India – RSF: Statement Against the Fascist State Repression Unleashed on the Anti-SIR Protesters and A Call to Militant Mass Movement Against SIR-NRC-CAA

We hereby share a statement by the Revolutionary Students’ Front (RSF), published on October 16.

The ongoing fascist state repression of the movement against the CEC and SIR has exposed the class character of the Indian state. To suppress the mobilisation demanding the scrapping of SIR and the resignation and arrest of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, the ruling Hindutva fascist BJP-RSS have turned Delhi into a militarised zone. On 10th October, authorities reportedly deployed around 41,000 police and paramilitary personnel, imposed Section 163 of the BNSS, suspended metro and express train services, delayed or cancelled flights, and shut down internet services. At least 10,000 people were detained, house arrested or prevented from reaching Jantar Mantar, while at least 7,000 were detained at the protest site. Protesters were brutally beaten, and countless women protesters also faced sexual assault by the police. Independent journalists, students, activists, YouTubers, content creators and actors were also detained. The state repression continued on 11th October, with further detentions of protesters and journalists covering the mobilisation. Journalists were manhandled and obstructed despite carrying press identification, while some reported that police seized or damaged their phones and equipment. By 12th October, at least 35 independent journalists had reportedly been detained. Those documenting and exposing state violence were themselves subjected to police action. On the same day Delhi Police removed Jantar Mantar from its list of designated protest sites, aiming to close a historic space for public dissent. CJP leaders Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka were arrested and sent to Tihar Jail for five days on charges of “trespassing” as they attempted to mobilise at Jantar Mantar. Protests by democratic student organisations and other groups against the crackdown were met with further state-sponsored violence. On 13th October, demonstrations involving NSUI, AISA and other organisations faced detentions and police brutality. The fascist state’s objective is clear : to break the movement through brutal force, intimidation and the criminalisation of collective resistance.

The ongoing state repression again proves Comrade Mao Tse Tung’s analysis to be correct, as in, “All reactionaries are paper tigers. In appearance, the reactionaries are terrifying, but in reality, they are not so powerful. From a long-term point of view, it is not the reactionaries but the people who are powerful.” In India too, state repression is used as a necessary instrument for preserving the existing status quo whenever the masses challenge it. The militarisation of Delhi, mass detentions, custodial violence, attacks on journalists and the closure of protest spaces are interconnected methods of suppressing dissent. The ruling Hindutva fascists seek not merely to disperse a gathering but to prevent people from organising, communicating, documenting repression and building a sustained movement. The removal of Jantar Mantar’s protest-site status is a direct attack on the people’s right to assemble. The streets belong to the people, not to the police and paramilitary forces deployed to silence and crush them.

This pattern is nothing new. During the anti-CAA-NRC movement, the state unleashed brutal police violence, mass arrests, internet shutdowns and criminal cases against protesters. During the farmers’ movement, barricades, heavy security deployments and restrictions on communication were used to obstruct resistance. Today, the same machinery is being deployed against the anti-SIR movement. The state uses propaganda to manufacture the image of an internal enemy, invoking public safety to discredit entire movements. No allegation of stone-pelting or injury to police personnel can justify indiscriminate violence, sexual assault, mass detention or the suppression of an entire movement. If people are being brutalised and facing militarisation, they will and must resist in a militant way.

The struggle against SIR is inseparable from the broader struggle against the NRC-CAA project, which threatens the voting rights and citizenship of millions. SIR alone has affected 13 crore people throughout India, mostly from marginalised communities and working-class backgrounds. It is a mass-scale disenfranchisement and state surveillance scheme targeting oppressed people, aimed at reducing them to second-class citizens stripped of democratic rights. Its consequences extend beyond voting rights; the exclusion of people from electoral rolls has been accompanied by the withdrawal of subsidised rations and welfare benefits, undermining their livelihoods and security. SIR must therefore be recognised as part of the broader NRC-CAA project, with the ongoing Census facilitating further population identification and classification. SIR identifies, excludes and surveils; NRC determines who is recognised as a citizen; and CAA 2019 selectively regularises exclusion in line with the Brahminical Hindutva fascist politics of the BJP-RSS. Together, these measures serve to institutionalise graded citizenship, with citizenship being weaponised for disciplining labour and turning those stripped of democratic rights into an exploitable, vast, disposable source of cheap labour. SIR, Census, NRC and CAA 2003 (which formulated the NRC scheme) must therefore be opposed as interconnected instruments of disenfranchisement, state surveillance and the political and economic subjugation of the masses.

We reject the illusion that the Indian state and its electoral institutions stand above class interests. India is a semi-feudal semi-colonial society in which imperialism and its agents, i.e. the comprador bourgeoisie and landlords, exercise power through the ruling parties. Elections cannot abolish this structure, nor can replacing one official or ruling party end the systematic suppression of the people. Therefore, our task is not to confine mass anger to the next electoral farce but to organise it into a militant mass movement. The fight for democratic rights must advance towards the establishment of a truly democratic India, that is, the New Democratic India.

We, the Revolutionary Students’ Front (RSF), unequivocally condemn the state terror unleashed against the anti-SIR movement. We demand the immediate release of all protesters detained for exercising their democratic rights, accountability and punishment for police personnel responsible for custodial violence and sexual assault, and the restoration of Jantar Mantar as a designated protest site. SIR-NRC-CAA and the ongoing Census must be scrapped. CEC Gyanesh Kumar must resign, be arrested, and a thorough judicial investigation must be conducted against him. We call upon all progressive, anti-fascist, democratic forces to come forward and build a united militant resistance against the fascist state repression and the fascist project of SIR-NRC-CAA. The answer to state terror is not retreat, but the organised militant resistance of the masses.