PROTESTS IN INDIA
2010-2012 TELANGANA PROTESTS
Few politicians have protested half as much as K. Chandrashekar Rao. For more than three years, Rao exhausted the protest handbook—dharna, morcha, fast-unto-death—to get Telangana its statehood.
2011 UP’S LAND ACQUISITION PROTESTS
In the land acquisition protests that erupted in parts of Uttar Pradesh, there was a message—agrarian India was not going to give up to rapid urbanisation without a fight.
2011 ANTI-CORRUPTION MOVEMENT
When Anna Hazare began a hunger strike, not many felt that hundreds would come out in his support. As the likes of Arvind Kejriwal came to demand a Jan Lokpal Bill, corruption became the UPA’s bane.
2015 PATIDAR RESERVATION PROTEST
The charged Patidar protest saw some levity when leader Hardik Patel declared that a new BJP scheme was a mere “lollipop”. To drive home his point, Patel then took to distributing lollipops across Gujarat.
2014 KISS OF LOVE PROTEST
It began as a march against moral policing in Kerala, but after Shiv Sainiks attacked protesters with canes, public displays of affection became acts of quiet rebellion for youth across the country.
2016-2017 MARATHA QUOTA PROTEST
Wanting quotas in jobs and education, the Marathas first protested silently, but when it finally came to amping up the pressure, the temptation of violence proved too great to resist.
2016 JAT RESERVATION AGITATION
As they blocked roads and railway lines, looking to be accommodated in the country’s OBC category, the Jat community proved that when an opponent seems hard to defeat, it is best to paralyse him.
2012 NIRBHAYA PROTESTS
The barbaric rape of a 23-year-old woman on a Delhi bus led protesters to defy prohibitory orders and demand justice. The government was then forced to legislate harsher punishment for sexual offences.
2016-2017 KASHMIR UNREST
After the killing of Hizbul militant Burhan Wani, anti-India protests broke out across Kashmir. In its response, the government used pellet guns and rifles in brutal retaliation.
2017 SAHARANPUR AGITATION
B.R. Ambedkar and Maharana Pratap were dragged into a tussle between Dalits and Rajputs in UP’s Saharanpur, but in the aftermath, a contentious Dalit leader emerged—Chandrashekhar Azad ‘Ravan’.
2018 FARMERS’ MARCH TO DELHI
Demanding remunerative prices and freedom from debt, farmers marched to Parliament, saying that despite having voted for the BJP, they could not fathom its government’s “antifarmer policies”.
2018 BHIMA-KOREGAON PROTESTS
It started when a procession of Dalits was pelted with stones. As protests erupted, hundreds were detained, and among them were civil liberty activists like Sudha Bharadwaj who were not even present on the scene.
2018 JUDGES’ REVOLT
When four senior Supreme Court judges— J. Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, Madan B. Lokur and Kurian Joseph—openly rebelled, it seemed briefly that the judiciary had discovered a spine.
2019 VANITHA MATHIL
Women protested being denied entry into Sabarimala by forming a 620 km-long human chain in Kerala. The lasting deadlock shows that men will make women beat their heads against any wall they build.
2019 BENGAL’S DOCTORS’ STRIKE
Between junior doctors, who refused to work after two of their colleagues were assaulted, and CM Mamata Banerjee, who refused to relent, the state’s healthcare system was deemed dispensable.