Mainstream WeeklyOn July 20, 2026, New Delhi witnessed brutal assertion of state power against the young protesters. The Hindu reported (July 21, 2026): “Several people were injured…when the police cracked down on a Parliament march called by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) seeking the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan… At least 38 of the injured were taken to the Lady Hardinge Medical College and around 65 to the Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, with fractures, swellings, and head and eye injuries, sources said.” What was reported in India Today is really alarming: “Pellet guns, mostly associated with Jammu and Kashmir, have been used in New Delhi, claim protesters. India Today Digital spoke to a protester whose medico-legal document says he was hit by pellets. He was hit during the CJP’s march to Parliament when security personnel allegedly used excessive force.” (www.indiatoday.in)
As reported in the media, “Delhi police have denied the widespread allegations of using pellet guns – said to have blinded hundreds in Kashmir a decade ago – on the CJP protesters.” (The Telegraph, July 24, 2026) However, a field report carried in The Indian Express (July 24, 2026) stated: “Following the July 20 crackdown on protesters, at least three cases of pellet gun injuries have come to light – that of 25-year-old Irshad Sheikh who works in Gurgaon; 19-year-old Sahil Lochab, a Delhi University student; and a 28-year-old journalist with the Outlook magazine.”
The police crackdown on the protesters has been condemned by different sections of the people, including the lawyers: “Lawyers’ bodies in Delhi and Mumbai have issued statements condemning police violence against students protesting in the two cities over exam paper leaks and seeking reforms…In Delhi, a group of 650 lawyers, including senior advocates Indira Jaising, Raju Ramachandran, Chander Uday Singh and Sanjay Hegde, have condemned the use of violence by Delhi Police against peaceful youth protesters at Jantar Mantar on July 20, 2026.” (barandbench.com)
The student/youth protests in New Delhi should be viewed in a larger perspective. One should keep in mind the insightful observations made by Sushant Singh in this context (The Telegraph, July 23, 2026): “Narendra Modi’s decade-plus-long dominance over the national imagination, realised by a systematic weakening of democratic institutions, has reshaped India’s political grammar. He has centralised authority, personalised leadership and reoriented public discourse around Hindutva…When tens of thousands of young people marched toward Parliament, they ostensibly did so to expose the structural rot of India’s educational bureaucracy under the current regime. But they achieved, perhaps inadvertently, a deep and irreversible fracturing of Modi’s hegemony over the country’s mind space.”