In this conversation, activist and journalist Teesta Setalvad speaks with Rhiya Ahir, whose act of standing in front of a police van carrying detained protesters during the July 2026 student protests became one of the defining images of the movement.

Rhiya reflects on what compelled her to step forward, where courage comes from and why fear cannot become a reason for citizens to remain silent. Teesta speaks about the resolve it takes to stand up to power in difficult times.

The post ‘We Cannot Be Afraid’: Rhiya Ahir in Conversation with Teesta Setalvad appeared first on SabrangIndia.

There is a detail worth pausing on before the argument even begins. The account’s bio carried a line from B.R. Ambedkar, “Educate, Agitate, Organise,” – before it was removed – which presented, evidently, as the spirit animating the campaign. It is hard to imagine a more complete inversion of what that phrase was meant to do. Ambedkar issued it to the very communities that reservation exists to protect, as an instruction for building collective power against a system stacked against them.

He was, not incidentally, also the principal architect of constitutional reservation itself. An account campaigning to dismantle his signature achievement, while quoting his most famous call to arms as its own mission statement, has not so much misread Ambedkar as run his words backwards.

That confusion turns out to be the whole story. RHA is being sold as something new – a fresh generation, fed up with a broken meritocracy, finally saying what previous generations were too timid to say. It is not new. The demand to “remove reservation” is one of the oldest, most recycled slogans in independent India’s political life, and it has failed, in more or less identical form, every single time it has been tried – against Scheduled Caste (SC)/Scheduled Tribe (ST) quotas as much as Other Backward Classes (OBC) ones, in state after state, for nearly fifty years before Gen Z existed as a demographic category.

Before Mandal: A fight older than the word “OBC”

The template was set in the late 1970s. In 1978, Bihar’s socialist chief minister Karpoori Thakur implemented 26% reservation for backward classes, based on the Mungeri Lal Commission – the first major state-level rollout of its kind in north India. It triggered a destructive anti-reservation movement, with upper-caste protestors, including some allied to his own coalition partners, taking to the streets against him. The quota outlasted his tenure; Thakur lost the chief ministership within a year.

Three years later, in 1981, a movement erupted aimed squarely at SC and ST quotas rather than backward-class ones. Ahmedabad saw India’s first big anti-reservation agitation, triggered by a state government move to raise reserved medical college seats for SCs and STs. It turned violent quickly, with Dalit students and neighbourhoods bearing the brunt of the backlash – an early, ugly template for what “antireservation” mobilisation would come to mean on the ground: not abstract policy debate, but targeted intimidation of the communities the policy served.

In December 1989, a separate wave of protest broke out in Uttar Pradesh, this time against Parliament’s routine decision to extend reserved SC/ST legislative seats for another ten years – a renewal that had never before drawn street opposition. Both agitations fizzled without altering the underlying quotas.

Then, in 1985, Gujarat erupted again, this time over a further hike in the OBC quota under chief minister Madhavsinh Solanki. What began as boycotts and marches by upper-caste students spiralled into months of rioting between February and August, killing well over a hundred people, before curdling into communal violence against Ahmedabad’s Muslim residents, who had played no role in the reservation dispute at all. The army patrolled the city; curfews ran for weeks; Solanki was forced to resign. The quota hike stood regardless.

1990 and 2006: Bigger stages, identical outcome

Then came 1990, the moment anti-reservation politics entered the national bloodstream in earnest. Prime minister V.P. Singh’s implementation of the Mandal Commission’s 27% OBC quota in central government jobs set off an agitation that spread across north India, marked by the self-immolation attempt of Delhi University student Rajeev Goswami – his image still invoked today by both sides of the debate. Dozens of copycat attempts reportedly followed, some fatal. The reservation survived regardless. The Supreme Court’s 1992 verdict in Indra Sawhney upheld it, adding only a creamy-layer exclusion and a 50% ceiling as concessions.

Sixteen years later, the argument resurfaced almost unchanged. When the government moved to extend 27% OBC reservation to the IITs, IIMs and AIIMS in 2006, a new organisation called Youth for Equality sprang up almost overnight, drawing medical students, engineers and general-category doctors into one of the most disruptive protest waves independent India had seen.

AIIMS doctors struck work, reducing hospitals to emergency services only; nearly a hundred thousand people rallied in Delhi; blockades shut down roads and rail lines across three metros for weeks. The protestors demanded a rollback, a white paper, merit-based alternatives to caste quotas. The Supreme Court instead upheld the quota in 2008, with additional seats added to protect general-category numbers rather than shrink them. Youth for Equality still exists today, now largely as a legal and political lobby rather than a street movement – itself a quiet admission that the agitation route did not work.

Numbers don’t lie

There is a structural reason none of these movements – 1978, 1981, 1985, 1989, 1990, 2006 — have ever succeeded: reservation is not a policy preference that a hashtag, or even a riot, can talk a government out of. It rests on constitutional protection, a court-enforced ceiling upheld across decades of litigation, and a cross-party political consensus that no electoral coalition has found worth breaking, whatever its private sympathies. Every time an anti-reservation campaign has gathered visible pace, a far larger counter-mobilisation has followed within days, not years, because reservation is tied to the political identity and material stake of hundreds of millions of Indians. One popular response to RHA’s overnight follower spike put the arithmetic plainly: for every lakh who want reservation gone, crores will show up to defend it.

Counter-mobilisation arrived within a day

The 2026 instalment has now supplied its own case study, and it has run true to form. RHA had sought permission for a demonstration at Jantar Mantar, and on August 21, Delhi Police instead issued a no-objection certificate for the alternative venue of Ramlila Maidan, capping the crowd at 500 people until 4 pm. Organisers cried foul, calling it a deliberate attempt to shrink their numbers. Hundreds of protesters – drawn, by their own account, from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Rajasthan among other states — showed up at Jantar Mantar anyway and refused to budge even after the Ramlila permission window lapsed. By evening the standoff had escalated: Rapid Action Force personnel were deployed, and over fifty protesters were detained, with traffic diverted around Sansad Marg, Tolstoy Road and Ashoka Road for hours.

The demands articulated at the site – laid out by Ajeet Bharti, who addressed the crowd – were a government white paper on nearly eight decades of quota policy, a “quota within quota” so benefits reach the most deprived within reserved communities, strengthening of Economically Weaker Section (EWS) reservation, and minimum qualifying marks for reserved-category candidates. Other protesters went further, demanding a “one family, one reservation” rule and withdrawal of the UGC’s 2026 caste-equity directives – closer, whatever the semantic hair-splitting, to the abolitionist reading the campaign’s own name invites.

The counter-mobilisation arrived within a day, exactly as the arithmetic above predicts. Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati and Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav both framed the Jantar Mantar mobilisation as an assault on constitutionally guaranteed SC/ST/OBC reservation. By August 24, Union Minister Chirag Paswan had delivered the government’s own rebuttal in unusually blunt terms, calling reservation a constitutional right no power on earth can abolish, and pointing to continuing caste-based humiliation – Dalit grooms still barred from wedding-procession horses, a Dalit leader’s stage still “purified” after his visit – as evidence the underlying problem hasn’t gone away. RHA, for its part, claimed on August 22, that the government had agreed to talks and that a minister would meet protesters personally – the same face-saving off-ramp virtually every one of its predecessor movements eventually took.

RHA also skips over what actually brought people onto the streets in the first place, and that omission is the tell. The CJP’s protests were about something specific and recent – a NEET examination scandal, a minister seen as unaccountable, an exam system that today’s students experience as rigged by coaching-centre capital and administrative failure, not by their classmates from reserved categories.

Turning that anger toward reservation isn’t a continuation of the youth movement. It is a hijacking of it, substituting a fifty-year-old argument that has never once won for the fresh, generation-specific grievance that actually filled the streets, and doing so under the borrowed authority of a thinker whose entire political project was to make that argument impossible to win.

Viral campaigns rise fast and vanish faster when the argument underneath them doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. RHA has the follower count of a trending hashtag, a bio quote it has fundamentally misread, a single Friday’s worth of detentions and traffic diversions passed off as a movement, and the record of every decade since the 1970s standing against it. History suggests it will have the shelf life of both – a brief surge of shares and outrage, followed by the quiet realisation that nothing about the underlying arithmetic, legal architecture, or political coalition around reservation has moved even slightly.

The post The ‘Reservation Hatao Andolan’ Isn’t a Gen Z Uprising. It’s a Rerun appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The Bharat Chodo Slogan was coined by none less than Yusuf Meherali, the historic venue for the launch of the Quit India Movement was the Gowalia Tank Maidan, thereafter named the August Kranti Maidan in Mumbai.
112 years ago, and 37 years before the Quit India Movement, the words and melody of the Rakhee Sangeet by Rabindranath Tagore filled the streets of Bengal and Hindus and Muslims poured out on the streets to say ‘No’ to the Partition of Bengal. The Partition was revoked and east and west Bengal were re-united on December 12, 1911 by the British. A new partition which divided the province on linguistic, rather than religious grounds followed, with the Hindi, Oriya and Assamese areas separated to form separate administrative units: Bihar and Orissa Province was created to the west, and Assam Province to the east. The administrative capital of British India was moved from Calcutta to New Delhi as well.

Rakhee Sangeet
During the swadeshi and anti-partition agitation people in both the Benglas took out processions in the streets of towns and villages and sang swadeshi and patiotric songs. An English version of one such song, originally composed in Bengali by Rabindranath Tagore, is reproduced below.

Let the earth and water of Bengal,
Let the air and fruits of Bengal, be sacred, be sacred, be sacred, my god.
Let the homes and marts of Bengal,
Let the forests and fields of Bengal, be full,  be full, be full, my god.
Let the promises and hopes of Bengalis,
Let the deeds and language of Bengalis, be true, be true, be true, my god.
Let the lives and hearts of Bengalis,
Let all the brothers and sisters in Bengali homes, be united, be united, be united, my god.

Excerpts from Gokhale’s Presidential Address
Bengal was at its peak of the united nationalist movement at the dawn of 19th century, which eventually emerged as a formidable threat to the British Raj. Divide and Rule has always been the policy of the rulers be it the British or those who rule from Delhi today.

To curb this nationalist movement, the Britishers decided to divide Bengal, a move vehemently opposed by various leaders of the time, including Rabindranath Tagore.

The decision was taken at a meeting between Lord Curzon and a Muslim delegation in Assam in June 1905, where the Muslims were convinced of the idea of a separate state to keep their identity. The plan was to divide the Hindu majority regions of West Bengal, Bihar and Odisha from Muslim-dominated areas of Assam and Sylhet. The British government passed the orders of partition in August 1905, which came into effect on October 16 of the same year. However, the date fell in the month of Shravan, when the festival of Raksha Bandhan was celebrated by the Hindu community.

Tagore masterfully used the concept of brotherhood, togetherness and ‘the thread of protection’ as a medium to protest against British’s partition policy by showing a picture of unity among the two communities.

Gopal krishna Gokhale’s Presidential Address at the Banares  Congress Convention (1905), where the made a detailed analysis of the question  of the partition of Bengal and the Swadeshi movement are worth a recall:
“Gentlemen, the question that is uppermost in the minds of all at this moment is the partition of Bengal. A cruel wrong has been inflicted on our Bengalee brethren, and the whole country has been stirred to its deepest depths in sorrow and resentment, as had never been the case before. The scheme of Partition concocted in the dark and carried out in the face of the fiercest opposition that any Government measure has encountered during the last half-a-century, will always stand as a complete illustration the worst features of the present system of bureaucratic rule-its utter contempt for public opinion, its arrogant pretensions to superior wisdom… Lord Curzon and his advisers… could never allege that they had no means of judging of the depth of public feeling in the matter. All that could possibly have been done by way of a respectful representation of the views of the people had been done. As soon as it was known that a partition of some sort was contemplated, meeting after meeting of protest was held…. The Secretary of State for India was implored to withhold his sanction to the proposed measure. The intervention of the British House of Commons was sought, first by a monster petition, signed by sixty thousand people, and later by means, of a debate on the subject raised in the House by our over-watchful mend, Mr. Herbert Roberts. All proved unavailing…. To add insult to injury, Lord C m n described the opposition to his measures as “manufactured”-an opposition in which all classes of Indians, high and low, uneducated and educated, Hindus and Mahomedans had joined, an opposition than which nothing more intense, nothing more wide-spread, nothing more spontaneous had been seen in this country in the whole course of our political agitation.. . .

The tremendous upheaval of popular feeling, which has taken place in Bengal in consequence of the partition, will constitute a landmark in the history of our national progress. For the first time since British rule began, all sections of the Indian community, without distinction of caste or creed, have been moved by a common impulse and without the stimulus of extend pressure to act together in offering resistance to a common wrong. A wave of true national consciousness has swept over the province…. Bengal’s heroic stand against the oppression of a harsh and uncontrolled bureaucracy has astonished and gratified all India, and her sufferings have not been endured in vain, when they have helped to draw closer all pasts of the country in sympathy and in aspiration….”

On July 19, 1905, British governor-general Curzon announced the partition of Bengal into two provinces-Eastern Bengal and Assam, and the rest of Bengal which included Bihar and parts of Orrisa.

The main political aim of the partition decision was a divide the Bengal population and to weaken the nationalist movement of which Bengal was the most important entre.

The British move was also to disrupt Hindu-Muslim unity by convincing upper class Muslims that the newly created province with its Muslim majority was in their interest. However, it only served to arouse and bring in all sections of the people in Bengal into an unprecedented mass movement which soon spread too many other parts of the country.

The anti-partition agitation assumed a militant from on August 7, 1905 when thousands of people at a meeting in Calcutta resolved to boycott British goods until the partition proposal was withdrawn.

The Partition of Bengal came into force on October 16, 1905 which day was observed as a day of national mourning throughout Bengal. It was during this movement that Swadeshi or use of Indian goods and boycott of British Goods became an integral part of the freedom struggle. At thousands of meeting people took the pledge of Swadeshi and boycott. Resolutions supporting Swadeshi and boycott were also passed at the Benares session of the Congress under the presidentship of Gokhle in December 1905, although the Moderates then and later tried to restrict their scope. The message of Swadeshi spread to the entire country and helped in promoting Indian Industries. A large number of educational institutions were also opened by nationalists and a National Council of Education was set up. The movement which had begun in Bengal over the question of partition was transformed into a wider movement for freedom of the country. The British rulers, in order to crush the rising tide of nationalism, unleashed naked repression.

Congress Resolutions on Partition, Swadeshi and Boycott Movement

At the annual session of the Congress held in 1906 in Calcutta, the resolutions passed at the preceding session (1905) against the Partition, were re-asserted and further resolutions were passed, supporting the Boycott and Swadeshi.

Some excerpts from the resolutions VI, VII and VIII read”

VI.       The Partition of Bengal-This Congress again records its emphatic protest against the Partition of Bengal and regrets that the present Government, while admitting that there were errors in the original plan and that it went wholly and decisively against the wishes of the majority of the people of Bengal, is disposed to look upon it as a settled fact….

This Congress, composed of representatives from all the Provinces of this country, desires earnestly to impress upon the British Parliament and the present Liberal Government that it will be not only just, but expedient to reverse or modify the partition in such a manner as to keep the entire Bengali speaking community under one undivided administration and thus restore contentment to so important a province as Bengal

VII.     Boycott Movement-Having regard to the fact that the people of this country have little or no voice in its administration, and that their representations to the Government do not receive due consideration, this Congress is of opinion that the Boycott Movement, inaugurated in Bengal by way of protest against the partition of that province was, and is legitimate.

VIII.    Swadeshi-This Congress accords its most cordial support to the Swadeshi Movement and calls upon the people .of the country to labour for its success by making earnest and sustained efforts to promote the growth of indigenous industries and to stimulate the production of indigenous articles by giving them preference, wherever practicable, over imported commodities, even at a sacrifice.

Widespread Protests at Meeting in Agra and Surat

Protest meetings against the Partition of Bengal were organised in all parts of the country on and after October 16, 1905.

From the Archives of the Amrita Basar Patrika.
AGRA CITY, Oct 22
At the Swadeshi Mass Meeting held in the Mankameshwar temple, over ten thousand people, both Hindus and Mahomedans, were present. Native Christians sent a sympathetic message explaining their absence that it was a Sunday. Lala Kedarnath Vakil was elected Chairman. The meeting commenced and terminated with singing national songs. A resolution was passed for the adoption of country-made goods….

Surat, Oct. 23…Public meeting of over 5000 people was held here-Parsis, Hindus, Mahomedans…. Israel and Native Christians attended. Lawyers, merchants, landlords, pensioners, artisans-in short, men of all classes and creeds assembled in the ball which was crowded to overflowing. Rai Bahadur Krishamukhram Mahata, retired Small Causes Court Judge, presided, supported by Divan Bahadur Ambalal Des     ai (Ahmedabad). Ali Mohamed Bhimji (Bombay) and Maulvi Abdul Halim Monghyr spoke in favour of the Swadeshi movement. Great enthusiasm prevailed. The proceedings lasted for three hours…. Handicrafts were exhibited A committee was formed to carry out the objects of the meetings.

Background of theBengal Partition and the Swadeshi Movement

What were Curzon’s  Aims  in Partitioning Bengal ?
The following  excepts from Curzon’s letter of February 2, 1905 to St. John Broderick, Secretary of state for India, give an idea of his aims in partitioning  Bengal.
“Calculation is the centre from which the congress party is manipulated throughout the whole of Bengal and indeed the whole of India. Its best wirepullers and its most frothy orators all reside here. The perfection of their machinery, and the tyranny which its enables them to exercise are truly remarkable. They dominate public opinion in Calcutta; they affect the high court; they frighten the local government and they are sometimes not without serious influence on the government of India.

The whole of their activity is directed to creating an agency so powerful that they may one day be able to force a weak government to give them what they desire. Any measure in consequence that would divide the Bengali-speaking population; that would permit independent centres of activity and influence to grow up; that would dethrone Calcutta from its place as the centre of successful intrigue, or that would weaken the influence of the lawyer class, who have the entire organization in their hands, is intensely and hotly resented by them. The outcry will be loud and very fierce, but as a native gentleman said to me-‘my countrymen always howl until a thing is settled; then they accept it’.

Partition Proclamation   
The text of the Partition of Bengal Proclamation issued from Simla on  September 1, 1905 is reproduced below:
The following Proclamation to which the sanction of His Majesty the King-Emperor of India has been signified by the secretary of state for India in council is published:
The governor general is pleased to constitute the territories at present under the administration of the chief commissioner of Assam to be for the purposes of the Indian councils Act 1861…a province to which the provisions of that Act touching the making of laws and regulations for the peace and good order of the presidencies of Fort St. George and Bombay shall be applicable and to direct that the said province shall be called and known as the province of Eastern Bengal and Assam…

2. The Governor General in council is pleased to specify the sixteenth day of October,1905 as the period at which the said provisions shall take effect and 15^th  as the number of councilors whom the Lieutenant Governor may nominate for his assistance in making laws and regulations.
3. The Governor General in council is further pleased and appoint that upon the constitution of the said province of Eastern Bengal and Assam, the districts of Decca, Mymensingh, Faridpur, Backergunge, Tippera, Noakhali, Chittagong, the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Rajshahi, Dinajpur, Jalpaiguri, Rangpur, Bogra, Pabna, and Malda which now form part of the Bengal Division of the Presidency of fort William Shall cases to be subject to or included within the limits of that Division, and shall thenceforth be subject to and included within the limits of the Lieutenant –Governorship of the province of Eastern Bengal and Assam.

Calcutta in Morning
The first part of a news item, which appeared in the Amrita Bazaar Patrika of October 17, 1905 entitled “Calcutta  in Morning-A Unique Sight”, describing the situation in Calcutta on October 16, 1905, the day Bengal was partitioned, is given below.
Yesterday was one of the most memorable days in the history of the British administration of India. It being the day on which the Bengal partition scheme took effect, the day on which our unsympathetic government forced a measure by a proclamation in the official gazette against the wishes of the whole population, the day on which our rules tried to separate the Bengali speaking people of the East Bengal from those of the West Bengal, the people of Calcutta, irrespective of nationality, social position, creed and sex, observed it as a day of mourning. The leaders of the Bengali community-Hindus and Mahomedans-did not however silently mourn and weep. They did something more. They as a legacy to posterity and as a landmark to British administration laid the foundation of the Federation Hall. They also took a practical step towards the furtherance of the Swadeshi movement by opening the National Fund.

The Scene on the Bank of the Hooghly
From the small hours in the morning till noon, the bank of the Ganges from Bag bazaar to Howrah presented a unique spectacle. It looked, as if it were, a surging sea of human faces. From all streets, lanes and bye-lanes, leading to the bank a quick succession of streams of people all bare-footed-found their way to the bank to have a plunge in the sacred river.

As the day advanced, the gathering thickened more and more and by 10, about a lakh of the male population of the metropolis-all in mourning-thronged the bank and the Ghats of tender sex.

They cry of “Bande Mataram” now and then, broke the silence of the still air and reverberated through it imparting a chastening influence on the minds of those who gathered together there…innumerable processions consisting of scores and hundreds of men, after arriving at the bank of the sacred river and wearing Rakhi (yellow thread) proceeded in procession singing ‘Bande Matram’ all the way.

Several thousands of such processions passed all over the city especially the northern quarter of it from 8 am. To 2 pm. They accosted on the way everyone they met with “Bande Mataram” in embracing each other and putting on “Rakhi”. It was a sight for the gods to see….

Roads and Streets
The scene in the roads and streets of whole Calcutta was quite novel and was perhaps never before witnessed in any Indian city….No purchasers were there and thus no sellers had to exhibit their articles…All the mills were closed and the mill hands paraded the city in procession…The only cry that was heard was of “Bande Mataram” . Bands of Mahomedans and Marwari’s joined the processionists and greatly enhanced the enthusiasm.

The post 112 Years Ago, Raksha Bandhan Stood for Hindu-Muslim Unity appeared first on SabrangIndia.

But to reduce the events to a story of “students versus police” would obscure the larger crisis. The agitation is rooted in a much deeper and longstanding grievance over recruitment delays, examination irregularities, alleged paper leaks, the changing format of competitive examinations and a lack of confidence in the State’s recruitment machinery.

The violence on August 25 is therefore not an isolated law-and-order episode. It is the latest flashpoint in a protest movement that has been building for weeks — and one that has also produced disturbing allegations of excessive and abusive use of State power.

A protest over jobs, examinations and a system students no longer trust

Students have been holding a sit-in at Patna’s Gardanibagh since August 18. More than a dozen student and youth organisations have joined the agitation, with demands extending across the Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC), Bihar Staff Selection Commission (BSSC), teacher recruitment and other government examinations.

At the centre of the immediate dispute is the fourth Teacher Recruitment Examination, or TRE-4. Students want the examination to be conducted in a single stage rather than the proposed preliminary-and-main format. They are also demanding the removal of negative marking, greater transparency in recruitment examinations and 100% domicile-based recruitment in government jobs and teacher appointments.

The scale of the recruitment opportunity is significant. The BPSC announced that TRE-4 would cover 32,388 teaching posts. According to The Indian Express, the proposed examination is expected to be held in December 2026 or January 2027, with applications scheduled from September 1 to September 30.  Students have also demanded cancellation of the 70th BPSC examination over alleged irregularities and a paper leak. The BPSC has rejected these allegations, saying that material circulated online was fake. It has also denied allegations of discrimination against Hindi-medium candidates..

Protester Vikas Bhatt, speaking to the media, pointed to the long delays in recruitment for posts such as librarians and the absence of regular examination calendars for several recruitment bodies. The New Indian Express reported his allegation that some recruitment processes announced through the BSSC had remained pending for years. The question confronting the Bihar government is consequently not merely whether students are willing to accept its assurances. It is whether the State has given them sufficient reason to trust those assurances.

The August 25 confrontation

On August 25, more than 1,500 students backed by 17 student organisations marched from the JP Roundabout near Gandhi Maidan under a call to “gherao” the Chief Minister’s residence, according to The Indian Express.  Police had erected barricades at Dak Bungalow Chowk to prevent the protesters from proceeding further. Students pushed through the barricades, leading to a confrontation with the police. The State responded with water cannons and a lathi-charge. Several students were detained. Two police personnel were also injured in the confrontation, according to The Telegraph, which reported that around 25 students were detained and later released without formal charges.

Other reports said students threw stones and that a police officer and a woman constable were injured. The violence cannot be ignored or excused: protesters who attack police personnel or damage public property must be held accountable through lawful procedures. But that does not settle the question of the State’s response.

A democratic government does not acquire unlimited authority merely because a protest becomes disorderly. The use of force must remain lawful, necessary and proportionate. The existence of barricades and a restricted area cannot by itself transform every protesting student into a threat requiring a coercive response.

The images from Patna — students facing lines of police personnel and water cannons — are particularly stark because the protesters were not demanding an overthrow of the constitutional order. They were demanding jobs, recruitment dates, examination reforms and accountability.

When the language of the State becomes dismissive

The confrontation was preceded by another controversy that exposed the widening distance between the administration and the protesters. BPSC Examination Controller Rajesh Kumar Singh, while responding to questions about the agitation, quoted the Hindi proverb: “Haathi chale bazaar, kutta bhaunke hazaar.” Protesters interpreted the remark as comparing them to barking dogs.

Singh subsequently expressed regret and said the statement had been taken out of context. But the Bihar government went further and suspended him following the controversy, according to The New Indian Express.  The suspension is significant. An official responsible for an examination system under intense public scrutiny cannot afford to speak about protesting candidates in language that can reasonably be understood as contemptuous or humiliating. Even if the proverb was not intended literally, the choice of language was extraordinarily insensitive given the circumstances. There is an important democratic principle here: the State must not dehumanise the citizen before it attempts to manage the protest. The students are not an inconvenience to be ignored until the barricades have to be erected. They are citizens raising grievances against institutions that exercise enormous power over their futures.

A much darker story lies behind the August protests

The allegations surrounding police conduct in Bihar go beyond what happened on August 25. A public hearing convened by the Bihar unit of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) on August 22 documented testimonies concerning police action during protests between July 21 and July 27.

According to the account published by Counterview, the hearing recorded 19 direct testimonies and allegations spanning physical assault, illegal detention, custodial torture, raids on homes, sexual violence against women protesters and other forms of intimidation. The allegations were made by protesters and activists and should be independently investigated rather than treated as established judicial findings.  The allegations are deeply disturbing. PUCL’s public hearing reportedly documented claims of targeted lathi-charges, police firing, the use of firearms, custodial abuse and violations during arrests and detention. Some testimonies also alleged that women were subjected to misogynistic abuse and physical assault.

There were also allegations concerning raids on homes. According to the report of the hearing, families claimed that police entered residences at night, assaulted residents, damaged property and subjected women to degrading treatment.

These are not allegations that a democratic government can simply dismiss as the inevitable excesses of policing. If even a fraction of these claims is true, the matter goes far beyond “crowd control”. It becomes a question of systemic abuse of police power. The PUCL hearing also raised allegations of discriminatory treatment of Muslims, Scheduled Caste persons, women and activists associated with CPI(ML), as well as allegations involving minors being detained without being produced before the appropriate authorities within legally prescribed timelines. These claims require independent verification and, if substantiated, prosecution and institutional accountability.

Even lawyers allegedly became targets

Perhaps the most alarming allegations concern those attempting to provide legal assistance to protesters. According to the PUCL public hearing account, two PUCL lawyer-members who were providing pro bono assistance to detained protesters were themselves allegedly confined and booked on charges that included liquor consumption and obstructing police duties. They were reportedly handcuffed and paraded in public.

If independently established, such conduct would strike at the heart of the right to legal representation and the functioning of the criminal justice system. Lawyers representing arrested protesters cannot be treated as extensions of the protest movement merely because they are providing legal assistance. A State that intimidates legal aid provider’s risk transforming access to justice itself into a casualty of protest policing.

PUCL has consequently demanded an independent investigation into police action between July 21 and July 27, including allegations of illegal detention, custodial torture, use of firearms and the alleged targeting of its lawyer-members. It has also sought withdrawal of 64 FIRs filed against protesting students and compensation for those injured in firing in Siwan. These demands should not be dismissed as political rhetoric. They warrant an impartial investigation capable of establishing what actually happened.

Detailed report may be read here.

The State cannot answer institutional failure with police power

The central contradiction in Bihar is difficult to miss. The students are protesting because they believe recruitment processes are unreliable. The government’s response has been to insist that their concerns have been addressed while simultaneously deploying a large police presence to prevent them from marching.

On August 25, the government announced the launch of Vidyarthi Sahyog Shivir, student support camps to be held on the fourth Tuesday of every month, along with an online grievance portal and helpline 1100. The stated purpose is to allow students to place their grievances directly before government officials.  Dialogue is welcome. But a grievance mechanism cannot become a substitute for substantive accountability.

Related:

Maharashtra: After backlash, govt. moves to withdraw FIRs against student protesters but questions remain

Youth Uprising: A protest, a brute crackdown, a continuing countrywide response

Mumbai stands with students, but the state pushes back

The exam crisis that became a battle for accountability

Brute Police Action: Mumbai’s crackdown on protestors in solidarity with CJP & Student Groups, AISF, SFI & AISA

The post Water Cannons Instead of Answers: Bihar’s recruitment crisis and the state’s crackdown on protest appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The investigation, released on August 26, draws on witness testimony as well as video and photographic material examined and verified by Amnesty International’s Evidence Lab. According to the organisation, its findings show the use of pellet-firing shotguns, tear gas launchers and grenades, batons, electric shock devices and firearms against protesters between July 20 and July 24 in Delhi and Siwan, Bihar. Amnesty says the manner in which these weapons were deployed breached international human rights standards as well as domestic policing guidelines.

The findings directly challenge the Delhi Police’s public account of the crackdown. Delhi Police had denied allegations of disproportionate force and described its handling of the protest as “professional”, including before the Supreme Court. Amnesty, however, says the evidence it verified contradicts that version of events.

For Amnesty International India Chair Aakar Patel, the episode represents something more serious than a conventional crowd-control operation. He described the authorities’ response as beginning with restrictions on communication, movement and assembly before escalating into what he called unnecessary or excessive force against peaceful protesters, including children. The organisation has characterised the response as “state-sanctioned violence masked as crowd control” and has pointed to the absence of accountability a month later as evidence of continuing impunity.

Evidence of pellet firing

One of the most serious findings concerns the use of shotguns capable of firing pellet ammunition. Amnesty’s Evidence Lab verified 17 videos filmed in central Delhi on July 20, covering areas around Jantar Mantar, Sansad Marg and Connaught Place, as well as two videos from Siwan in Bihar recorded on July 24. The Delhi footage was found to show personnel belonging to the Delhi Police, Rapid Action Force (RAF) and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF).

Two videos verified by Amnesty show an RAF officer firing a shotgun into a crowd at the Connaught Place–Sansad Marg intersection. Two other verified videos show protesters near the same location with injuries consistent with birdshot wounds. Amnesty also verified CCTV footage showing two RAF officers carrying shotguns elsewhere in the area.

The significance of the finding lies in the nature of the ammunition. Birdshot consists of multiple small metal pellets and is inherently inaccurate, Amnesty says, creating a serious risk not only to the intended target but also to bystanders. The organisation states that birdshot has been associated with deaths and blindness in other contexts and argues that it has no legitimate place in law enforcement.

A protester interviewed by Amnesty described being struck from behind while attempting to flee. According to the testimony, the individual sustained approximately 25 to 30 pellet wounds and required hospital treatment. The protester said doctors confirmed that the injuries were caused by pellets and that the incident had left extensive scarring.

The alleged absence of a warning is also significant. India’s Bureau for Police Research and Development guidelines recommend that security forces warn protesters before deploying less-lethal or lethal force. International standards similarly require law-enforcement agencies to exhaust non-violent means wherever possible and issue a clear warning before resorting to force when circumstances permit. Amnesty says the protester it interviewed reported receiving no warning before the pellet firing.

The allegations had previously been rejected by Delhi Police, which described reports of pellet injuries as “Fake News” and called them “completely false and misleading”. The police also warned that legal action could be taken against those allegedly spreading rumours.

However, the Amnesty investigation comes alongside other reporting cited in the organisation’s findings. The Hindu reported that an RAF unit fired two ballistic cartridges loaded with plastic pellets on the evening of July 20 on the orders of a Deputy Commissioner of Police. An internal CRPF inquiry reportedly found that RAF personnel had fired at least seven rounds containing metal pellets. An RTI response cited by The Hindu indicated that at least ten people were injured by pellets during the protests.

Tear gas used against protesters

Amnesty’s investigation also raises concerns about how tear gas was deployed. One verified video shows a tear gas grenade landing close to a group of protesters and exploding with a heavy blast. Amnesty says another verified sequence showed the grenade exploding immediately after landing near protesters, with one person attempting to escape before being thrown to the ground.

Eyewitnesses told Amnesty that tear gas grenades were fired directly towards protesters rather than being launched at an angle above their heads. The organisation says this is inconsistent with UN guidance on less-lethal weapons. More fundamentally, Amnesty argues that the use of tear gas should be restricted to situations involving widespread and serious violence. While acknowledging that there were isolated incidents of protesters throwing stones, it says the available evidence does not indicate violence on a scale that would meet that threshold.

This distinction is crucial. Crowd-control powers are not unlimited simply because a protest becomes difficult to manage. The question is whether the force used is necessary and proportionate to the threat actually posed. Amnesty’s findings suggest that, in several instances, the authorities crossed that line.

Lathis, including against peaceful protesters

The investigation further documents what Amnesty describes as frequent misuse of long, flexible batons, or lathis. The organisation verified eight videos showing Delhi Police and RAF personnel striking protesters, including a young boy who, according to Amnesty, offered no provocation or resistance. In some instances, officers allegedly struck people indiscriminately across different parts of their bodies. One verified video shows a man who had been knocked to the ground being repeatedly struck while he was unable to move or pose an apparent threat.

Amnesty notes that the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture has described such long flexible batons as inherently cruel, inhuman or degrading because they can deliver greater kinetic force than conventional batons, increasing the risk of serious injury. The investigation also identifies another accountability concern: the presence of plain-clothes men participating in beatings.

In at least two verified videos, men in plain clothes—including some wearing black helmets marked “Delhi Police”—are seen beating protesters with lathis. Uniformed officers appear to escort them towards the crowd but do not intervene, according to Amnesty. The organisation also points to the apparent absence of visible identification such as name tags or badge numbers, which it says violates the principle that law-enforcement officials must be identifiable during encounters involving the use of force.

Electric shock weapons under scrutiny

Amnesty also verified a video showing an RAF officer using an electric shock baton against a peaceful protester. The organisation argues that direct-contact electric shock devices cause severe pain without necessarily incapacitating a person and that there are less harmful alternatives available to law enforcement. Amnesty, together with the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, has called for their complete prohibition because of the risks of severe suffering, psychological harm, lasting disability and, in cases of prolonged use, death.

The finding therefore adds another layer to the concerns raised by the report: the issue is not simply the quantity of force used, but the choice of weapons and methods deployed against people participating in an assembly.

An assault rifle in Siwan

Perhaps the most alarming footage examined by Amnesty comes not from Delhi but from Siwan, Bihar. Two videos filmed on July 24 and verified by Amnesty show a state police officer firing an AK-type assault rifle towards protesters. Amnesty notes that such firearms are designed to kill and, under international standards governing assemblies, may only be used where there is an imminent threat of death or serious injury to a specific individual and only as an absolute last resort. The organisation says it found no evidence that such a threat existed in the incident examined.

The report says authorities have made no public commitment to investigate or prosecute officers involved in the alleged use of firearms, birdshot, tear gas, lathis and electric shock weapons. Amnesty is calling for a prompt, impartial and effective investigation, with the findings made public. It has specifically demanded an immediate end to the deployment of birdshot ammunition and direct-contact electric shock devices.

The crackdown began before the first baton was raised

The Amnesty investigation also places the use of force within the wider restrictions imposed on the “Chalo Sansad” march. Authorities denied permission for the march, imposed an internet shutdown around the proposed protest areas, prohibited gatherings of more than five people, closed several Delhi Metro stations and erected barricades across central Delhi.

Amnesty argues that these measures themselves raise serious freedom-of-assembly concerns. Under international human rights law, peaceful assemblies are not supposed to depend on prior permission. Where notification requirements exist, their purpose should be to allow authorities to facilitate an assembly rather than provide a mechanism for restricting it. The organisation further argues that the prohibitory orders effectively amounted to a blanket ban on the march and failed the requirements of legality, necessity and proportionality. It reaches a similar conclusion regarding the blanket internet shutdown imposed around the protest.

This is an important aspect of Amnesty’s findings. The report does not examine the July 20 violence simply as an isolated confrontation between protesters and police. It places the physical use of force within a broader sequence of restrictions—communication blackouts, movement restrictions, barricading, transport disruption and prohibitory orders—that had already narrowed the space for protest.

More than 400 injured

The scale of the confrontation was substantial. According to Delhi Police, more than 400 people, including police personnel and protesters, were injured. Amnesty also notes that at least three people were injured in Siwan, including a bystander who was shot and sustained a bullet wound to the neck. The report’s findings therefore raise questions extending beyond individual incidents captured on camera. If hundreds were injured during the police response, and if independently verified footage shows the deployment of weapons in circumstances Amnesty considers unlawful, the central question becomes one of institutional accountability: who authorised the force, who carried it out, who monitored it, and who is responsible for investigating it? A month after the events, Amnesty says there has been no public commitment from the authorities to investigate or prosecute officers involved.

Amnesty places the July events against the longer history of pellet-gun use by Indian authorities. The organisation has previously documented extensive injuries, including blindness and deaths, linked to the use of birdshot-loaded shotguns for crowd control in Jammu and Kashmir. A committee established by the Ministry of Home Affairs in 2016 to consider alternatives recommended restricting the use of such weapons to the “rarest of rare cases”, although it did not recommend a complete prohibition.

In 2018, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights called on India to end the use of pellet-firing shotguns for crowd control in Jammu and Kashmir. A petition seeking to decommission the use of pellet-firing shotguns by law-enforcement agencies for policing assemblies was also filed before the Supreme Court in July 2026. The Delhi allegations therefore revive a longstanding question about whether weapons that have caused severe and sometimes permanent injuries in crowd-control situations should be used at all.

From “crowd control” to accountability

The central thrust of Amnesty International’s investigation is ultimately about the limits of state power. The State unquestionably has a responsibility to protect people, maintain public order and respond to violence. But policing a protest does not give authorities an unrestricted licence to use force. International standards require force to be lawful, necessary and proportionate, with lethal force reserved for exceptional circumstances involving an imminent threat to life or serious injury.

Amnesty’s evidence raises questions on each of those fronts. Its investigation alleges pellet firing into crowds, tear gas deployed directly at protesters, repeated baton strikes against people who were not resisting, the use of an electric shock device against a peaceful protester and the firing of an assault rifle in Siwan. It also documents restrictions on communication and assembly before and during the protest.

The significance of the report lies not merely in its catalogue of weapons. It is the combination of restriction, force and apparent absence of accountability that makes the findings particularly troubling. The Delhi Police has maintained that its handling of the protest was professional. Amnesty’s investigation reaches a sharply different conclusion, backed by 19 videos it says its Evidence Lab verified across Delhi and Siwan, alongside witness testimony and photographic evidence.

The complete report may be viewed here.

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Bihar: Not just Delhi, Patna, Siwan too saw brute police violence against demonstrating students: PUCL

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‘Wherever You Go, We are watching’: Second threat letter to Kashmiri Pandits

The post Amnesty Investigation finds unlawful and deadly force against CJP-led protesters in Delhi and Siwan appeared first on SabrangIndia.

To date, the issue of police brutality that has received national attention is the barbarity displayed in the capital of Delhi on July 20. Reports on this aspect of overt police misconduct may be read here, here and here. However, the conduct of the state police in another BJP-ruled state like Bihar has received scant attention.

Following newspaper reports of this brutality in Patna and Siwan, the PUCL’s Bihar Unit constituted a fact-finding team to investigate the cases of police firing and bullet injuries sustained by students, custodial torture of students resulting in severe hearing loss sustained by a student, and intimidation acts of the police. The team visited Siwan on the August 15 and 16 and met all the injured victims of either police firing or custodial torture. It also came across cases of intimidation by police, house raids, and damage to property and beating, profiling of victims on the lines of caste and religion, and attempts to destroy evidence. This report is also being prepared. Similarly, PUCL acted on a complaint regarding police brutality unleashed on the students of a welfare hostel in Sitamarhi, where a day before the July 22 protests, the police entered the hostel and brutally beat students. This incident is currently under investigation.

Thereafter, on August 22, at the IMA Hall, Gandhi Maidan. Patna, a public hearing was conducted to record testimonies and first person accounts of the statewide police brutality between July 21-25 in several locations of the state. The report was released today. This was a part of the human rights platform’s decision post July 25 to comprehensively document cases of police brutality, violating the human rights of Indian citizens guaranteed by the law, PUCL decided to hold a public hearing so that the voices of the victims could be captured and incorporated in its report.

As mentioned above, the public hearing was organised on 22 August 2026 at the Indian Medical Association (IMA) Hall, South-East Gandhi Maidan, Patna. Over one hundred people participated, comprising mostly students, PUCL members, and civil society activists. Most students belonged to organisations such as AISA, AISF, Disha Chhatra Sangathan, and NSUI. One student activist, and a victim of police violence as well, belonged to Chhatra RJD. A panel, comprising Basant Chaudhary (senior advocate, Patna High Court), Sudha Varghese (Padma Shri awardee, social worker), Arshad Ajman (social activist), and Pranav Chaudhary (former Assistant Editor of the Times of India, Patna edition), presided over the proceedings. A total of 19 victims of police brutality presented their testimonies. Of these 19 victims of police violence, a recorded video testimony of Bullet Kumar Gond, an ST youth from Siwan district, was presented as his bullet injuries and subsequent intramedullary nailing did not permit travel.

Based on the testimonies during the public hearing, also supported by the fact-findings in Siwan and Patna, the following types of cases of police brutality, seriously infringing upon human rights of the protesters, were recorded:

1. Brutal lathi charge deliberately targeting students to injure them. In some cases, beating of students happened outside the sites of protests or at the timings of the bandh call.
2. Hitting girl protesters on their private parts.
3. Firing directly on students, without any warning or immediate provocations, resulting in several cases of bullet injuries. In some instances, those injured by bullets were further beaten up.
4. Using a firearm as lethal as the AK-47 on students, though this firearm is not supposed to be used on protesting citizens.
5. Custodial torture of students by the police, resulting in injuries, loss of hearing, etc.
6. Illegal detention of students without presenting them before a magistrate within 24 hours.
7. Detained students’ families not informed of their whereabouts, thus denying the students the support of their families and lawyers.
8. Students sent to judicial custody without informing them of the charges against them or providing them with a copy of the FIR.
9. Students sent to judicial custody without access to a lawyer to defend them before the magistrate.
10. Destruction of evidence by police, such as seizing students’ and passerby citizens’ mobile phones to destroy video recordings related to the use of force by them.
11. Raiding students’ and activists’ homes in the dead of night without any search warrant. Beating of residents, damaging household items, abusing women, including older women, and infringing the right to privacy by checking mobile and personal belongings.
12. Making misogynist remarks against girls during home raids and in custody. For example, family members being warned that the girl will not find a groom if she participates in protests along with boys.
13. Obstructing an officer of the court (advocate on record of the Patna High Court) in discharging his duty to represent his client, filing FIRs against two lawyers in unsubstantiated charges of liquor consumption and another charge of obstructing the police officer in discharging their duty, parading them handcuffed in public, and leaking their arrest memo photos to the media.
14. Custodialisation and beating of citizens who were passersby at that moment. One such passerby was hit by a bullet fired by police in Siwan.
15. Even minors kept in police custody, not presented before the Child Welfare Committee and the JJ Board.
16. Calling students terrorists. Threatening protesters during their custody of imposing UAPA and making them suffer like Umar Khalid.
17. Profiling of arrested protesters on religious and caste lines, and differential treatment with them based on these lines. In particular, Muslims, SCs, women, and CPI (ML) activists were harshly treated.

The panellists were unanimous in their opinion that the testimonies made the entire state culpable and, rather than calling it merely police brutality, it should be called state brutality or state repression. It is only when the government decides to crush a movement that the police unleash their brutality ruthlessly.

Hence, the PUCL seeks accountability of the state for human rights violations.

Demands of the PUCL, Bihar

Towards the end of the public hearing, PUCL Bihar Unit presented a charter of demands and also announced its future action plan. The key demands are as follows:

• An independent and impartial investigation into the police actions starting from 21 July to July 27, 2026, including but not limited to the use of firearms in Siwan and Jehanabad, brutal lathi charge against protesters throughtout the state, illegal detention, custodial torture, violations of legal provisions while remanding the detained protestors to judicial custody, harassment of activists even after the protests were over, and mistreatment of two lawyer members of PUCL and imposition of false cases against them. The inquiry should also include brutal police action inside the welfare hostel in Sitamarhi on the evening of July 21.
• Fixing accountability for police brutality and stern punitive action against police officials at various levels who violated the rights of protesters and other victims.
• Fast-tracking the process to withdraw all 64 FIRs against protesting students. Identification and withdrawal of cases filed even after 6 pm on 26 July if they are related to the protests and Bihar bandh, and also related to the protests filed by private individuals against the protesters.
• Adequate compensation for all persons injured in the Siwan firing, commensurate with the nature and seriousness of their injuries.
• Protection of the constitutional right to peaceful protest, so that students, activists and ordinary citizens are not subjected to violence merely for raising their voices.
• Review of the police manual and police training and suitable changes therein so that police are sensitive about civil rights and regulating the protesting crowd, and do not resort to brutal methods.

Background: It was on July 25, several PUCL members raised their worries after watching and reading the news about Bihar police’s brutal action against protesting students in Patna and other parts of the state. Hundreds of student protesters and others were detained in several police stations, and some were even sent to judicial custody. There was also news of injuries sustained by several protesters due to lathi charge, police firing, and tear gas shelling. Police picked some students and youth activists from their homes. Some non-participating youth who just happened to pass by the site of protests were picked up by the police and detained or sent to jail. We also received news of the beating of some students in police custody.

It is in these circumstances that the PUCL Bihar Unit decided to play an active role in providing immediate legal support to detained or jailed protesters and other youth and, for this purpose, collaborated with the Jan Nyay Abhiyan in Patna and other districts. A group of lawyers worked day and night to identify detained or jailed protesters, file their bail petitions, meet those in police custody to assess their physical condition and needs, and accompany them when police presented them before a judicial magistrate. While performing this important role of a human rights defender and also as officers of the court, two of the PUCL lawyer members were kept in illegal confinement and implicated in false cases. Currently, they are on bail.

Action Plan

All testimonies and remarks by the panellists, as well as fact-finding reports, will form an important part of a detailed report on state repression unleashed on protesting students. PUCL sees this report as a useful tool for seeking justice for the victims. The report will be submitted to relevant government offices, commissions, legislative committees, courts, police and judicial training institutions, academic institutions, and other civil rights organisations. The full report will be printed and disseminated, and its summary will be sent for publication to newspapers, news portals, magazines and journals.

On the legal front, PUCL plans to hold a meeting with prominent lawyers to explore the possibility of filing a writ in the High Court and/or other actions, as per their advice. Together with Jan Nyay Abhiyan, PUCL will also monitor the withdrawal of 64 FIRs related to student protests, as per the government’s announcement. Moreover, there are still cases filed by private individuals or the police but not listed in the 64 FIRs.

An invitation was received during the public hearing to conduct a similar public hearing in Jehanabad on the use of firearms and other brutal methods employed by the police against protesters. The PUCL has stated that it will pursue the invitation and also explore the possibility of organising public hearings in Siwan and Sitamarhi.

Related:

Maharashtra: After backlash, govt. moves to withdraw FIRs against student protesters but questions remain

Youth Uprising: A protest, a brute crackdown, a continuing countrywide response

Mumbai stands with students, but the state pushes back

The exam crisis that became a battle for accountability

Brute Police Action: Mumbai’s crackdown on protestors in solidarity with CJP & Student Groups, AISF, SFI & AISA

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Teachers working as Booth Level Officers (BLOs) have been engaged in the exercise for more than a month. They were earlier expected to return to schools on August 8, but their deployment has now been extended until August 17. The draft electoral rolls are scheduled to be published on August 24.

The extended schedule means teachers appointed as BLOs, as well as those assisting them, will continue with house visits, voter verification, form-related work and other activities connected with the revision.

Unit tests and classroom teaching affected

Schools are preparing for unit tests scheduled for August while also working with new textbooks introduced for Standards III, IV and VI under the National Education Policy. Teachers and school heads said the continued absence of staff has made it difficult for schools to maintain regular teaching and complete the syllabus.

The periodic assessment test, which is mandatory for students and is intended to assess their learning and academic progress, is normally conducted in August. Educationists have said that continued teacher deployment could push the assessment towards the end of September or October.

The extension has also affected unit tests planned for the second week of August. In several government and civic schools, teachers have either been fully relieved from school duties or are spending a substantial part of their working hours on SIR-related work.

In some schools, more than 70% of the teaching staff has reportedly been deployed for SIR duties, leaving fewer teachers to handle regular classes and examinations. Several schools have also been functioning for only half a day because of the shortage of teaching staff.

Teacher Madhav Suryawanshi said the continued deployment was affecting classroom work. He said, “BLO and SIR duties are complicated and continuous processes that require teachers to stay away from classrooms for several weeks”, as reported by the Times of India.

He also pointed out that the new textbooks introduced this year for Standards III, IV and VI under the NEP required additional classroom attention. According to him, schools were already facing difficulties in completing the syllabus and preparing for the first unit tests.

Schools managing with reduced staff

The impact is not limited to teachers formally appointed as BLOs. School heads said other teaching and non-teaching employees have also been assigned to assist in the SIR exercise.

According to the Times of India, Headmaster Tanaji Mane said his school had 17 teachers, one clerk and four Class IV employees. Initially, three teachers had been appointed as BLOs, but from July, the teaching and non-teaching staff were also assigned as assistants for the SIR exercise and directed to be relieved from their regular school duties.

According to Mane, the school had to function with reduced staff before all employees were eventually relieved. He was later also assigned election duty.

He said schools were simultaneously receiving circulars relating to literacy surveys, out-of-school children, student records and departmental competitions, making it difficult to run the school with normal staffing.

Education Department accounts for large share of BLO appointments

Tanaji Kamble, president of the Progressive Teachers Association, cited figures from the Ghatkopar East Assembly constituency to highlight the extent of teacher deployment. According to Kamble, 283 employees were appointed for BLO duties in the constituency. Of these, 184, or around 65%, were from the Education Department, including 157 teachers. Kamble said the figures from one constituency reflected the wider situation in Mumbai. He also said the government had stated that around 40% of teachers had been assigned SIR duties, while the situation on the ground was different, as per a report in the Hindustan Times.

The deployment has also led to pressure on teachers who do not report for election-related work. Police stations have issued notices to some teachers who failed to report for duty.

The issue has led to concerns among teachers, headmasters and school managements. Some school administrators have also approached the court over the matter, although no hearing has taken place so far.

Teachers say prolonged duty is affecting learning

Faruk Kazi, another teacher involved in the SIR exercise, said teachers had already been under pressure because of the prolonged nature of the work. As reported by the Times of India, Kazi said, “We have been under immense pressure for the past month. The form-filling process was completed only recently, but now verification and subsequent stages will continue.”

He said the revised schedule could extend the work into October and added that the Education Department had not done enough to address the concerns arising from prolonged non-academic duties. Jalinder Sarode, working president of Shikshak Sena (Maharashtra), also said the extension was coming at a time when examinations were already being conducted, as reported

As reported, Sarode said, “Examinations are going on and the frequent absence of teachers is disturbing the teaching process.”

He suggested that the government consider using trained personnel from other departments or outsourcing election-related work instead of continuing to deploy teachers from schools.

Concern over prolonged absence from classrooms

Suhas Gurav, an educator, said the issue was not limited to the additional workload being placed on teachers. He said attention also needed to be given to the effect of prolonged BLO and SIR duties on classroom teaching. As reported, Gurav said, “The real question is whether parents and society recognise that prolonged BLO and SIR responsibilities prevent teachers from devoting sufficient time to their primary responsibility of teaching.”

The SIR extension means teachers and other school employees assigned to the exercise will continue their election-related responsibilities until August 17, while the draft electoral rolls are scheduled to be published on August 24. Schools will accordingly continue to manage regular teaching and academic activities alongside the extended election-related deployment.

Related:

The Deadly Deadline: “I Can’t Do This Anymore”—India’s electoral revision turns into a graveyard for BLOs/teachers

SIR exercise leaves trail of suicide across states as BLOs buckle under pressure and citizens panic over citizenship

Haunted by NRC fears, 57-year-old West Bengal man dies by suicide; Mamata blames BJP for turning democracy into a “theatre of fear”

Pregnant woman deported despite parents on 2002 SIR rolls, another homemaker commits suicide

The post Maharashtra SIR extension keeps teachers away from classrooms as unit tests face delays appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The reasons are not far to seek.

Over a decade ago, in 2015-2016, barely a year or two into the first term of this regime that has since been viewed nationally and internationally as autocratic and proto-fascist, it was the Ambedkar-Periyar circles in both Hyderabad Central University and Chennai that were the first targets of power and ideological assault. Ministers from the union government weighed in, first to withhold meritoriously earned scholarships/fellowships of Dalit (read Ambedkarite) and left oriented students like Rohith Vemula and others, thereafter to humiliate them by limiting access to libraries and even hostel accommodation. Muslim student scholars like Umar Khalid and Najeeb Ahmed were particular targets. Najeeb “disappeared” from his JNU room on October 15, 2016, after an alleged scuffle involving the RSS-linked Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) the day before. He had been injured in that encounter and doctors, according to a witness, had refused timely treatment. Shockingly, the case assiduously pursued by his mother was “closed” by the Rouse Avenue court in 2025.  Two films, Ammi (2019) and Where is Najeeb? (2022) have preserved a contemporary tragedy this regime would rather have us forget.

Rohith Vemula, talented and bright, part of a vibrant student community that was in the cross hairs of the administration for daring to screen Muzaffarnagar Baqi Hai at HCU was driven to suicide, an act the movement has called “institutional murder” on Sunday January 17, 2026. That very night JNU students protested Rohith’s death and the ripples of the movement surged across India. Mumbai that only sometimes steps out collectively against repression saw tens of thousands students and activists march in Mumbai from Byculla to CSMT (CST) to demand justice for Rohith.

Brute power and authority coupled with the supine behaviour of Vice-Chancellors like Appa Rao Podille (HCU) and M Jagadesh Kumar (JNU) actively enabled violent police entry and involvement in both campuses, behaviour that physically brutalised students and also criminalised dissent. [1] Cases were filed, Umar Khalid and Kanhaiya Kumar were jailed for a month and students (35 from the FTII) had to spend precious years battling the vindictiveness the powerful. Payal Kapadia’s A Night of Knowing Nothing (2021) is a film that, in a multi-layered narrative depicts what young Indians have been put through.

2016 then is as significant as 2026 may yet prove to be.

Why then is our public memory so short and our response only episodic? Institutional culpability or even amnesia by our constitutional bodies including courts and a wilful subservience by legacy and traditional commercial media has enabled the irresponsible vilification of student leaders and protesters.

Clearly, the specific targets were young, autonomous students, free in thought and behaviour. Organisations and individuals from Left and Dalit lineages and communities were specific, targets the case(s) made against them more vindictive and pernicious.

Umar was labelled “anti-national” (“desh drohi”) by irresponsible (and unaccountable) “media houses”. Rohith’s unquestionable “merit” was questioned and his caste status “doubted”, his mother hounded as she struggled for justice for her son. Fatima Nafees, Najeeb’s mother proud that her son made it to a central university, regrets that he opted for staying in its hostel! This level of violence and institutional discrimination faced by Dalit and Muslim students has not stemmed before 2016 or since. The deaths of Arman Iqbal Khatri (April 2023) and Darshan Solanki (February 2023) in Mumbai’s Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and Payal Tadvi (May 2019) studying to become a doctor at BYL Nair Hospital were all victims of targeted violence. Corrective constitutional institutions like courts have been tardy in offering remedies

Today in 2026, while the “westernised youth” or “desh drohi” (anti-national) are labels still sought to be applied to Gen Z as well, for erudite and clear left-leaning scholars like Umar and Rohith it was relentlessly pinned.

The sustained protests in HCU and JNU —among two dozen other institutions of higher learning –a decade ago were the first effective challenges to a regime determined to control behaviour, thought and ideas. In the months and years that followed this protest spawned multiple campuses across India: Film & Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune, Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Varanasi Mumbai University, Kashmir, Assam, Puducherry, all saw spirited and sustained protests. Patna University-Bihar, Jadavpur University-West Bengal, National Law School-Bangalore and the Allahabad Central University-Uttar Pradesh saw similar struggles against repression. Nine months after Rohith Vemula’s “institutional murder” on Sunday, January 17, 2026, eight law students from the Babasaheb Ambedkar University Lucknow protested after two of them were target of vindictive administrative action: two of them toppers, who ranked first and second in the PHD entrance examination had been suspended and thereafter expelled without due process because they protested the caste-ist behaviour of both the government and their professors who they claimed were being protected by the administration and the Ministry for Human Resources Development (MHRD).In an article on SabrangIndia, Prathama Banerjee (in 2016) reported that in Gwalior, a meeting organized by the Ambedkar Manch involving an Ambedkarite professor Vivek Kumar from JNU was attacked by ABVP members, who went on to not only fire guns at the gathering but even burn the Indian Constitution, perhaps to avenge Ambedkar’s burning of the Manusmriti half a century ago!

From the ideological slant on syllabi, to the rights of women to dress as they please and eat non-vegetarian (!), to dubious appointments like Gajendra Chauhan as director (FTII), students and youth mobilised first and immediately against the threat to their very existence and autonomy. By end 2016, the Modi 1.0 regime’s assault on public education and taken the form of simply cancelling (read withdrawing) a staggering 20,000 scholarships to central universities; this was soon followed by withdrawal of all minority scholarships instituted by the previous UPA II government.

So while today’s 2026 Gen Z protests come as another breath of fresh air to a battle weary people, our students and youth, backed by some in the academia have been at the forefront of this democratic challenge for a decade.

What if?

What if the political opposition, despite its poor numerical strength had backed and amplified these voices and demands in Parliament? Since and repeatedly since 2016?

Would India have already witnessed a pushback from the seat of power?

In any truly democratic society, it is the university that is the storehouse of young and budding intellectual opinion and often the bedrock of voices of sharp, critical dissent. Since 2014, India has been going through a determined effort towards homogenisation and imposed majoritarianism—whether through the blind acceptance of commercialization or privatization of education, or the imposition of a culturally-homogenous worldview where the Indian state and nation is equated with “one language, one culture,” in effect denying a plurality of existence and citizenship. These trends are not just dangerous but pose a challenge to the very foundation of India as a constitutional republic. Centres of higher learning within India that have become the battleground for the preservation of Indian democracy and all it stands for.

Before 2014, over the decades of the 1960s and 1970s, through a slow and often painful process within these central universities that came into being through key enactments—the University of Hyderabad Act of 1974, the Jawaharlal Nehru Act of 1966 and the North-Eastern Hill University Act of 1973—baby steps toward affirmative action within teachers’ unions and associations first ensured real diversity among students: students from rural, marginalised and discriminated-against backgrounds made it into institutions of higher learning. That is how, our Umars, Najeebs, Rohiths are household names even in bold challenge or sacrifice. Before that it was the moneyed with access that enjoyed entry within.

Under this regime in its third term however, the dual assault of aggressive neoliberal policies that have ensured a cut in scholarships in institutions of learning, accompanied by an ideological assault of a proto-fascist authoritarian character, have rendered campuses in India the focal points of a resurgent democratic movement. Student leaders and associations that do not fall in line with the majoritarian vision face criminal cases, the worst being the law of Sedition (Section 124-A)..[2] Only a few days ago, a former student of previously prestigious Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) was denied bail for attending an event in support of academic, now deceased, G.N, Saibaba.

As the monsoon session of Parliament reaches its conclusion, and the union home minister, responsible in the chain of command for the use of pellet guns and nail-tacked lathis on students who protested at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar on July 20, refuses to answer charges of accountability or incompetence, there is every chance that the regime may not back off either surveillance or vindictive action.

The Gen Z generation that is rightly euphoric of its success in shaking up the union government, may yet have to give tests of its resilience to persistent punishment by process. If solidarity shown by older Indians and large sections of independent media, not present a decade ago, holds, victory may still be ours. We need to be prepared though.

In this moment of reckoning, this is my humble tribute. To the inspiring decades plus relentless pushback by India’s young.

[1] Vice-Chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in 2016 was M. Jagadesh Kumar, who assumed office on January 28, 2016, a month before the assaults and arrests of tudents. He succeeded Sudhir Kumar Sopory and later served until February 2022; Appa Rao Podile former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hyderabad was awarded the Millennium Plaques of Honour for his achievements in Life Sciences by the Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi in 2017!

[2] Teesta Setalvad’s KG Kannabiran Memorial Lecture delivered at Madurai. December 11, 2016

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His life story is full of contradictions. He emerged from Delhi’s politically charged theatre culture and was associated with the Left, but later developed an intense hostility towards leftists. He has himself described his decision to play a part in the politically controversial Jahangir National University as being driven by resentment rather than conviction and subsequently apologised for it.[1]

There is a similar contradiction in the way he talks about relationships, women and responsibility. Mishra has publicly admitted to cheating on his wife and has spoken about being emotionally absent and irresponsible during the early years of his marriage. He has also spoken about making obscene calls to women while drunk and acknowledged behaviour that he himself considered deeply inappropriate.

The point isn’t that a person’s private mistakes automatically invalidate their political opinions. They don’t. People can change, grow and genuinely repent.

The problem begins when someone turns their own personal journey into a source of moral authority over society, while refusing to interrogate the power structures, prejudices and contradictions embedded in their worldview.

And yet, somewhere along the way, Piyush Mishra has become something of a sweetheart of the young, progressive podcast circuit. He is presented as the rebellious, uncompromising, revolutionary intellectual, the older, irreverent voice who supposedly says what others are afraid to say. In the process, his history of misogynistic behaviour and his increasingly right-leaning political positions often seem to disappear from the conversation. The rebel is celebrated; the contradictions are merely a side note. There is also something deeply uncomfortable about the cultural archetype he represents: the brilliant, troubled, self-confessional male artist whose excesses are romanticised as evidence of his genius, while women are expected to absorb the consequences of those excesses with patience, forgiveness and understanding.

Mishra’s artistic talent is real. His self-awareness about some of his failures may also be real. But self-confession isn’t the same thing as political introspection.

And then comes Jharkhand.

This contradiction becomes particularly visible when Piyush Mishra enters the Jharkhand student protest.

A student movement is, at its core, about young people demanding accountability, dignity, opportunity and a future that isn’t determined by the whims of those in power. It is about challenging structures, not surrendering to personalities.

So his presence in the Jharkhand protest raises an uncomfortable question: what exactly does he represent there? If the movement claims inter-sectionality, shouldn’t that lens apply to the men it celebrates too?

If the protest is about challenging patriarchy, hierarchy, privilege and the normalisation of power without accountability, then elevating a celebrity whose own public narrative is marked by admitted infidelity, misogynistic behaviour and ideological contradictions sits uneasily with the politics of the movement.

The issue isn’t whether Piyush Mishra is allowed to speak. Of course he is. The issue is what his presence symbolises.

There is an additional question worth asking here. Mishra did publicly support the Jantar Mantar student protest, condemning the violence and saying that the government should have opened a dialogue with the students earlier. But he was not physically present at Jantar Mantar, where the violence against students was severe enough to move an empathetic heart to action. In Jharkhand, by contrast, he travelled to Ranchi, joined the students in person and sang Aarambh Hai Prachand at the protest site. He has said that watching interviews with the students and seeing their pain moved him to join them.

So the question is I’d keep it as an open-ended question rather than implying an answer:

So the question is: what made his solidarity more visible in Jharkhand? Does the difference in the governments being confronted have anything to do with it?

And perhaps the sharper question is for the progressive men, at least those who celebrate his presence at the protest: can a movement that seeks to challenge hierarchy and privilege afford to simultaneously romanticise the very contradictions it claims to resist? And why are those same contradictions disqualifying when they belong to people they oppose, but fascinating, forgivable or even revolutionary when they belong to a man they admire?

Perhaps the real test of progressive politics is whether we are willing to apply the same scrutiny to ourselves and the people we admire as we do to those we oppose.

(The author, is a branding and design strategist with over 25 years of experience across leading advertising agencies. She has worked with the Congress Party for the past six years)

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the author’s personal views, and do not necessarily represent the views of Sabrangindia.

[1] Piyush Mishra played the character of “Guru Ji” and sang the promotional track “Main Nahi Manta” for the controversial political drama film Jahangir National University (JNU), which was released on June 21, 2024. Following the film’s release, Mishra publicly offered an unconditional apology for taking on the role, admitting that signing the project without reading the complete script stemmed from his past opposition to communist ideologies

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In this fifth and final installment of the series, the spotlight falls on the man Gandhi considered his own “fifth son”—Jamnalal Bajaj. Their relationship defied every conventional understanding of the bond between wealth and political leadership. Jamnalal was not content to remain a generous donor or a sympathetic admirer. He sought something far more demanding: to remake his life in accordance with Gandhi’s ideals, placing his body, his fortune, and his family at the service of a national and ethical mission.

For Gandhi, this was not a relationship founded on patronage but on transformation. Jamnalal did not merely finance constructive work or support political campaigns; he embraced the discipline of the ashram, the hardships of imprisonment, the burdens of public service, and the uncompromising ethic of trusteeship. In doing so, he dissolved the boundaries between industrialist and satyagrahi, between privilege and sacrifice, until his wealth became inseparable from his moral responsibility.

As this exclusive series reaches its conclusion, the story of Mahatma Gandhi and Jamnalal Bajaj offers its most profound insight into the Gandhian experiment. It reminds us that enduring social change is sustained not simply by ideas or institutions, but by individuals willing to transform themselves before seeking to transform the world.

Read on to discover the story of why Jamnalal Bajaj became not just Gandhi’s closest associate, but the Mahatma’s beloved “fifth son.”

When history recalls the industrial titans who fuelled the engines of twentieth-century political movements, it almost always paints them in the cold, strategic shades of pragmatism. We see men who stood safely in the shadows of power, writing massive cheques to secure their investments, purchasing political insurance while keeping their immaculate suits far away from the dust, the sweat, and the swinging batons of the police lines. History treats them as financiers, not fighters. But history breaks its own rules when it encounters Jamnalal Bajaj.

In the roaring current of the Indian freedom struggle, Jamnalal was neither a distant banker nor a cautious ally operating on the comfortable periphery of revolution. He was a man who allowed himself to be utterly dismantled and rebuilt by the moral genius of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

Where other wealthy patrons gave their surplus wealth, Jamnalal gave his very flesh. He traded the soft luxury of a merchant prince for the rough, abrasive embrace of coarse khadi, the backbreaking chores of the ashram latrine, and the cold concrete of colonial prison cells.

When Gandhi looked across the vast landscape of his followers in 1942, his eyes softened as he wrote a profound truth in the pages of Harijan:

“There was no work of mine in which I did not receive his fullest co-operation in body, mind and wealth.”

This is the untold epic of the merchant who did not merely fund the Mahatma, but chose to become his son, collapsing the historic distance between capital and conscience to prove that a man can conquer his wealth before his wealth conquers him.

Conscience Finds Home

To understand the moral architecture of the man who would become Gandhi’s right hand, one must travel back to the late nineteenth century, to a modest Marwari household in the dusty village of Kashi-ka-bas in Rajasthan. Born on November 4, 1889, into humble circumstances, the young Jamnalal’s destiny took a dramatic, fairy-tale turn at the tender age of five. He was chosen and adopted into the colossal, glittering merchant empire of Seth Bachhraj in Wardha.

Overnight, the peasant boy was dropped into a world of unimaginable opulence. He was surrounded by ledger books that recorded fortunes, vaults overflowing with silver coins, and a family that equated human value with material display. Yet, the opulence never quite stuck to his skin. The boy possessed a strange, innate spiritual allergy to luxury.

The defining rupture of his youth arrived over a handful of heavy gold jewellery. His adoptive grandfather, eager to showcase the family’s immense wealth at a glittering social gathering, harshly reprimanded the young Jamnalal for refusing to deck himself out in expensive ornaments. To the grandfather, a naked neck was an insult to the family firm.

The boy’s response stunned the household. Rather than bow to the tyranny of pride, Jamnalal quietly stripped away what comforts he had and walked out of the mansion into the dark night, leaving behind a letter that burned with detachment. As historian B. R. Nanda notes, this was no petulant teenage tantrum. It was an early, visceral manifestation of a spirit that viewed material possessions not as a crown, but as a cage.

When Jamnalal eventually met Gandhi decades later, it was not a conversion from scratch. It was a spectacular moment of recognition. Gandhi did not invent Jamnalal’s conscience. He simply gave it a home.

Quest For A Master

By the time the First World War was fracturing the globe, Jamnalal Bajaj was a mature, fabulously wealthy merchant, yet his soul remained deeply restless. Like many sensitive spirits of his generation, he was profoundly disillusioned by the moral vacuum of colonial modernity. He travelled across India, seeking out the great religious figures and socio-political stars of the era, sitting at the feet of Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya and wandering among local sadhus, but he returned from each encounter empty-handed. They offered dogmas, rituals, and philosophical abstractions. Jamnalal hungered for an ethical life that could be lived out in the marketplace.

Then, in 1915, a quiet lawyer returned from the battlefields of South Africa, carrying nothing but a walking stick, a spinning wheel, and an unshakeable faith in the power of Truth.

When Jamnalal met Gandhi, the effect was instantaneous. Here was a man who did not just preach the scriptures. He lived them out in the dirt. Gandhi’s radical synthesis of absolute inner discipline and explosive, non-violent political action was the exact key Jamnalal had spent a lifetime searching for.

But Jamnalal did not want to be just another wealthy patron writing cheques from a safe distance. In a move that shattered all conventional social boundaries, he approached Gandhi with an astonishing, deeply emotional request: he asked to be formally adopted as the Mahatma’s “fifth son.”

For Gandhi, who already had four biological sons with whom he shared a famously turbulent, demanding relationship, this was a moment of immense symbolic gravity. He looked into the eyes of the Marwari tycoon, saw the absolute, terrifying sincerity written there and accepted.

From that moment on, their letters shifted from the formal language of political allies to the intensely intimate, demanding, and loving dialogue of a father and a son. Jamnalal had successfully abdicated his throne of gold to inherit a kingdom of sacrifice.

Body As A Political Weapon

The world soon realised that Jamnalal’s adoption was no mere sentimental performance. In 1921, as the Non-Cooperation Movement began to convulse the country, Jamnalal walked into the public square and formally returned his title of Rai Bahadur, a highly coveted mark of distinction bestowed upon him by the British Crown. To the colonial state, this was an act of shocking class treason. A premier merchant prince was openly declaring that the King Emperor had no clothes. But the real shockwave hit when Jamnalal stepped away from his corporate boards to throw his actual physical body into the fires of mass agitation.

During the historic Nagpur Flag Satyagraha of 1923, when the British administration banned the hoisting of the Indian national flag, it was Jamnalal who took command of the peaceful volunteers. He marched directly into the forbidden zones, courting arrest with a calm smile.

When the heavy iron gates of the colonial prison slammed shut behind him, a vital boundary in Indian political history was permanently breached. Other industrialists gave money to keep the Congress alive. Jamnalal gave his liberty.

He was arrested again during the salt raids of 1930, and repeatedly thrown back into prison throughout the turbulent decade. Inside those damp, disease-ridden cells, Jamnalal steadfastly refused any special privileges, soft mattresses, or dietary exemptions that his immense wealth could easily have bought him. He ate the same coarse prison gruel, slept on the same stone floors, and endured the same humiliating searches as the poorest, most forgotten freedom fighter beside him. His wealth was completely decoupled from privilege. It had been entirely re-engineered into an instrument of voluntary suffering.

Rigours of Ashram Life

The true test of Jamnalal’s transformation, however, took place far away from the public drama of political rallies, within the quiet, uncompromising confines of Gandhi’s ashrams. The ashram was Gandhi’s moral laboratory, a place designed to systematically strip away every trace of ego, caste vanity, and class prejudice from its inhabitants.

The equaliser in this laboratory was manual sanitation work, the daily, mandatory task of cleaning the community’s dry latrines.

For a man born into the strict, orthodoxy-bound Marwari community, where notions of ritual purity were deeply entrenched and enforced by an army of domestic servants, this was a mountain of cultural resistance. Yet, biographical records by B. R. Nanda and contemporary witnesses confirm that Jamnalal did not flinch. He picked up the broom and the shovel.

The hand that signed multi-million rupee business contracts was the very same hand that regularly scoured the ashram toilets. This was the pure essence of Gandhian pedagogy at work: an ethical transformation that was not debated in abstract seminars but hammered out through the repetitive, daily rhythm of physical labour. Jamnalal did not merely read about equality. He scraped it out of the dirt.

Constructing Sevagram

In the mid-1930s, Jamnalal engineered an intervention that would permanently alter the geographic centre of the Indian freedom struggle. Desiring to anchor Gandhi’s vision deeply within the suffering heart of rural India, Jamnalal gifted the Mahatma a vast tract of land in an isolated, malaria-ridden village called Segaon, nestled near Wardha in the Central Provinces. This forgotten hamlet, entirely cut off from modern infrastructure, would be christened Sevagram, the Village of Service.

The radical austerity of this project is preserved in a remarkable, sharp letter written by Gandhi to Jamnalal on March 19, 1936. As he prepared to move into the wilderness, Gandhi gave his “fifth son” a strict, unyielding architectural mandate.

Gandhi demanded that the construction of his personal living space must not cost a single rupee over Rs.100, utilising only local mud, bamboo, and thatch. Jamnalal supervised the project meticulously, ensuring that not a single anna of industrial luxury crept into the sanctuary of rural poverty.

As the great leaders of the nation, Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel, Maulana Azad, and Rajendra Prasad, descended upon this remote village to consult the Mahatma, the logistical challenges became comical. The roads were non-existent, frequently turning into deep pools of thick mud during the monsoons.

To solve this, Jamnalal designed a brilliant, hilarious piece of folk engineering that became affectionately known as the “Oxford.” He took the chassis and body of an old, broken-down Ford motorcar, stripped away its engine, and hitched its front axle to a pair of strong, slow-moving village oxen.

Inside this bizarre hybrid vehicle, a perfect, rolling metaphor for the convergence of modern industrial design and ancient rural reality, the elegant, European-educated Nehru and the iron-willed Patel were bumped and rattled across the muddy terrain to see the Mahatma. As Madeleine Slade (Mirabehn) beautifully noted in her memoir The Spirit’s Pilgrimage, though Gandhi had officially retired from the Congress, “the Congress had not left him.” It was Jamnalal’s quiet logistical genius that transformed an isolated rural outpost into the de facto capital of the Indian nation.

Laxmi Narayan Radicalism

At the very heart of the Gandhian economic alternative lay the highly controversial concept of Trusteeship. Gandhi did not believe in the violent, bloody extermination of the wealthy class through class warfare. Instead, he made a radical moral appeal to their conscience. He argued that a rich man did not own his wealth. He merely held it in trust for the collective benefit of the starving millions.

While the intellectual elite of the era dismissed Trusteeship as a naïve, utopian fantasy designed to protect the rich, Gandhi had a devastating, living answer to his critics. He would simply point his finger at Jamnalal Bajaj. Gandhi openly remarked that whenever he sat down to write his theoretical framework on Trusteeship, he had Jamnalal “principally in mind.”

Mahatma Gandhi once remarked about Jamnalal Bajaj, “I can say with confidence that Jamnalalji did not earn a single pie through unethical means, and whatever he earned, he spent it all for the good of the people.” This observation captures the essence of Gandhi’s philosophy of Trusteeship, the belief that wealth is not a matter of absolute private ownership to be donated at one’s discretion, but a social trust held for the welfare of all. It went beyond charity or philanthropy, placing an ethical obligation upon individuals to use their resources in the service of society. Jamnalal did not merely endorse this principle; he lived it, dedicating his wealth, influence, and personal life to building a society founded on non-violence, social justice, and freedom from exploitation.

Jamnalal was deeply influenced by Gandhi and embraced his austere way of life. Jankidevi willingly walked beside her husband on this path of sacrifice. What followed was a remarkable series of personal transformations.

It began with the renunciation of gold ornaments. Gandhi’s general appeal was followed by a letter from Jamnalal to Jankidevi, who was then just twenty-four. They believed that gold was a symbol of Kali and that it bred jealousy, attachment, and the fear of loss. Jankidevi willingly gave up all her ornaments and never wore gold again for the rest of her life.

Next came purdah. At Jamnalal’s urging, Jankidevi abandoned this symbol of aristocratic respectability and encouraged other women to do the same as an act of courage and self-respect. In 1919, this single decision became a powerful statement of women’s freedom and dignity, inspiring thousands whose lives had long been confined within their homes.

Jamnalal soon extended this philosophy far beyond his personal life. He institutionalised Trusteeship on a remarkable scale, channelling his vast fortune into Gandhi’s constructive programme, funding the Gandhi Seva Sangh, serving as the tireless Treasurer of the All India Spinners’ Association, and strengthening the All India Village Industries Association.

Yet perhaps his greatest act of Trusteeship was not financial but social. On 17 July 1928, five years before Gandhi formally launched his nationwide anti-untouchability campaign, Jamnalal and Jankidevi opened the doors of their Lakshmi Narayan Temple in Wardha to everyone, irrespective of caste. For the first time in India, Dalits (then referred to as Harijans) were welcomed into a Hindu temple under the initiative of its own patrons.

In the late 1920s, this was an act of explosive social radicalism. Jamnalal was attacked by religious traditionalists, boycotted by wealthy merchants, and threatened with social excommunication. Yet he stood firm at the temple gates, insisting that if God could not welcome the poorest and most oppressed, then such a god was nothing more than stone. In doing so, he risked his business, social standing, and personal safety to ensure that his private property served the cause of human justice.

Death In The Family

The intense, burning pace of Jamnalal’s life, divided between the damp dampness of prison cells, the gruelling travels of rural mobilisation, and the immense stress of managing both a commercial empire and a national movement, eventually took its toll. On February 11, 1942, at the age of fifty-two, Jamnalal’s exhausted body finally gave way. He suffered a sudden, catastrophic cerebral hemorrhage and passed into the ages.

The news of his death struck Gandhi like a physical blow. The Mahatma, who had trained himself for decades to receive news of death with absolute, detached stoicism, was completely broken.

Mahadev Desai, writing in a raw, grief-stricken letter to C. Rajagopalachari, recorded the profound emotional devastation that filled the ashram:

“Bapu is in great need of consolation… his sorrow is as deep and profound as it was on Maganlal Gandhi’s death.”

The nation had lost its treasurer, but Gandhi had lost his son. Days after the funeral, Gandhi gathered the grieving family around him, his presence bridging the gap between public leader and family patriarch. He looked at Jamnalal’s two young sons, Kamalnayan and Ramkrishna, and distributed their inheritance not in terms of stocks and bank accounts, but in terms of moral duties. He advised the elder son, Kamalnayan, to take the reins of the family’s vast commercial enterprises, running them with strict ethical transparency. Then, turning to the younger son, Ramkrishna, he asked him to surrender his life entirely to finishing the incomplete rural service of his father.

Even in death, the Mahatma’s moral authority continued to shape the Bajaj lineage, ensuring that the legacy of the fifth son would not dissolve back into mere corporate capital.

A Historic Partnership

The epic partnership between Mahatma Gandhi and Jamnalal Bajaj challenges the cynical, simplistic assumptions that dominate our modern view of politics and money. It dismantles the rigid, old idea that leaders must always be ideological purists and that capitalists must always be exploiters.

Jamnalal’s life stands as an immortal proof that the human conscience is fully capable of staging a spectacular revolution against its own economic privileges. He redefined the very meaning of success, showing the world that true wealth is measured not by how much a man accumulates, but by how much of himself he can successfully give away.

In our current twenty-first-century landscape, an era driven by hyper-capitalism, corporate social responsibility that so often feels like corporate public relations, and a deep, toxic division between classes, the story of the Mahatma and his fifth son remains a brilliant, challenging blueprint.

Mahadev Desai’s magnificent funeral tribute in Harijan preserves the final ledger of this extraordinary life for eternity. He wrote that Jamnalal was not merely the treasurer of the nation’s wealth, but the “treasurer of the nation’s honour.”

Jamnalal Bajaj left behind a luminous, timeless lesson for the elite of every generation. The highest use of capital is its total surrender to conscience, and that the greatest title a billionaire can ever earn is to be called a servant of the poor.

To read more articles from this series, click here.

Courtesy: The AIDEM

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