The ‘shirtless’ Youth Congress protest at the AI Summit in New Delhi has produced the kind of reactions that now arrive almost by reflex. Outrage. Mockery. Moral grandstanding. Within minutes, social media and hyper-ventilating prime time shows playing the visuals in a loop had delivered its verdict: the protest was “misguided,” “embarrassing,” even a “national shame.”
Let us begin with what should be obvious. It is perfectly legitimate to question the protest. One may see the choice of venue as odd, the symbolism as over-the-top, the politics as theatrical. Personally, I saw the protest as ‘poor form’ in the context of a major global AI Summit that has little to do with any political angst over an as yet unsigned Indo-US trade deal. But democratic debate is built on precisely such disagreement.
Not every protest is wise. Not every slogan is persuasive. Often, as most likely in this case, the protest is designed purely to capture eyeballs in a manic attention deficit media ecosystem that prioritises sensation over sense.
The ‘drama’ may seem inappropriate, even reckless. But there is a distinction that often gets lost in the noise: disliking a protest is not the same as de-legitimising the right to peacefully protest. So when the Delhi police cracked down on the non-violent protesters by arresting them and the Youth Congress president under non-bailable legal provisions, even accusing them of ‘conspiracy against the nation’, it was designed to have a chilling effect on all protests.
Interestingly, the Delhi police is only following a playbook perfected in Gujarat where Section 144 has been routinely invoked to prevent any public gatherings. In a 2025 order, the Gujarat High Court ruled that the Ahmedabad police’s repeated and continuous imposition of Section 144 amounted to ‘unjustified, non-transparent and constitutionally impermissible restrictions on citizens’ rights.’
In a sense, the Modi-Shah Gujarat model of coercive state power has gone national, now borrowed by several state governments across parties that brazenly use the local police as a weapon to harass and intimidate their political opponents. This ‘normalisation’ of punitive measures against any expression of dissent is ominous.
The shrinking of democratic spaces in public life is apparent. The Leader of the Opposition is heckled and not allowed to speak in Parliament on contentious issues. Parliament itself has become a notice board for government legislation to be rammed through. The mainstream media is mostly chained, unable or unwilling to raise inconvenient questions that will challenge the party in power. University campuses are now strictly policed: any expression of an alternative viewpoint is instantly branded ‘anti-national’.
Civil society itself is reluctant to challenge anyone in authority for fear of being targeted: actor Naseeruddin Shah was recently ‘disinvited’ to a Mumbai University event without an explanation or an apology only because he has been critical of the Modi government. From YouTubers to stand-up comedians, the fear factor can be overwhelming for many.
Democracy is not a system where only the sensible are allowed to speak. It is a system that protects the freedom to be noisy, inconvenient, excessive – even wrong. The real test of democratic maturity is not how we treat protests we agree with, but how we respond to those we find irritating or absurd.
And yet, the governing instinct is frequently the opposite. A protest disrupts traffic, unsettles an event or embarrasses authority. The administrative response is swift: detain, disperse, invoke the law. Arrest becomes less about public order and more about restoring optics. The problem arises when this instinct slides into overreach. Non-bailable charges are meant for serious offences, not as routine instruments to manage peaceful dissent. Their indiscriminate use sends a message far beyond those arrested. The signal is subtle but powerful: protest, and you may pay a disproportionate price.
India’s own history offers enough warnings. The Jayaprakash Narayan movement in the 1970s was dismissed by critics as chaotic and irresponsible. The state’s heavy-handed reaction in declaring an Emergency is what ultimately defined the moment. Democracies rarely gain strength by confusing dissent with disorder.
We have seen versions of this story play out repeatedly. Anti-corruption protests, citizenship law demonstrations, farmers’ agitations – each drew sharp criticism, sometimes justified. But the legitimacy of democracy required that the right to assemble and dissent remain intact. Democracies do not weaken because protests are flawed. They weaken when the space for protest shrinks.
Which brings us to the other favourite phrase of the week: “national shame.” A shirtless protest, we were told by none other than Prime Minister Narendra Modi, had somehow diminished India’s dignity. This is rhetorical inflation at its most dramatic. Democracies have always been theatres of symbolism. Black armbands, hunger strikes, silent marches, street plays – protest is rarely tidy or aesthetically pleasing. That is its nature. Recall how in 2004, 12 Manipur women disrobed in front of the Assam Rifles headquarters in Imphal against the killing of Manorama Thangjam, who was also allegedly raped. That one act shook India to the gravity of the crisis in Manipur at the time.
In this instance, ‘Shirtless’ (and pot-bellied) men running around on a global stage may be seen as juvenile, even as a political self-goal. But to elevate them into national humiliation is to stretch the phrase beyond meaning. The Indian Republic is not so fragile that its honour will collapse at the sight of political theatre.
More importantly, what truly constitutes national shame? Not spectacle, surely, but systemic failure. A preventable tragedy that claims lives. A custodial death that raises questions about the rule of law. Corruption that corrodes public trust. Communal violence that scars social harmony. Institutional breakdowns that deny justice. These are stains that linger. By contrast, a dramatic protest is, at worst, a fleeting image in the endless churn of politics – destined to be forgotten long before the next controversy arrives.
(Rajdeep Sardesai is senior
journalist and author.)
