In Protests for Removal of CEC Gyanesh Kumar and Against Mass Disenfranchisement, An Echo of 1894 Mahatma Gandhi’s Struggle for Voting Rights of Indians

ON the occasion of the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi on 2nd October this year  several opposition parties including Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) have launched massive protests across the country  demanding resignation of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar who  according to the Indian Express  expose flagrantly  violated the constitutional provisions and rules leading to the  appalling erosion of independence of the Election Commission of India for implementing SIR without involving two other Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi.  It has resulted in the  disenfranchisement of crores of voters across India and the expose revealed the shocking decision of Kumar to  include illegally and in an unauthorised manner a provision in Form 6 asking the first time voters, using that Form for getting enrolled in the electoral roll, to mention from the electoral roll of 2002 the names of their  parents and or grand parents.  Additionally the Indian Express revelations laid bare the manipulation of electoral rolls to add and delete voters centrally at the office of Election Commission of India by employing a software which lawfully should have been operated by Electoral Registration Officers posted in different States of the Indian Union. 

Such egregious transgressions of CEC Kumar with impunity has erased  millions of names from the voters list and  overwhelmed people with  anxiety and desperation.  They apprehend that because of their disenfranchisement they would lose their citizenship and all other rights enshrined in the Constitution assuring  them their individual dignity. 

Specious Grounds For Disenfranchisement 

It is salutary to note that  the aforementioned protests unleashed against Kumar in defence of the right to vote of the citizens has an echo of Mahatma Gandhi’s 1894 heroic struggle in South Africa’s Natal province for retaining the voting rights of Indians after the Franchise Law Amendment Bill was introduced in the Natal Assembly to take away their restricted franchise  rights on very specious grounds. 

On December 16, 1895 Mahatma Gandhi in his article “Indian Franchise” wrote that  British authorities asked Indians to prove that they were voters in India so as to be entitled to it in Natal. He then  asked, “Why such a rule for the poor Indians alone?” He added that they would not object to such an arrangement if it were applicable to all including whites who were inhabitants of Natal . He noted that the Europeans would “…find it difficult to get their names on the Voters’ List in the Colony under such conditions.” 

Colonial Playbook For Disenfranchisement and SIR  

That colonial play book of 1894 asking Indians in Natal Province of South Africa to prove that they were voters in India is getting replicated in 2026 SIR mandating that those desirous of getting enrolled in the electoral roll should locate their names in the voter list of 2002. 

Any attempt to ask  Europeans  to prove their status as voters in the countries from where they came to Natal, in the words of Gandhi,  “would be received with the strongest indignation”.

His  utterances are resonating in 2026 when people in India are expressing their indignation because the ECI while implementing SIR asked them  to prove their citizenship and eligibility as a voter disregarding their enrolment in earlier electoral rolls and Supreme Court in its May 2026 judgement upheld  that ECI can examine citizenship of a voter in a limited way.   

It is instructive  to note that the right to vote in Natal in 1894 was restricted to a few and it was available to those possessing immovable property worth 50 pounds.  Yet Gandhi in his July 1894 petition to Lord Rippon, Principal Secretary of State for Colonies,  stated that any civilised country would value  franchise right as the  birth right and  the commonest right of a citizen and asserted that disenfranchisement of Indians  would subject them to indignity and heap insult to the whole Indian nation. 

Fast forward to 2026 when  13 crores of voters are now facing disenfranchisement due to SIR.  Combine it with  Indian Express expose pinning the Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar for  his deliberate acts of commission and omission in flouting all rules and norms while taking crucial decisions concerning SIR. All such actions removing millions of voters from the electoral roll   constitute an insult to the Indian nation and its Constitution which upholds the dignity of an enfranchised country upholding parliamentary democracy. 

In the aforementioned  petition to Lord Rippon, Gandhi wrote that bereft  of  voting rights Indians  would lose, “…self-respect, to remain in the Colony and that such a thing would materially interfere with their business, and throw hundreds of Her Majesty’s Indian subjects out of work”. Those articulations of Gandhi uttered in echo  in Rahul Gandhi’s assertions during his Vote Adhikar rally in Bihar in September 2025 that “Vote Theft meant theft of rights, theft of employment, theft of education, theft of democracy and theft of the future of the youth”. 

In fact many people whose names were removed from the electoral rolls in West Bengal and Bihar following the implementation of SIR are now being deprived of their opportunities to earn their livelihood, their small business establishments getting demolished  and even the ration cards issued to them have been withdrawn. 

What Indians are facing on account of their disenfranchisement in 2026 were predicted by Mahatma Gandhi when voting rights of settlers of India  in Natal were taken away by colonial rulers. He, in his article, “The  Indian Franchise” written on  December 16, 1895 very emphatically stated, “I repeat again, it is not political power that the Indians want. It is degradation, it is many other consequences and measures that will flow from and will be based on the disfranchisement that they dread and resist.”

Hundred and thirty one years later Indians suffering the process of disenfranchisement on account of SIR are indeed confronting its dreadful consequences and, therefore, on October 2, 2026, on Gandhi Jayanti, country wide protests have been launched to uphold the jurisprudence of universal adult franchise and flag the point that the constitutionally mandated  independence of Election Commission of India must be restored and defended to salvage democracy from the onslaught of the powers that be. 

Communal Grounds for Disenfranchisement 

The British rulers of Natal employed communal factors in 1894 to disenfranchise Muslims hailing from India. They manufactured the reasoning that mostly  Muslims among Indians were more keen to retain their right to vote. Specifically peddling the false  argument that overwhelming   numbers of Muslims in the voter list would enable them to wield greater political power  over Hindus  they cautioned the latter to be wary of the former. Mahatma Gandhi in his aforementioned letter to Rippon referred to charges made by British rulers that a few Indians wanted  political power and that those  few were Mahomedan agitators and so   the Hindus should learn from past experience that the Mahomedan rule would be ruinous for them. He remarked that people of both the communities lived amicably in Natal and  such attempts  to set the Hindus against the Mahomedans would be most mischievous and calamitous causing grievous results which India tragically faced due to divisive British rule.  Juxtapose those observations of Gandhi with the SIR produced curated voter list from which more names of Muslim voters have been deleted across the country. In doing so the play book of colonial rulers in employing Hindu-Muslim narrative to disenfranchise voters is being followed by those operating State apparatus of India during 2025-2026 when SIR process is being carried and   adverse consequences   on the purity and integrity of electoral process are being unmistakably felt. 

Debunking Ghuspatia  Narrative 

It is rather tragic that the devious strategy of British rulers of Natal describing Indians settled there as intruders and so should be devoid of right to vote has been replicated by the present rulers of India  including CEC Gyanesh Kumar who justified SIR on the ground that Ghuspatias (infiltrators) would be removed from the electoral roll. Mahatma Gandhi in his above mentioned article, “Indian Franchise,” debunked the characterisation of Indians as intruders and charged that even the white rulers coming from Europe would not be spared of the same charge that they intruded to South Africa. 

A Retrograde Step 

It is quite significant that Gandhi described Franchise Law Amendment Bill to disenfranchise Indians as a “legislative activity, of a retrograde character.”

Description of the SIR by opposition leaders as a form of “Vote Bandi’ captures Gandhi’s words “retrograde’ invoked in the context of Franchise Law Amendment Bill of 1894.

That retrograde Bill became an Act but due to petitions of Gandhi that Indians were removed from electoral roll on racial grounds, the UK Government disallowed it. But it was then altered and racial element was removed by providing for the disqualifications as voters of all Asiatics as such. That became an Act and Indians lost their voting rights.

Gandhi wrote in his petition to Lord Rippon “ I take the liberty to say that, had not an attempt been made to tread upon their commercial pursuits, had not attempts been made and repeated to degrade them to the condition of pariahs of society, had not, in fact, an attempt been made to keep them for ever “hewers of wood and drawers of water”, i.e., in a state of indenture or in one very much resembling it, there would have been no franchise agitation.”

It is indeed tragic that several decades after splendid success of universal adult suffrage in India and an agitation has been launched in defence of the right to vote, that too on the occasion of birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi whose first struggle in South Africa in 1894 was in defence of the voting rights of Indians who were then disenfranchised.  Millions of Indians  now losing their right to vote and massive erosion of independence and integrity of the Election Commission under the leadership of  CEC Gyanesh Kumar is imperilling democracy in India . The struggle of Mahatma Gandhi in South Africa during 1894-95 against disenfranchisement of Indians in South Africa offers valuable lessons to uphold universal adult franchise and the rights  of all Indians who are constitutionally mandated to be treated equally regardless of their identities rooted in faith, caste, language or ethnicity for inclusion in voter list.    

Presumption of Citizenship 

In his book “Satyagraha in South Africa” Gandhi wrote, “There is always a general presumption in favour of the right of the subject. So long, therefore, as the government of the day does not become positively hostile, the names of Indians and others could be included in the electoral roll, the above law notwithstanding.”

Those words are assume salience  in the context of the protests against mass disenfranchisement on account of SIR and erroneous functioning of CEC Kumar disregarding  the general presumption in favour of the rights of the citizens.   Therefore,  Mahatma Gandhi’s 1894  struggled for the rights of Indians in Natal to vote is of enduring significance to save the Constitution.