward election commission. The youth are committed to take on the hopelessly compromised corporate media that misreported the protests.
Keeping company in the progressive transition of Khalid and Bora are some very eminent intellectuals of the subcontinent. Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s path from traditional Islamic education to becoming one of South Asia’s most iconic Marxist intellectuals highlights a fascinating evolution. Majrooh Sultanpuri was destined to become a hakim, for which he had acquired a degree. Then he turned towards left politics and endured isolation and even jail for his beliefs.
I recently saw lovely pictures of Faiz’s daughters on a holiday in Sri Lanka. Had DPT been around, they would have in all likelihood been in India for he had the magic of fixing visas for all manner of progressive Pakistanis. Devi Prasad Tripathi came to JNU from the RSS stable. He became a staunch member of the Communist Party of India-Marxist and won the election as student union president when he was arrested and jailed during the emergency. Many political stalwarts left the RSS to become leftists and are leading critics of the Modi establishment.
Kaifi Azmi became a progressive writer after early inspiration from the valour of Imam Husain. And, Iran has shown that a just battle can harness religious motifs to thwart a powerful aggressor. “Dekhna Kaifi nishan-i-hurriyat lahraega/ Jab jahan ko azm-i-Sher-i-Karbala mil jayaega” (‘Watch, O Kaifi, the banner of freedom shall flutter high/ Once the world finds the Lion of Karbala and joins his battle cry’). Kaifi’s pre-Marxist verses presaged the retreat of imperialism not far from the site of the students’ protest. And Iran’s left? They’re cohabiting with imperialism.
The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.
Published in Dawn, August 11th, 2026
