The contrast could not have been sharper. In Delhi, peaceful citizens agitating against the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) and demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, faced detention and a heavy police response. In Mumbai, the same protest was allowed to continue despite the police having denied permission. OSWALD PEREIRA reports
The police are expected to maintain public order. But in a democracy, they also have a more difficult responsibility: to protect citizens who exercise their right to protest, including when their protests are directed against the government or public institutions.
Recent events in Delhi and Mumbai have raised an important question about how that responsibility is being exercised.
A peaceful protest should not depend on the city in which it takes place. Yet recent events in Delhi and Mumbai have produced a striking contrast in the way the police dealt with citizens challenging those in power.
In Delhi, protesters demanding accountability about SIR were detained as they sought to assemble at Jantar Mantar. Those detained included All India Students’ Association (AISA) president Neha Bora, 29; senior lawyer and politician Kapil Sibal, 78; lawyer Prashant Bhushan, 69; and activist Yogendra Yadav, 63. More than 1,000 protesters were reportedly detained on October 2, with further detentions the following day.
This was not an isolated episode. Earlier protests by students over the NEET paper-leak controversy in July had also seen confrontational policing, including the use of water cannons, lathis and pellets.
The question is not whether the police have the authority to regulate demonstrations. They clearly do. The question is what happens when citizens exercise their right to criticise the government, the Election Commission or any other public institution.
Mumbai offered a refreshing contrast.
On October 2, the Cockroach Janta Party-led protest at Shivaji Park went ahead despite the Mumbai Police having denied permission. The gathering continued for more than four hours, with speeches, slogans and criticism of the Election Commission. The police did not respond with the kind of mass detention witnessed in Delhi. The Maharashtra government had adopted a “non-confrontational approach” to the demonstrations.
That does not mean Mumbai Police ignored the law. An FIR was subsequently registered against the organisers and hundreds of unidentified participants over alleged violations connected with the gathering.
But the crucial difference was in what happened during the protest.
The police allowed citizens to assemble, speak and make political demands, even though the police may pursue legal remedies afterwards. That is an important distinction in a democracy.
It would be easy to interpret the Mumbai approach as political accommodation. But there is another possibility, and it is worth considering: perhaps the police recognised that a protest can be politically uncomfortable without being a threat to public order.
That distinction matters.
A police force does not have to agree with a protest to protect it. It does not have to endorse the protesters’ demands to ensure that they can voice them. Its responsibility is to prevent violence, protect public safety and enforce the law—not to decide which political opinions deserve to be heard.
So why was Delhi different?
Part of the explanation may lie in the different administrative structures. Delhi Police comes under the Union Home Ministry, while Mumbai Police comes under the Maharashtra government. But institutional differences cannot justify different democratic standards.
The Constitution does not say that citizens in Delhi have fewer rights to dissent than citizens in Mumbai. Nor does it make the right to protest dependent on whether the police approve of the cause.
There will, of course, be circumstances in which the police must intervene. A protest that becomes violent, blocks essential services or threatens public safety cannot simply be allowed to continue. But peaceful dissent is not synonymous with disorder. Criticism of a government is not disorder. Demanding accountability over an examination paper or electoral rolls is not, by itself, disorder.
This is where the two faces of the police become significant.
The issue is not that Mumbai Police was necessarily being lenient. It may simply have been recognising the difference between maintaining public order and suppressing public dissent.
That is the standard by which policing in a democracy should be measured.
A democracy does not require the police to agree with protesters. It requires them to protect the protesters’ right to disagree.
The real test of police authority, therefore, is not how quickly a crowd can be dispersed or how many protesters can be detained. It is whether citizens can criticise those in power without being treated as a threat to the state.
Mumbai showed that political dissent can be managed without turning the police into the face of confrontation.
The question Delhi now leaves behind is a more fundamental one: when citizens raise their voices against power, should the police protect their right to be heard—or silence them first and explain the law later?
Oswald Pereira, a senior journalist, has written ten books, including The Vijay Revolution: People Power & the Politics of Hope, Beyond Autobiography of a Yogi, The Newsroom Mafia, Chaddi Buddies, The Krishna-Christ Connexion, How to Create Miracles in Our Daily Life and Crime Patrol: The Most Thrilling Stories. Oswald is a disciple of Paramhansa Yogananda, and practises Kriya Yoga.
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Some images are AI generated