NEW DELHI: Jantar Mantar is a republic of handfans these days.
Hundreds of young volunteers are furiously fanning those filing in and out of the protest site in the muggy heart of Lutyens’ Delhi.
It’s a small gesture of kindness that marks the evolution of a motley crew of first-time protesters who have learnt to organise more efficiently and sustain a movement in the face of inclement weather and immense pressure from an intemperate administration.
Welcome to India’s first large-scale Gen Z protest, where planning and posing go hand in hand with protesting. Here is a snake of youngsters carrying in food, water and medicine for those fasting and camping overnight. There, a group of medicos slinging stethoscopes are urgently ushered in. Every few metres, video makers are speaking into phone cameras.
The hoarse sloganeering of yesteryears is partly replaced by printed memes. The humour, too, is reflective of the zeitgeist. Twenty-nothings from some of Delhi’s top colleges are holding up neatly-visualised posters screaming,“There’s 20% ethanol in my exam”, “Swiping left on national issues like it’s Tinder” and “Dande Mataram”. A large neem evergreen is marked as “Pradhan resignation tree”.
It’s as if the Gen Z protesters are embodying pre-Boomer political theorist Hannah Arendt’s idea that exposing authority to contempt through laughter is an effective way to undermine it.
On the other hand, millennial Rajesh Sau, a 31-year-old from Bihar’s Begusarai who has come to the capital for the first time, holds up a serious-minded, AI-generated poster of the Cockroach Janta Party’s Abhijeet Dipke next to Bhagat Singh that he claims to have downloaded from Facebook.
Kindness is mostly shown in the form of food and medicine. Members of Sikh foundations are handing out khichdi plates and juice bottles to outstretched hands. Garbage bags are filling up faster than cleaners are moving them out.
In a show of supreme irony, parked government ambulances are handing out masks to guard against teargas and spraying pain-relievers on shoulders injured by lathi charges.
Some among the volunteers are blaring whistles to referee crowds when they behave like petulant Argentinian footballers. Only a few near the stage wear the white tees sporting the ‘official’ cockroach logo.
At the main stage, humour gives way to the serious demands of resignation, education reforms, court-mandated probe and negotiations with the government. There is talk of shifting demands “from Pradhan to pradhan mantri”. There is also exhortation for restraint from the stage. CJP’s Saurav Das warns against giving in to polarising banter by “planted miscreants”.
