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Snapshot of the day
August 27, 2026
Anirudh S.K. & Kalrav Joshi
The Modi government’s choice of protesters it considers worth engaging with – let alone hearing – is becoming increasingly instructive, even if hardly surprising. For over a month, tens of thousands of students protested peacefully across the country, demanding accountability over examination irregularities, the unemployment crisis and education reforms. The government did not formally engage with them until July 20 – the day peaceful protesters were met with a brutal Delhi police crackdown, including the use of pellet guns and tear gas grenades – when senior BJP leader and Union minister J.P. Nadda finally was forced to meet the representatives of the Cockroach Janta Party (after keeping them waiting outside his office for two hours).
Yet it took considerably less for Nadda to decide to meet representatives of the Reservation Hatao Andolan, which was born last month and held a protest at Jantar Mantar last week seeking an end to caste-based reservations. Earlier today, Nadda met Harsh Dubey, Mrityunjay Pathak and Ran Bahadur Singh Chauhan as per a pre-determined schedule, with another meeting expected soon. Details of what transpired were not disclosed, though Dubey described it as an important step towards “dialogue”. Notably Nadda did not mention the Andolan by name or what they are agitating for.
The BJP’s far-right flank, however, is clearly not pleased. Hate peddler and frequent abuser Ajeet Bharti accused the party of treating Dubey as its “planted” leader and staging a “pretence of negotiation”, claiming that the memorandum submitted contained “worthless demands” and did not even use the word “reservation”. Other leaders with the Andolan have also called Dubey a ‘plant’ for the BJP.
The contrast comes at a particularly significant moment. India’s much-delayed census is supposed to conduct the first enumeration of caste since 1931, but its design is already raising troubling questions. Of course there is the fact that the exercise’s population phase will simply record what people say their caste is, risking a repeat of the 2011 SECC episode. And the questionnaire has again raised the shadow of the National Population Register in addition to throwing up privacy concerns. Speaking to Sravasti Dasgupta, ex-deputy registrar general K.N. Unni said: “For instance, Aadhaar and mobile numbers can be sought for identification, but what purpose these other details are serving is not clear if not for [the] NPR.”
And for those who say that caste discrimination is just a relic rather than a living reality, the news keeps providing the answer.
If anyone thought the controversy over the “purification” of the venue where Congress president and Rajya Sabha leader of opposition Mallikarjun Kharge – a Dalit – addressed a rally in Haldwani had embarrassed the BJP, its
