New Delhi: Protests at the heart of New Delhi on July 20 saw young and old pour in, in a way that ensured that it grew beyond the movement that called for the march to the parliament.What began as a call by the outfit Cockroach Janata Party, against the mishandling of India’s education system, became a galvanising force, drawing close to a lakh people to a section of the city in which internet was shut off, metro connectivity cut off and which had a comparable security force coverage.Several who attended the protests said that this was one of the most well attended mass movements. In it, police lathicharged and fired tear gas shells indiscriminately, hurting even minors.Some photographs do justice to the intensity of the movement. Here they are.Photo: PTI.Early on Monday, protesters arrived holding aloft a portrait of Dr Bhim Rao Ambedkar. The number of Ambedkar paintings held aloft shows that the ambit of this outpouring extended beyond the realm of just getting Dharmendra Pradhan to resign.Photo: PTI.This revolution will be livestreamed. Young people record police as they cheer and sloganeer. Indeed, footage from this protest has been ubiquitous despite the government’s move to shut down internet in central Delhi.As police tear gassed people, among those hurt were The Wire’s reporter Atul Howale. A favourite of Indian security forces, tear gas is said to have unexamined long term health impacts in some cases.Photo: PTI.At around 10.48 am today, police said they were dealing with protesters “professionally.” This image below bellies that and sets the tone for the wanton lathicharging and beating that followed.Photo: PTIIn the video screengrab below, security forces take up a shooting stance against people approaching the parliament peacefully.Photo: PTI video screengrab.Frontline editor Vaishna Roy has posted the following extraordinary photograph, which is perhaps second to none in capturing the might of the state against the young and the helpless. In it, a man is tripped viciously by policemen. His trouser is torn at the knee. Both his feet are hoisted in the air and he braces for impact with the hard asphalt. At the back is a plain-clothed man with a telling expression, and beside him a policeman who stretches eagerly to add his weight to an already won physical fight.This is the only response this govt is capable of. Brute force.Dialogue, resolution, responsibility, all this is alien to it. pic.twitter.com/TUgQ5MtDdf— Vaishna Roy (@vaishnaroy) July 20, 2026Photo: PTI.Finally, Prime Minister Narendra Modi gestures while addressing the media outside Parliament House on the opening day of the monsoon session. Six hundred metres from the scene of this gesture, youth were gathering in numbers unprecedented. In an ideal India, a prime minister would have apologised for the failure of the public exam system. Not Modi, who did not bring up the protests even once.