On Tuesday evening, October 13, about 70 to 80 people gathered at the Brandenburger Tor in Berlin to speak to people they could not reach directly. Most were Indian. Many were students or workers who had arrived in Germany at different times and for different reasons. Several asked that their names not appear in print, and that request is honoured here. Their reasons seemed practical, some hold visas that a political statement could complicate. Some have families in India who could face consequences from a photograph.“We went back and forth for days,” one of the organisers said, “then we realised that if we stayed silent to protect ourselves, we would be protecting nothing but our own comfort.” The gathering began with an Instagram post by a few of the friends in Berlin. The post moved from account to account and from one group chat to the next until strangers decided to come together.Berlin shaped the protest more than the participants expected. The city treats public assembly and protest as a part of its political grammar, and the Brandenburger Tor has hosted some of its most charged moments. It has been a stage for imperial parades and Nazi propaganda. It stood beside the Berlin Wall for decades. In 1987, the 40th president of the United States stood at the Brandenburger Tor and challenged Soviet leader Gorbachev to tear down the wall, and two years later it did.Also read: ECI Restricts Electoral CCTV Access Citing ‘Overwhelming Demand’, But Admits Zero Records In RTITo protest there is to draw on that history, which teaches that public space belongs to those who use it to demand freedom. Before and during the First World War, activists in exile in Berlin from India formed the Berlin Committee to press for India’s independence from British rule and to win support in European capitals. “We are not the first Indians in this city who felt the struggle at home needed a voice outside it,” one participant said. “We are just the latest.”Protesters gathered in Berlin, Germany, demanding CEC Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation. Photo: Sausthab TalukdarThe crowd also included many Europeans and their presence altered the evening. One man held a placard reading, “I am a German and I know what a dictatorship is when I see one.” Several participants discussed how fascism didn’t arrive in Germany overnight. The democratic machinery was dismantled slowly through procedures that appeared lawful on paper. “No one wakes up one morning in a dictatorship; rather, one finds oneself in a country where rules have quietly changed,” one participant said.A man from Hungary held a second sign: “Orban looked unbeatable too.” He had grown up watching Fidesz win large majorities, rewrite electoral rules, and bring courts and media under government influence. But many in Hungary assumed that the system would hold. The Hungarian participant said that when people claim that nothing can change, he remembers that the same was once said about Hungary. But that which might look permanent can be challenged. The German carried a warning about how democracy erodes and the Hungarian carried a hope that it can be defended.A protester from Hungary holding a sign: “Orban looked unbeatable too.” Photo: Sausthab TalukdarThere is no honest way to write about this protest without admitting privilege. The people gathered together for the protest live in a country where they can gather, criticise a government and can still walk home without the fear of immediate reprisal. Many holds Overseas Citizens of India status, residence permits, universities, jobs and legal protections. Needless to say, the better living conditions. They can also close their screens and decide that the crisis in India is too far away to carry. That temptation is real and distance makes it easier to give in to. Geographical separation tends to convert suffering into content and resistance into a news cycle, something to be scrolled past between appointments.One participant, who moved to Germany five years ago, framed the problem directly: “We are safe here. We are earning in Euros. We have democratic rights, freedom of speech, the ability to walk into a protest site and demonstrate without being arrested. It would be easy to sit back and ignore what is happening in India. But silence is political too. Privilege should be a platform, not a cushion.” Another one added, “Is it not rather ironic that people protest to defend democracy in India and risk arrest for doing so, while we protest for India in a foreign soil and strangers lend an ear to the problem?”Also read: Delhi’s Total Crackdown Lays Bare a Government Unable to Handle Any CrisisSome pointed to a larger problem inside the diaspora. Many Indians abroad celebrate all the festivals with great pomp and show, and speak proudly of their homeland. Many also support the current government and treat criticism of it as loyalty. Culture becomes their politics: dance, food, temples, festivals – everything except the difficult question of what is happening to the people who live in the heart of that culture. Another participant said, “Where the voting right is absent, democracy is dead and once democracy is dead the celebration of culture and tradition loses its meaning. The true nature of India is in constitutional rights, in liberty and the willingness to dissent.”Protesters gathered in Berlin, Germany, demanding CEC Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation. Photo: Sausthab TalukdarDelhi Police’s conduct also came up during the protest and all participants condemned the police brutality unequivocally. One of the protesters also raised a book In the Shadow of The Swastika by Marzia Casolari that examines the links between Indian radical nationalism, Italian fascism and Nazism.Also read: Jantar Mantar: What Experts Feel About the Denotification of DissentThe vote is not one issue among many but is the foundation on which every other democratic claim rests. When voters fear that their names will be removed from the rolls, or doubt that the institutions protecting their franchise are neutral, the damage is alarming. Reports of contested voter-list revisions in India have raised exactly these fears, especially among poorer, migrants and marginalised citizens. Freedom of speech, minority protection, labour rights and the independence of the courts all depend on the same ordinary act of voting.“The Nazi-era plebiscites of 1933 and 1936 were held under intimidation and rigged results, which is often cited as a warning about how elections can be hollowed out from within,” one protester said. Another replied that Germany has also shown how an electoral system can correct itself. After irregularities in 2021 elections of Berlin, mishandled ballots and postal votes led to partial repeat votes in February 2023, and a postal vote scandal in Neu Kolln prompted criminal investigations. Whether Indians can ever expect the same amount of accountability from the government is the biggest question.The protesters called for the resignation of the chief Election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, and demanded accountability from the government for the conduct of the electoral process. They also called for an end to the police brutality against citizens and for recognition that protest is a fundamental right guaranteed by the constitution of India. The Indian diaspora in Berlin stands in solidarity with those in Indians.Why bring this international attention? Because governments care about their reputation with foreign partners, investors and international media. A protest in Berlin will not change India overnight but it can break the impression that the world is not watching. It signals to those back in India that their voices are heard, their struggles are seen and they do not stand alone.Tonmoyee Rani Neog is a researcher and writer based in Wolfsburg, Germany.