On the CJP, the NEET leak, and the weapon that failed to detonate
1. How much of the patriotic framing was strategy and how much was simply the sincere register of the people who happened to be there?
2. Does the Shaheen Bagh comparison hold? The counter-case is that 2020 and 2026 are not comparable because the CAA was a policy the government wanted and the NEET leak was an embarrassment it did not.
3. Can a satirical formation convert?
Sorting out the Cockroaches?
Every major Indian protest movement of the last twelve years has faced the same attempted execution. Not by baton, though the batons come, and came again on 20 July. The execution is attempted when the state tries to answer the question who are these people? before the movement can answer it. Shaheen Bagh was minorities. JNU was tukde-tukde. The farmers held out longest and won their repeal, and were still, in the telling, Khalistanis with tractors.
It is a sorting mechanism. Once a crowd has been sorted out of the nation, its demands become negotiable in the way that a hostile faction’s demands are negotiable, which is to say not at all.
The Cockroach Janta Party won in large part because Abhijeet Dipke understood this and moved first.
The insult