New Delhi, India – When Kunal Choudhary left Punjab's Ludhiana city on July 14 to join the Gen Z-led protests in New Delhi, he knew it was in effect a one-way ticket with little possibility of returning home in the foreseeable future.
Choudhary, 19, a law student at a private university in Jalandhar, another city in Punjab, was among tens of thousands of people who streamed into the national capital to demand education reforms after papers for a key medical entrance test were leaked, leading to more than 20 aspirants dying by suicide and causing widespread anger across the country.
The unprecedented challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 12-year rule forced the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and an overhaul of entrance exams ordered by the government, exposing cracks in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government's aura of invulnerability. Meanwhile, similar protests continue in other parts of the country.
Choudhary's journey to join the protests in New Delhi was unlike many others. His father is a BJP and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) member, and Choudhary himself was an RSS member until he left home. "I missed my final semester exams because they clashed with the protests," he told Al Jazeera.
The RSS, founded in 1925 on the lines of fascist parties in Europe, is the BJP's far-right ideological mentor. It aims to turn a constitutionally secular India into a Hindu state. Members participate in weekly meetings with martial drills and indoctrination.
Choudhary's father, Jeevan Choudhary, a businessman, has never known a life outside RSS. Young Choudhary inherited the legacy unwillingly, as his "heart was never really into it". He says the RSS "doesn't teach you anything useful. They only tell you how to hate Muslims and Dalits."
Choudhary said his family's biggest problem with the CJP-led movement was that people "didn't care about caste, religion or social strata – that everyone came together, sat side by side, and ate". He cited the example of Mohammad Junaid, a Muslim who served free food and water to protesters.
A video of Choudhary went viral during the protests, in which he talked about allegations of government corruption and revealed his background as a BJP worker's son and erstwhile RSS member. After seeing it, his father asked him not to say anything wrong about the BJP and RSS, but Choudhary insists he said nothing wrong.
Choudhary now lives at a gurdwara near Jantar Mantar. He plans to find a job as a telemarketer and complete his law degree through distance learning. He says his mother has been "quietly supportive", but going home any time soon is not an option.
Priya Singh, 24, faced threats of physical violence from her father when she decided to join the protests. She covered her face to avoid recognition. Her father, a security firm employee, defended the police even when shown videos of sexual assault on a female protester.
Singh says her father argued that protesters "shouldn't have been there in the first place because the government had asked them not to protest". He even said that women who were gravely injured "deserved that because they hadn't listened to or informed their parents".
Anjali, 25, a postgraduate student at Delhi University, grew up in Bihar. Her parents are staunch BJP supporters and RSS members, but she is a student leader with the All India Students Association (AISA), the campus wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist). She gradually shifted to leftist activism and stopped taking financial help from home in 2018.
Anjali says her mother sometimes secretly watches her TV appearances. Her father, who has a master's in political science, dismisses her politics, "using every trick in the book to shame her, guilt her, embarrass her and implore her to stop wasting [her] life".
On July 20, during the police baton charge, her mother called in tears, asking if she was injured. Her father commented, "I told her this regime will crush her, and they won't spare anyone. Why does she like getting beaten up? Did we raise her only to get thrashed?"
After Pradhan's resignation, Anjali's mother was surprisingly proud. "A historical moment," she said. "She said that it might have taken time for us to get here, but we proved that we could do it." Her father has remained silent on the matter.
Neha Bora, 29, national president of AISA, went on a 23-day hunger strike during the protests. Her parents – an army officer father and homemaker mother – are BJP supporters, but her mother traveled to Jantar Mantar to support her and congratulated her on Pradhan's resignation.
Sociologist Anubhav Sengupta says the protests have sparked "a possibility of ideological conversation from within". He notes that older generations adopt a "more practical approach to sociopolitical issues", while student movements "often tend to be value-based".
Choudhary, meanwhile, wonders why his parents continue to support a party that, according to him, will find the "next reason to divide and rule once Muslims are out of their way". He recently met an RSS member who told him, "You seem to have become a deshbhakt [patriot]. We aren't deshbhakts. We have our jobs cut out for us, and we will continue to do that."
For Choudhary, that was reassurance enough that he had made the correct decision. "I can't think like them. They are goons, and I can't live peacefully around them. This is it for me."
Source: www.aljazeera.com