How would you describe the protest against SIR and Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar on Saturday?
Did it “fail”, as several television news channels reported? Was it a “hit ya flop”? as India TV asked. Or did the “Capital Crackdown” by security forces rob it of any meaning? (Hindustan Times)
For the last 72 hours, the protest, called by the Cockroach Janta Party, has been the leading story across newspapers, TV, digital news, and social media platforms such as X and Facebook.
On Sunday, The Sunday Times of India devoted eight pages to it. Other newspapers such as Hindustan Times, The Indian Express in English, and Hindustan, Punjab Kesari in Hindi gave it 3-5 pages. The entire weekend was dominated by the protest, security preparations for it, and the developments that followed.
It was the lead story across newspapers on the weekend.
Does that make it a flop or a success? If you judge it by the politics of spectacle, it was unprecedented in recent history.
Overnight, “Delhi lockdown”, “Delhi crackdown”, “Delhi clampdown”, “Delhi sealed”, “Delhi jammed”, “Fortified Delhi” entered public and personal conversations.
On Friday, 9 October, TV news, newspapers and online news websites had hammered home how Delhi had been “shut down”: 45,000 security personnel, 45 metro stations closed, trains stopped, internet suspended. “Trains cut, Internet down: Delhi turns a fortress ahead of protest,” wrote The Hindu in its lead headline, on 10 October.
We watched hundreds get “detained” by the “heavy hand of the police” (NDTV) on TV news and video grabs on social media, as thousands of uniformed women and men stomped down the streets of the capital. It made people realise that this was something unique: The full might of the state had just paralysed Delhi.
“Capital punishment,” Times Now called it.
And yet, and yet: Newspapers like The Indian Express and Amar Ujala claimed that up to 7,000 people had been detained by the end of Saturday. When the police were positioned “in every nook and corner of central Delhi’’ (Times Now Navbharat), how did they avoid the security net?
‘Loud and clear’
On Saturday morning, all eyes were on Jantar Mantar in Delhi, the proposed site of the SIR protest. For the next few hours on TV news, all we saw was police, police, and more police.
“There are so many police personnel, the protesters can’t get through,’’ said an Aaj Tak reporter.
Those who did manage to “get through” were quickly whisked away into waiting buses.
“The message is loud and clear: They won’t be able to hold a protest,” said the India Today reporter.
NDTV concluded that the “clampdown of the police and administration seems to be working’’.
News reporters managed to speak to some protesters: On NDTV, a Class-12 school student said he was at the protest to protect his vote that was being taken away from him. Gyanesh Kumar must go, he said.
Another said that “accountability was necessary’’.
Some protesters didn’t know why they were there: They claimed they wanted Kumar to resign. When the India TV reporter asked, “Who is Gyanesh Kumar?” the man shrugged.
By early afternoon, it was “heating up” (CNN-News18). Flash protests were seen in different parts — Mandi House for one.
However, going by TV, the only “high drama’’ was the detention of the CJP leaders at Delhi airport.
‘Normalcy’
Abhijeet Dipke, Saurav Das, and Ashutosh Rank were detained inside the plane they were travelling in from Mumbai. They immediately shot a video of the police lined up to detain them.
Dipke’s invitation to “arrest me if you want…’’, his words to fellow passengers, his conversation with the policewomen who had come forward to escort him off the aircraft, played out on TV news and news portals almost immediately.
Every detail of their detention and subsequent departure for different detention centres was reported.
In the afternoon, politicians stole the limelight, especially former chief ministers Mamata Banerjee and Arvind Kejriwal. Banerjee was seen seated with a poster claiming “loot” of the West Bengal Assembly seats; Kejriwal was being dragged away by the police.
The rest of the time, TV reporters spread out across Lutyens’ Delhi looking for protesters and their confrontations with the police. They told viewers that there were some pockets of resistance, especially by Left student organisations, but by and large the police had it under control.
“From Akshardham to Chandni Chowk, normalcy reigns,” declared Times Now Navbharat.
Also read: When the Rahul and Priyanka Show took over Indian TV news
Same protest, different stories
Not quite. Television news didn’t tell us the entire story.
If you looked at newspaper websites or Youtube news channels, they showed a somewhat different picture.
There were lawyers arguing with the police — several had been detained on DeshBandhu Youtube channel and one can read about it in The Hindu.
We didn’t see that on TV news.
We saw AISA’s Neha Bora and others at Dilli Haat where another protest was in progress, from Hindustan Times.
The Indian Express told us of how minutely the security had been planned at an 4 October meeting.
We saw that Connaught Place did have a protest of its own where Right-wing supporters reportedly abused SIR protesters while the police stood by. Read it in The Hindu.
When TV news reporters went to Connaught Place, everything was peaceful. The place was deserted.
Newspapers highlighted the detention of several journalists from Navbharat Times, Scroll, and Newslaundry, something TV news mostly ignored.
And if you read The Sunday Express lead report, “Lockdown Crackdown”, you get a very good idea of how protesters were really treated.
Above all, the news photographs gave us the best sense of what happened in central Delhi on Saturday.
We saw the battalions of police waiting to stop protesters; we saw them drag away protesters; we saw protesters run away; we saw the police chase them.
A footnote: India Today was the only news channel to telecast the CJP Sunday press conference, where Ajinkya Shinde, Ratna Singh, Saurav Das lashed out at the Modi government — and the circumstances of mass detentions on Saturday.
All the others ignored it. Why? It was newsworthy.
If it wasn’t, why did all the main news channels — barring Republic TV and Republic Bharat which are fighting their own personal battle against anyone opposed to SIR and Gyanesh Kumar — spend the last three days reporting on the protest led by CJP?
The author tweets @shailajabajpai. Views are personal.
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)