The Right to Protest in the Age of Gen Z

Leaderless, online-born movements are testing how Indian law and policing treat peaceful dissent in the capital.

On 2 October, the day India marks the birth of Mahatma Gandhi, the man who made peaceful protest a national tradition, hundreds of people were detained for trying to protest peacefully. The setting was Jantar Mantar, the stretch in central Delhi set aside for demonstrations. A Section 163 order barred gatherings of more than five people. Metro stations were closed. More than 700 people were reportedly held, among them a former chief minister, a student union president and journalists. Amnesty International called it a blatant attack on the right to assemble.

The protesters were demanding the removal of the Chief Election Commissioner over voter-list deletions. That demand is open to debate. But the way the state responded raises a separate question that matters whatever one thinks of the cause: what does the right to protest mean in, especially for a new kind of movement that does not look like the ones the law was built around?

Who was on the street

The crowd was unusual. It included members of the Cockroach Janta Party, a Gen Z movement that began as online satire and has grown into a street force. It included student groups, among them the left-leaning All India Students' Association, whose president, Neha Bora, was detained. It included opposition politicians. In Mumbai, CPI(M) General Secretary MA Baby joined a gathering at Shivaji Park. Congress has said it will begin its own protests on Tuesday.

What links them is not one party or one leader. It is a shared feeling, expressed mostly online, that important institutions are no longer answering to ordinary people. The movement has no single chief, no formal membership and no standard route for talks. That makes it hard for the state to deal with, and it also makes it hard for the movement to bargain.

India is not the only country to see this. In recent years, young, online-organised movements have swept through other South Asian countries, with protests in Bangladesh in 2024 and in Nepal in 2025 ending in the fall of governments. India's situation is different, and its institutions are stronger, but the pattern of fast, leaderless mobilisation is the same. Governments everywhere are learning that these movements can grow quickly and in unexpected ways.

What the Constitution says

Article 19 of the Constitution protects the freedom of speech and expression, and the right to assemble peacefully and without arms. These are fundamental rights. They are not absolute. The state can impose reasonable restrictions in the interests of public order, the security of the state, sovereignty and a few other grounds listed in the Constitution.

The key word is reasonable. The Supreme Court has repeatedly said that restrictions must be proportionate: they must serve a real purpose and go no further than needed.

Several decisions are worth recalling.

• In the Ramlila Maidan case in 2012, the Court held that citizens have a fundamental right to assemble and protest peacefully, and that the police cannot use their powers arbitrarily.

• In 2018, in a case about protests at Jantar Mantar, the Court said the right to protest cannot be taken away, though it can be regulated, and that a balance between protest and the rights of residents must be found.

• In the Anuradha Bhasin case in 2020, the Court said that orders restricting gatherings under the old Section 144 must be reasoned, limited in time and proportionate, and cannot be used to suppress legitimate expression.

What Section 163 is

The old Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code gave magistrates power to ban gatherings in urgent cases to prevent trouble. Under the new criminal procedure law, the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, the equivalent power sits in Section 163.

It is a common tool, and it has a place. If there is a real risk of violence, officials need to be able to act quickly. Crowd management is a legitimate concern, and police often face a difficult task.

The issue is how it is used. When an order bars more than five people from gathering, bans slogans and speeches, and covers the very place the state has designated for protest, it becomes harder to argue that it is a narrow, proportionate step. Closing metro stations around the site adds to the concern. The Court in Anuradha Bhasin said such orders must be justified by facts, not used as a routine shield against dissent.

A protest site that cannot be used for protest is a contradiction the state has to explain.

The detentions

Detention is another tool, and another place where the law draws a line. Police can detain people to prevent a breach of the peace, and in practice, those held at protests are usually released after some hours. But detaining more than 700 people, including a former chief minister and journalists, raises two questions. First, was there a real and specific threat that justified so many detentions? Second, why were journalists, whose job is to report, held at all?

Amnesty has also reported that in earlier protests by the same movement, security forces used lethal weapons, including pellets and grenades. The movement's protests in July led to the resignation of a minister. Those claims should be examined independently, and if they are true, they would mark a serious departure from the principle of minimum force.

None of this means every police action was wrong. Authorities may have had real concerns, and the Delhi Police have a hard job. But a state that is confident in its position does not need to treat every question as a threat, and the heavy response risks making a small matter large.

Protest and order: a fair balance

It is worth giving the other side its due. Residents near protest sites face noise and blocked roads. Rallies can turn violent, and past protests in India and elsewhere have led to deaths and damage. Online movements can spread rumours quickly, and a crowd with no leader can be hard to control. Officials have a duty to keep the city running and to protect people and property.

But the answer to these problems is not to ban protest. It is to manage it. That means clear and consistent rules, designated sites that are actually usable, talks with organisers where possible and proportionate policing. It also means keeping force as a last step.

Protesters also have duties. The right is to assemble peacefully and without arms. Movements that want to be heard have to stay within that line, discourage violence and refrain from spreading claims they cannot support. When a movement says votes were stolen, it should be ready to show evidence. If it cannot, it weakens its own case.

A new kind of movement, an old kind of law

The law and the police are used to dealing with organisations: a union, a party, a farmers' group with known leaders. When a protest is planned, organisers apply for permission and officials set conditions. If something goes wrong, there is someone to talk to.

Leaderless movements break that model. A call goes out on social media, and thousands turn up. Nobody has applied for permission. Nobody speaks for everyone. This can make the police nervous and quick to impose bans. It can also make protesters distrust the process.

Neither side can fix this alone. A few practical steps could help:

1. Clear notification routes. A simple, online way for groups, even loosely organised ones, to inform the police and agree on conditions.

2. Usable designated sites. If Jantar Mantar is the place for protest, rules should allow reasonable numbers, speeches and slogans there.

3. Contact points on both sides. Even without formal leaders, volunteers can act as liaisons if the police are willing to talk.

4. Training in crowd management. Police training should stress de-escalation and proportionate force.

5. Protection for journalists. Reporters should be able to cover protests without fear of detention.

6. Public reporting. Police should publish how many people were detained, on what grounds and when they were released.

What young people are signalling

There is also a deeper point. A movement that began as online satire and now draws crowds tells us something about how young Indians feel. Many are well educated, connected and sceptical. They see institutions that look distant, and they use humour and street action to be heard. Whatever one thinks of their demands, ignoring or crushing them is unlikely to work. Young people who feel unheard rarely stay quiet, and the history of the region shows that anger that finds no outlet can become far more disruptive.

A mature democracy treats such energy as a sign to listen to, not a threat to suppress. That does not mean agreeing with every demand. It means giving people lawful ways to speak and answering their questions in good faith.

The test of a democracy

It is tempting to see protest as a nuisance. But Gandhi's own movements were, in their day, seen by authorities as threats to order. India's founders wrote the right to assemble into the Constitution because they knew that voting every five years is not enough. Citizens need ways to speak between elections.

Seen that way, the events of 2 October deserve reflection from everyone. The government should ask whether the scale of its response was needed. The protesters should ask whether their methods and claims serve their cause. Parties should ask whether they are using young people's energy responsibly. And all of us should ask what kind of space we want for dissent.

The right to protest is not a favour granted by the state. It is a freedom the Constitution protects, within reasonable limits. How those limits are drawn, and how fairly they are applied, will show how confident India's democracy is in itself.