History has testified time and again that the city of Delhi, as much as it remained a centre of power for many regimes, has equally been a land of collective dissent and people’s rebellion. The people of this city have witnessed, withstood and survived many wars, sieges, colonial occupations and draconian emergencies, sowing hope even in the darkest of times. Since October 10, the city has faced yet another siege enforced by its own government and its machinery. Beginning October 2, thousands of civilians, students and members of opposition parties have been relentlessly protesting on the streets, demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar over alleged irregularities in the conduct of elections and the scrapping of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), which has led to the disenfranchisement of more than 13 crore people.Despite police brutality, arbitrary mass detentions, intimidation and denial of permission for peaceful demonstrations, protests have continued.The protests gained momentum after left-wing student organisations and the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) announced a joint call during an October 7 press conference at the Press Club of India (PTI) for a massive protest march towards Delhi’s Jantar Mantar on October 10.Soon after the protest call, the Union government deployed more than 40,000 security personnel, hundreds of barricades, modern surveillance systems and centralised loud speakers in central Delhi and all across major parts of the capital, fortifying it into a complete lockdown zone. Most of the public transport in central Delhi, including 57 metro stations, bus services and inter-state trains, was suspended to prevent people from joining the protest. Late on October 9 and throughout October 10, the internet services were also shut down across central Delhi, effectively placing the capital under a state of siege. Widely circulated videos from the night of October 9, offered a sight no less than a dystopia: the empty and heavily barricaded streets of Delhi echoed with a repetitive and quasi-robotic announcement warning citizens against assembling or protesting. It evoked disturbed memories of the many tenebrous times the capital had witnessed in the past. However, notwithstanding extraordinary efforts by the Delhi police and paramilitary forces, on the morning of October 10, the protesters steadily began to gather across central Delhi. The police soon started to forcefully detain everyone on site, including many individuals who were not even there for the protest. Also read: Regime Change Is Democracy’s Lifeblood and Modi is No Exception: 7 Reasons Why BJP is WrongEven after large-scale detentions and an enforced climate of fear since early morning, thousands of citizens gradually assembled and marched towards Jantar Mantar, defying many barricades and facing brute force, threats and detentions. Sakil (19), who is originally from north Bengal and now lives and works in Delhi at a construction site in Okhla, had earlier participated in the youth protests at Jantar Mantar on July 2020 and was brutally beaten by the Delhi police. Yet fear of getting beaten again or detained could not deter him from joining this protest.He said:“The floods took away our home in North Bengal many years ago and no government did anything for our family even after giving hundreds of promises during elections. Our home in Tughlaqabad village was also demolished in 2023 by the government authorities and we got no compensation or patch of land to build our home again. And this time they removed names of all our family members from the voters’ list and I could not even register my name as a voter… It was supposed to be my first vote.”After almost five hours of hide-and-run, he finally got detained around 4 pm. The police forcefully dragged to a detention bus and he was taken to a place far away from central Delhi. “I have almost nothing to lose anymore but how could you [the government] snatch away voting rights from all of us in the family?… Do the police and the government think that they are capable of stopping the protest by scaring us with lathis ?”asked Sakil. He was released later that night. Throughout the day on October 10, more than 7,000 protesters were forcefully detained and sent to different locations. The police had also arbitrarily detained senior and junior Supreme Court lawyers who were staging a peaceful protest in front of the Supreme Court.Scathing attacks on press freedom by state authorities continued all day, as several journalists with valid press cards were stalked, harassed and detained. Most of the journalists covering the protests were barred from talking to detainees, while the police turned a blind eye to the right-wing goons who continued to target, assault, isolate and physically injure protesters, including women. Despite all forms of brutality, the protests could not be stopped or silenced as people kept assembling and raising voices in defence of India’s constitution and democracy. Mala Devi (79), who taught in a primary school for more than 35 years, had joined the protest in “solidarity with the young people of this country.” She was very disheartened and enraged after seeing how protesters were detained and harassed.She noted:“Over the years, I have seen many governments rule and fall…And I have also witnessed how the police use brute force to suppress democratic protests. They think they are protecting the regime in the name of duty, but they don’t realise it does quite the opposite. People who are being beaten today will always remember this violence, and the protests will only intensify until the end of this regime.”§The next day, on the morning of October 11, identical scenes played out across central Delhi. Protesters from different circuits and organisations, along with civilians without any particular political affiliation, staged minuscule demonstrations all over the city. Flouting the Supreme Court’s early morning orders to remove barricades, restore internet and stop arbitrary detentions, the police continued attacking and arbitrarily detaining protesters. Students’ Federation of India (SFI) members, who were staging a peaceful demonstration, were also attacked, beaten and detained by the police. Meanwhile, attacks on journalists continued, even after showing valid press cards over and over again. Many women journalists and protesters shared harrowing accounts of sexual assault by the police during detentions.Also read: ‘We Can’t Stay Silent’: Voices From Berlin Demanding CEC Gyanesh Kumar’s ResignationA journalist, who had to run away from the protest site to avoid detention, said: “As an independent journalist without a big subscriber base or financial support, it’s becoming very hard for me to cover protests these days in Delhi…I saw journalists from comparatively bigger media outlets were barred from doing their job. Some of them were also detained!… We don’t have any immunity left in this country to work as real journalists.” According to the latest report on press freedom index, published by Reporters Without Borders, India ranks 157th out of 180 countries. Intimidation, threats, physical assault, content takedowns on digital platforms, arrests with fabricated charges and severely imposed restrictions in conflict areas in the country have increasingly become the new normal. A journalism graduate from Madhya Pradesh, currently based in Delhi and looking for jobs, has been actively running an anonymous account on Instagram to criticise different government policies and state sponsored violence. “I have faced digital censorship for talking and writing about the killings of journalists by the genocidal Netanyahu regime in Gaza… Some of my posts on the military atrocities across south Asia have also been taken down. I have created a backup account just in case the government decides to delete my current account permanently… The future of journalism seems bleak in this country but at the same time when I see the independent media is still fighting it all, it gives me courage and strength to continue,” they said. At around 2.30 pm, All India Students Association (AISA) and other student bodies began another march to Connaught Place and Jantar Mantar from R.K. Ashram. After a major scuffle and chase between the police and the protesters, students were forcibly detained, including AISA’s national president Neha Bora. They were dragged and pushed into a detention bus that looked like a prison from the inside. A student from Delhi University, who was also detained that day, said: “The Police is only capable of harassing and inflicting violence on students, who are protesting for the survival of the fundamental democratic rights in this country. The capital is engulfed with hate crimes against women, Dalits, adivasis and trans-queer folks. There are literally no safety nets for the Muslims and other minority communities… We see almost every day hate crimes are taking place here and there. And we also see how the Police remain silent on these issues.” Videos flooded across social media showing the police’s complete silence and inaction as hundreds of right-wing goons, with lathis in hand, roamed freely. By remaining selectively silent, the police and the paramilitary forces not only flouted the apex court’s directives regarding detentions, but also helped stage violence and assault on unarmed protesters. The women activists and protesters from the SFI showed extraordinary courage and resistance as they continued to protest. Meanwhile, in a brazen disregard of law and order, the police assaulted, thrashed and detained protesters in numbers after 7 pm.That day, the streets of central Delhi bore witness to one of the major crackdowns on dissent and democratic protest by the police, as students bled and gasped for freedom amidst an undeclared emergency. §From midnight to early morning of October 12, Delhi saw an unusually heavy rainfall, as if the sky of the capital wept in grief after witnessing the state’s vulgar onslaught of violence on peaceful protestors, who were demanding nothing more than their constitutional rights.Security measures were intensified. Six major metro stations connecting to central Delhi were shut down and more than 30,000 security personnel were deployed to strangle the entry of the protesters. Around 9 am, following a government order, the Delhi police officially denotified Jantar Mantar as a designated protest site after 33 years. In an astounding response to the INDIA coalition’s ‘Chalo Dilli – March for Democracy’ call, thousands of people began to gather in and around Barakhamba road, bypassing the gridlocks on foot. By around 1:30 pm, more than 2.5 lakh people had assembled for the march. Defying many tactics of the police to demoralise the protestors, the march, led by the major opposition party leaders, started moving towards the Supreme Court. The protesters breached the barricades and marched on, outnumbering security forces. It was a spectacle of democratic consciousness that the capital had not seen for a long time. Hope was out and visible on the streets of Delhi. Ratan Kumar (38) who travelled from north UP to join the protest march, said: “In this country, there is hardly any government that has done many great things for the poor… But the current government has instead snatched away little things we had before, let alone doing something good… And now they are after our democratic rights too? I strongly believe the wind is changing and the old man has lost his appeal. You [PM Modi] can not fool the public forever.”As the Chief Justice of India had already denied permission for a meeting with opposition leaders, the march was blockaded near the Supreme Court. Leader of opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, along with other leaders, managed to enter the registry and formally lodge a comprehensive legal petition demanding an independent audit of the massive voter deletions. §Early on October 13, CJP leaders Ashutosh Ranka, Saurav Das, Ajinkya Shinde and 11 other members pulled off a surprise protest move. Resisting the government’s order denotifying Jantar Mantar as a protest site, they sneaked into the premises and unfurled the Indian national flag there. As they were sloganeering for the CEC’s resignation, the police cracked down on them in a rapid and heavy-handed response. They were pinned-down and detained, with few protesters kept in police custody overnight. Two FIRs were filed against the CJP members, including co-conveners Ranka and Das. On Wednesday, October 14, the two were remanded to judicial custody in Tihar jail for five days following an order issued by an executive magistrate court.In solidarity with CJP volunteers, a series of flash protests by multiple student organisations erupted across Delhi, despite heavy paramilitary deployment. Major opposition leaders also took to social media to strongly criticise the government’s actions. On the same day, after an internal briefing and sharing of testimonies of police brutality on the journalists, PCI members and many other journalists staged a silent protest march around the vicinity of the Press Club. The protest addressed concerns over India’s democratic decline, unprecedented attacks on journalists at work and an ever the growing crisis of press freedom in India. “It seems the power in the center has become purposefully deaf to the democratic voices of the people. The air in the capital has become heavier with dissent. Denotifying Jantar Mantar will not be able to stop the people from protesting until they reclaim their democratic rights…People will assemble to protest anyway, irrespective of spaces. They will shout and scream until the voices reach the deaf ears of power and make its feet tremble. The bell has already been rung for the regime’s farewell,” said Falak Bint Akhtar (27). She has been a part of the ongoing protests since October 2. She was a student at Jamia Millia Islamia during the equal citizenship movement of 2019. The disturbed memories of December 15 from that year haunts her till date. That day Delhi police personnel had forcefully entered the Jamia campus, fired tear gas shells and lathi charged students inside the Zakir Hussain Library. Falak strongly hopes for a future where the kids can be safe and free from all sorts of fear. She hopes for a democracy in this country, where people will thrive irrespective of their class, caste, gender or religion. She firmly believes that these protests and the country-wide collective reckoning are the first step towards a democratic future, one that is free from fear and is shared by all.This report records events from the ongoing protests till October 14. All illustrations have been created by Pariplab Chakraborty, a multimedia illustrator, journalist and visual researcher with The Wire. §As the anti-SIR protests continue to grow larger, a note in the quest for hope:The ongoing protest is taking many routes and adapting to numerous possibilities, leading towards a shared goal of a larger collective, which believes in people’s participation in political processes and defends the Constitution of India. After a long time, the country is witnessing a large-scale democratic protest, a reckoning and eruption shared by people from across all spheres of living. Years of subjugation and an illusion of satisfaction created by a chest-thumping, ultra-religious majoritarian regime has finally begun to wear off. The country’s youth are steadfast in their demands and are not willing to bow down in spineless reverence and unaccounted worship of the powerful. Across the globe, the young generation is not willing to accept what has been force fed all these years. Resistance and dissent is piling up, taking shape and emerging as a challenge to the morbid, hyper patriarchal and absurd systems of governance that mindlessly preach wars, religious dogmatism and a false sense of pride, disconnected from everything that can be humane. From India to France, Brazil to Belgium, the youth are rising up to shatter the old ways. As the genocide of the Palestinians has officially entered its 4th year, and the Benjamin Netanyahu-regime continues to bomb and kill children in Gaza without any accountability; as the children in Iran and Sudan are fighting for their survival each night, looking at the dark clouds hovering over their heads; as AI and its plastic-empire exhausting ground water at a lightening speed while there is no fresh water access to most people living in the global south; as hate crimes against women, marginalised, trans and queer people are skyrocketing each day; as military and industries are collaborating in an ‘unholy’ to create weapons of mass destruction; and as brilliant minds of our generation are languishing in jails for more than six years without trial – finding hope has become the hardest thing to do. But hope is not something that’s standing still on the ground or flying in the thin air, ready to be found. Throughout the history of human survival, people who waged wars against systems of oppression and dared to dismantle the tenacious grips of power have shown us ways in which hope can be sown, nurtured and eventually harvested.