Delhi Protests Shift Focus: From Change to Judicial Relief

The recent agitations in Delhi, particularly those associated with the Cockroach Janata Party and student organisations such as the All India Students’ Association (AISA), is pointing towards an emerging incongruity. The principal objective of the agitation now seems to be the dodging detention or securing judicial relief. The Delhi High Court’s recent dismissal of AISA chief Neha Bora’s plea against a peace-bond notice issued in connection with a protest against the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) brings this evolving relationship between street politics and judicial intervention into focus. The courtroomsare now becoming an alternative arena of political contest, with legal proceedings competing with the original cause for public attention. This approach marks a departure from the dominant grammar of political agitation in the decades preceding the present times. For much of the freedom struggle, and even during the Emergency, the political choice for agitators was to either evade arrest by going underground or openly defy the law and court arrest. The inspiration for this tradition came from Mahatma Gandhi, for whom civil disobedience was much more than a political tactic. By surrendering personal liberty, the protester sought to expose the moral limitations of a law or government perceived to be unjust.