What’s a mass protest but a collective refusal to accept lies and a joint insistence upon a common truth? And hence the joy manifested on November 1. The sea of humanity comprising the marchers carried this joy on their faces. Along with bags, banners, flags, musical instruments. Waves upon waves of people – contingents from Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan and the Northeast – in colourful head dresses and sarees, youth and women from various organisations, walked and chanted, closing in on the Ramlila Maidan, flooding in from all sides, from the Minto bridge side, the Railway Station side, from Mir Dard chowk and the mohalla adjoining it – to pool at the sad slushy ground, turning it joyful. People sat atop buses, on trees, on walls, on poles, crowded the terraces of government residential colonies, to watch the marchers. One could not but imagine how colourful this singing dancing chanting sea of humanity must look from the penthouse offices in the tall glass-plated government buildings towering above the Maidan. The Bharatiya Janata Party office too is close by. Did they watch? Did the echoes filling the sky reach them?This Maidan, set aside for play-acting of mythological morality dramas with readymade villains, saw a real-life epic unfold on November 1. A people-sponsored morality play behind state-sponsored police barricades. The presence of the opposition bloc gave safety to the protest, but the energy and life came from the presence of thousands of ordinary citizens. The very air pulsated with roars and chants of masses. Every face was agog with anticipation. Every banner, every slogan demanded the right to free and fair elections, to electoral justice and transparency. To vote, speak, dance, protest freely. Every heart danced to the beat of Azadi. Every voice was people’s voice.Caught on the back foot by a spate of protests against vote chori – the stealing of votes – the Hindutva regime, like always, decided to appropriate this civic-society tool for itself. On November 1, as well as a couple of days before it, this anti-governance government put up a street show of power, the anti-protest protests, led by among others, a seldom seen chief minister. A contingent of pot-bellied, saffron scarf wearing lotus-eaters marched through Chandni Chowk, holding up banners calling for an end to anarchy and to save democracy. People hold placards as they take part in a rally under the banner of ‘Save Democracy, Remove Anarchy’, in Agartala, Saturday, Oct. 31, 2026. Photo: PTI.Labelling every protest against the government as anarchy is the part of the regime’s toolkit. The Union home minister, who remains perpetually unmoved whatever may be the violation of rights, spoke up about the violation of the traders’ rights to do Diwali business caused by the voter rights protest. If students and ordinary folks asking legitimate questions about their stolen voting right is anarchy, what should we call sitting office holders who, instead of being accountable for doing the work they hold the office for, take to the streets demanding accountability from the opposition?Spreading disinformation, distracting from issue at hand, gaslighting, labelling the questioners and when all else fails, appropriating the tactics of the other side are the current regime’s strong points. None of these operate on logic. Naturally, it never occurred to them to ponder over what a protest signifies. What’s the other word for an anti-resistance resistance? Tyranny. What’s an anti-perfume perfume called? Malodorous stink.When the puny, powerless and grievously wronged rise up in protest, awe fills up every heart. Who can forget the wrinkled old women and housewives of Shaheen Bagh sitting through wintry nights or the farmers barricaded behind nails at Tikri border or the Olympic medal-winning wrestlers being dragged on Sansad Marg? Resistance – organised by ordinary, pushed to the wall masses, who, having been rendered voiceless, must demand the justice being denied to them on streets – tends to remain engraved in memory even when it fails to achieve its objective. Even when the State crushes it. Because we revere the guts and pluck of these resistors. We memorialise them in our hearts despite all efforts by the pitiless State to erase them. On the other hand, a street march by a party that owns all media, directs and censors social media and sits without accountability on all seats of power is a travesty and a farce. Picture the overfed, dead-eyed cadres raising half-hearted slogans they themselves don’t believe in. Like overdressed actors shouting dialogues to set right the wrongs they look like a bunch of comical losers. The road show, a tableau of tired politicians haplessly clinging to reins of power slipping out of hands, seemed more like a tacit confession.In this image posted on Nov. 1, 2026, BJP leader Dharmendra Pradhan and others take part in ‘Save Democracy, Remove Anarchy padayatra’, in Faridabad. Photo: X/@dpradhanbjp via PTI.If anyone had doubts, they removed them by putting up heart (and ear) rending song shows insisting that the Supreme One won’t go. The songsters, like the anti-protest protesters, were guilty of protesting too much. Or maybe they were Vibheeshans secretly spiting the non-biological Ravan by supplying meme material to Gen Z content creators.Whatever be the facts, the BJP forgot that a street march is never merely a show of force. When every institution is systematically flooded with lies, a protest march is above all, a mirror. A show of truth. The protest’s power comes not just from numbers but from the sheer joy on protestors’ faces.Truth and joy share an intimate bond. The joy of thousands of common people, people who suffered for so long in so many ways, and have felt so silenced that their collective suffering binds them together in solidarity, making them come together to chant out their truth and demand their inalienable rights.This truth was the unwavering conviction in AISA national president Neha Bora’s steely question: Who do you think you are? That you ask ordinary Indians, people who have built your roads and dams and Parliament building and shiny new BJP offices, to prove their citizenship? This truth was the sense of joyful purpose in the SFI members’ voices as they lead chanters to the beat of their dafli. Supreme Court wanted proof of deleted voters from Opposition partiesNow common people have entered the chat with a list of 10 lakh+ deleted voters 🔥This will go down in HISTORY. https://t.co/SNIC710mNt— Ankit Mayank (@mr_mayank) November 1, 2026The protest then became a festival of truth, truth showcased in a hundred creative ways – from deleted voters’ fingers to people holding a giant printout of voter deletion list. An occasion when individual ordeals and silences dissolved, when small differences became immaterial and a feeling of collective triumph pervaded. In one voice they said, we will not yield to this abrogation of our fundamental rights. No one will be allowed to snatch our citizenship away. Instead those who strive to steal votes, will be questioned and shamed. Collectively, loudly, repeatedly. With joy and solidarity. Without fear. The exhilaration on protestors’ faces was the joy that collective action pursuing truth and freedom brings. Repression reaches a tipping point when instead of being afraid, citizens start deriving joy from reclaiming rights from a totalising brutal power. The state tactics to dissuade protest by detention, harassment, and loss of job opportunities, make protestors even more determined. More repression instead of more fear brings greater urgency to reclaim agency. The youth filling up the stands at Ramlila Maidan had immense clarity. Like fear, freedom too had a cost and they were there to pay it in sweat, blood, spray guns and memes – for their future’s sake. The contrast with the too-comfortable, stony faced, stiff-eyed pro-government marchers with a slightly bored, eager-to-go-home vibe about them could not have been starker. On Ramlila Maidan no one was in a rush to go back, except the police. Everyone belonged.