Gandhi’s 1921 warning that Authorities Suppressing People’s Right to Protest Would Perish Because “India ..is steeled with high courage” Echo in Protests Against Compromised ECI

With alarm and extreme degree of consternation the country is confronting a dire situation marked by Modi regime’s unusual coercive measures to preventing opposition party MPs, civil society groups and common people to exercise their fundamental right to assemble without arms and  peacefully protest,   demanding resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar for his acts of commission and omission in implementing SIR and the resultant disenfranchisement of crores of people. 

The Indian Express expose of 23rd September unmasked  Gyanesh Kumar’s alleged machinations, among which involved,  conduct of  SIR unilaterally without involving two other Election Commissioners Sukh Bir Sandhu and Vivek Joshi. It also brought to public domain how the  operation of the digital electoral roll of a billion people was centrally operated at ECI office, even for  adding and deleting voters to it,  denying the legally mandated  Chief Electoral Officers of States to do so. More shockingly, the ECI press note of September 26 claimed  emphatically that the Supreme Court had allowed ECI for  additions to  statutory Form 6 asking people, filling that form for getting enrolled as  first time voters,  to record the names of their parents or grandparents as those appeared in 2002 electoral roll.  Only competent authority such as the Law Ministry is legally authorised to make such  additions as  those involved changes to rules falling within the scope of subordinate legislation which is beyond the jurisdiction of ECI. The Indian Express laid bare in its investigative report that two ECs red flagged such blatant over-reach  and described those additions as “illegal and unauthorised.” On October 5 when Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, in his oral observations,  said that SC had not approved of any additions to Form 6, the ECI’s lie got exposed, indicating the horrendous scale of manipulations of even statutory documents to prepare an electoral roll based on SIR process.   

It is worth recalling  SC’s observations   in its May 2026 judgement  that  the SIR process is  perceived as exclusionary and so  affirmed that it  should be “rendered constitutionally compliant in execution.”

But it is perplexing to note that implementation of SIR process instead of  being constitutionally compliant is subverting the very Constitution. The scathing Indian Express expose has affirmed it triggering  countrywide convulsions and reinforcing  Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi’s recurrent charge that  Vote Chori, Vote Theft, was being committed by BJP for  stealing  mandate of the people and forming  Government in connivance with the  ECI. 

Such unprecedented malpractices committed in ECI compelled  Justice Rohington to remark that “We cannot have an Election Commission that malfunctions.” 

On 2nd October, on Gandhi Jayanti, when opposition parties organised peaceful protests in Delhi  demanding resignation of CEC Gyanesh Kumar they were prevented from doing so and in contrast  Cockroach Janata Party was allowed to organise a meeting in Mumbai where large numbers of people participated. It is rather revolting to note that apart from deploying large numbers of personnel of Delhi police and several companies of paramilitary forces the Modi Government closed  around 11  metro stations and shut down  mobile internet services for safeguarding  public safety and public order, and preventing incitement to offences. To foil the attempts to organise protest barricades were put on  roads, opposition  leaders including LOP Rahul Gandhi were detained and stopped  to go to Janatar Mantar, the designated protest site, to exercise their constitutionally mandated fundamental right to protest.  It is all the more horrifying that on Mahatma Gandhi’s birth anniversary they were not allowed to express their legitimate dissent from any part of Delhi. Gandhi was a shining example of protestor whose resistance to British rule anchored in the ideal of non-violence eventually enlisted millions of Indians to heroically fight for our independence which was achieved on August 15, 1947. Never ever in the history of independent of India has any Union Government suppressed the constitutionally guaranteed fundamental right to peacefully protest on Mahatma Gandhi’s birth anniversary. 

Even subsequent massive mobilisation of opposition parties on 3rd, 4th, 5th 6th and  7th October to escalate protest peacefully was thwarted by police. Such harsh measures trampling upon a constitutional right send ominous signals across the world. International media is adversely commenting on the political regime in India for denying people their constitutionally enshrined right to protest hollow out  the jurisprudence of universal adult franchise in India which commanded  the admiration of the whole world right since the conduct of first general elections.  

Twenty-five years back on January 17, 2001 then President of India K R Narayanan in his speech delivered on the occasion of the inauguration of  the golden jubilee celebrations of ECI referred to the applause received by ECI for its stellar work in upholding its independence and conducting free and fair elections. He then stated,  “In a public opinion poll it was found that people rated the Election Commission very high far ahead of the police, the bureaucracy, the political parties, the Central Government, local self-Government and even the judiciary.”  

Two and a half decades later, and especially after the ECI operated the SIR, the Lokniti-CSDS survey documented  massive erosion of the  credibility of the Election Commission of India and decline of people’s trust on its functioning. The Hindu bemoaned the breakdown of independence of ECI and loss of people's faith in it  and described  the tragic phenomenon as “unprecedented.” It warned that it could fundamentally undermine the credibility of the electoral process itself. 

During ECI’s  golden jubilee celebrations president Narayanan in his speech referred to the presence of  the Prime Minister and the Leader of Opposition on the podium and said that their presence “..to pay tribute to the Election Commission on its anniversary is itself a demonstration of the honoured position it occupies in Indian political structure.” “I am,” he remarked, “honoured to join them all those present here in saluting the Election Commission of India on its Golden Jubilee.” 

Twenty five years later the Election Commission malfunctioned to such an extent that the opposition parties protested and  Modi regime stubbornly went ahead to foil it. Only yesterday, on October 8, when opposition party MPs went to Raj Ghat, the memorial complex where Gandhi was cremated following his tragic assassination, the police did not prevent them from going there and pray for restoration of the integrity of the electoral process. 

Ninety-five years ago on June 18, 1931, Gandhi wrote in Young India that “One form of direct action is adult suffrage. The second and more potent form is Satyagraha.” He did so while locating the  import of adult suffrage as an integral aspect of Poorna Swaraj, complete independence, and insightfully remarked that the exercise of franchise right  meant  “directly acting upon the powers that be.” So striking  off the names of crores voters from the electoral roll following the implementation of SIR have tragically resulted in smashing the basic political right of the people to engage in direct action upon the powers that be. It is because people are losing their constitutionally mandated right to vote they are expressing outrage across the country and coming forward to offer  Satyagraha,  which in the words of   Gandhi is “more potent” for direct action upon those who are vested with power.

It is indeed disturbing that Modi regime has called back several hundred companies of paramilitary officers from Jammu and Kashmir and from anti-Naxal operations for deployment in Delhi to deal with protests of Cockroach Janata Party scheduled for 10th October in Delhi. The Print in its report “Bracing for Jantar Mantar 2.0, Delhi to deploy 23,000 CAPF personnel. Forces pulled from J&K, Naxal ops” stated that “The scale of the mobilisation is considerably higher than that seen during other major protests in the capital.”

Apart from huge mobilisation of security forces, express and mail train services to some Delhi stations have been called by the Indian Railways. It is reported that 57 metro stations in Delhi would be  shut down. In the meanwhile   statements have been made by Cockroach Janata Dal leaders to the effect that thousands of their workers have been rounded up by police before the commencement of protest on October 10. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court on Friday (October 9, 2026) said the right to association and to protest peacefully is a fundamental right of every citizen, while reacting to a mention by senior lawyers of the apex court about the unprecedented “shutting down” of the national capital a day ahead of the CJP protests for the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar on October 10. The Bench, comprising Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V. Mohana, said that there could not be a complete ban on these services and could regulate how they operate, keeping the principle of proportionality in mind, so that the public at large is not put to inconvenience. The Bench accordingly asked Solicitor General Tushar Mehta to impress upon the government the need to allow these services in a regulated manner.

Why is the Union Government at its wit’s end to see people of India exercising their fundamental right to protest? Such massive deployment of security forces to prevent people to express their disaffection through protest would backfire and they will exert themselves in face of all coercive measures to restore their right to vote unconstitutionally snatched away from them due to the mal functioning  of the Election Commission headed by CEC by Gyanesh Kumar. Cockroach Janata Party President Abhijit Dipke responding to such crackdowns asked if Modi wishes to be remembered as General Dyer or martyr Mangal Pandey?

Such brutal  measures are being taken to  muzzle  people’s freedom to protest is reminiscent of   Gandhi’s speech at the Congress session in Ahmedabad on December 28, 1921, when he described freedom of opinion and freedom of association as “the two lungs that are absolutely necessary for a man to breathe the oxygen of liberty”.

He then elaborated, “If there is any authority in this country that wants to curb the freedom of speech and freedom of association, I want to be able to say in your name, from this platform, that that authority will perish, unless it repents, before an India that is steeled with high courage, noble purpose and determination, even if everyone of the men and women who choose to call themselves Indians is blotted out of the earth.”

Gandhi’s warning that “that authority will perish” which would deploy brutal measures because   “India ..is steeled with high courage, noble purpose and determination..” can be ignored at its own peril by the Modi Regime.