SOMETHING SEEMS to be changing since the Jantar Mantar sit-in that became a movement that forced the Narendra Modi government to listen and bend. If that change is not just a short-lived excitement that fizzles out before the next election comes, if it is to go beyond the selfie-style vertical videos starring Prime Minister Narendra Modi, or the curated stage of Rahul Gandhi's 'Chhatron ki Goonj' that makes space for his young audience's stories, or the Instagram duel between Congress and BJP — what would it be?
Is there a new politics of the young that will survive, after young protesters' voices, amplified by social media, have faded? What is, really, the students' movement that speaks of education and jobs carving out new common ground and new solidarities, smudging the lines of a divided politics?
In a nation still carrying scars and silences of Partition, a version of the Mandir project — one that may well have been a retrospective add-on, post-2014, to airbrush an inherently violent and exclusionary story was about deconstructing a denial. It was to be about acknowledging the unaddressed challenge festering under slogans of "unity in diversity". This version of the Mandir project could, arguably, have led to a bottom-up reworking of religious co-existence from fear, prejudice and violence, to respect, pluralism and diversity. But a Hindutva leadership that sought to inflame and polarise, and the demolition in 1992 of the Babri Masjid, crushed that possibility even before there was a first place of a rebuilding.
The Mandal project oversaw the splitting of the polity into its constituent castes. In its best version, after applying social justice as balm and corrective, the outcome was to be the putting back together of a more equal society. But that was thwarted because the legitimising principle of social justice gave way to a proportional representation arithmetic — "jiski jitni sankhya bhaari..."
Vandita Mishra's argument is that Gen Z's protest can't survive on anger alone. The 90s solved Mandal vs Mandir by splitting and uniting. Mayawati's 'bhaichara' and Nitish's 'sushasan' tried to cross the divide, AAP tried school-hospital plus Hindutva, Modi 1.0 tapped "aspirational Hindutva". All are tired now. Prashant Kishor's pitch - ask what is best for children - and Vijay's abstract Tamil Nadu Dravidian politics are attempts to find a language beyond caste-religion. The Jantar Mantar youth moment showed unifying possibilities, but as NeXT atlas data shows, without a vocabulary for caste, shrinking minority space and federal strain, it will be outgunned by legacy. To endure, the young must learn to speak both new and old.