Abhijeet Dipke, founder of the Cockroach Janta Party, has been mostly sitting on the makeshift stage at New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar as the exhaustion of a protest that has stretched on for over 24 hours catches up to him. When the protest started, he was constantly standing, motivating through songs, slogans and fiery interviews.
What hasn’t changed, however, is his determination to keep protesting, and not leave the protest site.
Within the span of two weeks, the site has seen two protests by the CJP, and two different versions of Dipke in these two protests. During the first protest, Dipke was seen leaving the stage and going back early, only to be convinced by his supporters and organisers to come back and keep the morale up.
This time, he stayed.
“I am not going anywhere until Dharmendra Pradhan resigns,” Dipke told The Telegraph Online. “If the Delhi police give me another protest site, I am happy to move there, but until he resigns, I will not stop protesting.”
This is a Dipke who is far more determined and steadfast than the version two weeks ago. He has also learnt the art of working the crowd. He did have a few protests across the country since the first CJP protest to pick up these skills.
This time he has managed to convince a chunk of his supporters to stay on and keep protesting, even after the permission has expired, at the face of heavy police presence and the imminent threat of being detained or lathi-charged by the police at any moment.
Ladakh activist Sonam Wangchuk has announced that he will sit on a hunger strike soon if Pradhan doesn’t resign.
“Don’t be scared. We will keep sitting here, whether we are lathi-charged or detained. But we will not stop protesting,” he kept telling the crowd.
The Delhi police on the other hand, took a far more sombre approach to dispersing the crowd before giving up on it altogether. As the clock struck 5pm on Saturday, which was the cut off time for the protest, scores of Delhi police personnel and the Rapid Action Force gathered to disperse the crowd.
They first made announcements asking people to leave, then closed in and dispersed most of the crowd. But around 70 of them stayed. Eventually the police gave up announcing or even dispersing.
“Let’s see when their patience runs out,” a Delhi policeman told The Telegraph Online. “We have shifts; once our shifts are done, someone else will come and take our place. What will they do?”
Well, they stayed. No food, no electricity, no water. But they stayed.
Dipke didn’t have much to offer in terms of speeches barring his initial speech. Since 5pm on Saturday, his time in front of the mic mostly consisted of chanting slogans, singing songs with the protesters, requesting them to not leave the protest, urging others to join and pleading with the Delhi police to restore electricity and allow access to drinking water.
The cops eventually complied.
Despite a significant decrease in online chatter about the CJP, the attendance at the protest on Saturday proved contrary. The hype was still there. However, during both the protests, most of the people in attendance were primarily there to show support for the cause. It was difficult to find someone at the protest directly affected by the paper leaks.
It wasn’t very hard to find out where most of the protesters came from, as they flouted their student organisation banners all across the protest site. However, it would be wrong to say that only student organisations showed up, because a good chunk of the attendance consisted of people from different age groups and backgrounds – from gig workers to parents to college students, the list was diverse.
Not to mention the number of media personnel and content creators present, too.
The learning over the course of two protests haven’t just been Dipke’s alone, but for the organisers too. The second protest at Jantar Mantar looked far better organised – free water was being distributed, carpets were laid out for people to sit, and the protesters were asked to bring steel plates and spoons to make noise.
Post 5pm on Saturday, while the attendance may have gone down significantly, the motivation and the noise didn’t. The slogans, the cheering, the singing, and the plate and spoon orchestra went on till almost midnight that day.
By 9am on Sunday morning, despite the protest being deemed “illegal” and the police not letting people enter the protest, over 100 people had turned up, and the mood was back to where it was on Saturday afternoon.
Dipke has nothing new to say today, nor does his colleagues, but they have managed to bring back the crowd, and keep them there.