As Gen Z Makes Its Presence Felt, the Modi Government is Rattled; Cabinet Reshuffle, the Dog that Did Not Bark; Drone Footage of Massive Crowds Triggers Police Investigation
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Snapshot of the day
July 20, 2026
Siddharth Varadarajan
Today will not be easily forgotten. Even as the government listed a Bill in parliament to criminalise “disrespect” to Vande Mantram, citizens on the streets of Delhi - and across India - paid the highest respect to the national anthem by living its spirit in the face of police violence.
As The Wire notes in its analysis of the seven reasons why the student protest has rattled the Modi government,
“What began as online outrage over exam leaks has rapidly evolved into an offline generational revolt against a system that treats young Indians as disposable. By forcing the question of accountability all the way up to Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself, these students have turned Delhi’s streets into the one arena where power can no longer avert its gaze or hide behind procedure.”
More importantly, there has been a collective shattering of the enforced culture of fear, by a cohort that the BJP is unable to dismiss in communal, casteist or other identity based terms.
As tens of thousands peacefully sought to march towards Parliament, located just over a kilometre from the protest site at Jantar Mantar, the Delhi police which operates under the direct authority of the Union home ministry, lobbed tear gas shells and used batons to disperse the protestors who have been demanding the government take responsibility for the mess it has created in various national exams and sack education minister Dharmendra Pradhan.
Overwhelmingly young, and from a wide range of cities and towns across India, the protestors gathered peacefully in the streets around Jantar Mantar as they sought to make their way towards parliament. The police was jamming cell phone signals so there was virtually no mobile internet connectivity near parliament and Connaught Place from around 10 am till late afternoon. Many metro stations were also shut to prevent people from travelling to Jantar Mantar.
There were the usual calls for Pradhan’s resignation, slogans of Inquilab Zindabad, Jai Bhim and Vande Mataram but many directly targeted Modi and his government for a wide array of failures. As groups of protestors managed to get closer to parliament, the police attacked them with lathis and tear gas. By the evening, the police forcibly sought to dismantle the stage that the Cockroach Janata Party had erected at Jantar Mantar. There were also reports of lathis being used against protesors at RK Ashram metro station.
A delegation of the CJP met Union health minister and former BJP president JP Nadda at his bungalow today reiterating the movement’s demands that Pradhan either step down or be fired; that Wangchuk be released from Safdarjung Hospital; and that the police quit using force on protesters in the capital. CJP spokesperson Saurav Das said that Nadda promised to “discuss this at the appropriate level”. For his part the minister claimed this was ‘the first time the protesters proposed to hold talks with the government’ – in fact, the CJP had said last month itself that it is open to dialogue with the government – and said he requested agitators to end their sit-in.
Earlier in the day, the three hunger strikers from the All India Students Asociation gave up their fast after surviving without food for three weeks. Whisked away from his hunger strike site at Jantar Mantar on Saturday in scenes resembling an abduction and taken to Safdarjung Hospital eight kilometres away, Wangchuk has said he will continue fasting in light of the way the police treated protesters today. The inventor-activist said he will
