A common explanation of the student uprising that has just shaken the country focuses on the anger of the Gen Z at the pervasive unemployment that prevails, and the rampant corruption that leads to question paper leaks, and damages its prospects of getting even such employment as is available. This of course is correct; but it is insufficient. When a 15 year-old girl confesses that she came to Jantar Mantar after telling a lie to her mother, surely what agitates her is not just her own job prospects, but something deeper; likewise when the Gen Z agitation spreads spontaneously to numerous cities all across the country, something deeper is at stake, which the ruling party and government cannot even comprehend.

It is clearly not a political agitation; it clearly has no “leaders”. The Bharatiya Janata Party is adept at dealing with “leaders”, by dividing them, by defaming them, by corrupting them, by buying them up, and by threatening them with the Enforcement Directorate and the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act; had this agitation been led by “leaders” it would not have gone as far as it did. All the standard tricks of the ruling party were tried, but they failed miserably, since the movement did not depend on anyone’s “leadership”. Sonam Wangchuk’s breaking his fast made no difference to the agitation. Likewise, the visit by two members of the “Cockroach” Janata Party to Minister J.P. Nadda’s house to negotiate, did not go down well with the students; the fact that their disapproval prevented any further negotiations without prior stipulating of conditions, indicated the unconventional nature of the movement. It was not like usual movements with “leaders” acting on behalf of “followers”. In fact the students were united not behind “leaders” but on a set of (three) conditions, on which no compromise was allowed by them.

The fact that this movement aroused such pervasive and spontaneous support in such a short time was because of a deeper reason, namely, a disenchantment among the students and youth about the moral hollowness of the present regime. What united the vast crowds at Jantar Mantar was not just the bleak job prospects or the scourge of paper leaks; it was the fact that there was no accountability in the system, nobody to be held morally responsible for the system’s grotesque failures, which indicated a moral hollowness.

The demand for Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation was not because that resignation would rectify the problem of question paper leaks or fix a broken education system; every person present at Jantar Mantar knew that. The demand for his resignation was nonetheless made non-negotiable, because it was to overcome this moral hollowness, to ensure that someone in the political establishment, not just some bureaucrats or underlings, was made answerable for the exam fiasco; this is also why Modi’s promise of fast-track courts to deal with those responsible for question paper leaks fell so completely flat. It was in short a demand for ethical conduct that united the students and the youth, from the 15 year-old girl who had run away from home, to the intrepid young men and women who faced pellet guns.

Indeed a moral hollowness is at the core of the present regime, which has infected much of the polity with it. From disenfranchising millions of voters who it believes may vote against it, and that too by using an Election Commission whose formation itself is through a process that is immoral (it is formed essentially by the Prime Minister and one of his nominees), to making election results themselves irrelevant by buying up or threatening elected opposition members to change sides and join the ruling party, it has been playing out a veritable charade in the name of democracy. The students and youth were expressing themselves against this charade. While much of the ‘godi’ (lapdog) media has been applauding this charade, and vast numbers of people, aware of this charade, have been terrorised into silence over it, the students have shown the gumption to openly oppose it. The lampooning of the Modi cult through posters and cartoons was an obvious expression of this opposition; and it had the effect of freeing lots of people from the paralyzing fear that had been gripping them.

In fact the police brutality, the pellet guns, the nailed lathis, the tear gas, and the apparently senseless insistence on Dharmendra Pradhan’s continuation as education minister, were all designed to perpetuate that very fear in people’s minds, to perpetuate the impression that this government does not budge. It aimed once again to atomise people, to break them into monads, so that each person continues to believe in his or her own ineffectiveness and is persuaded that the government enjoys such strong support that it remains invincible.

This moral hollowness is indeed a hallmark of all fascist regimes. The Nazi movement in Germany in the 1930s which began by fulminating against monopoly capital even while being surreptitiously aided by some monopolists, made a deal with it on coming to power. To effect this deal it even massacred large numbers of its own supporters who were led by Ernst Rohm, in the “Night of Long Knives”; from the moral high ground of being anti-monopoly, it shifted to the moral hollowness associated with an alliance with monopoly capital. The neo-fascists of today make an open deal with monopoly capital, especially with a newer segment of it, even before coming to power; and such a deal which gives a license to loot to the monopolists necessarily gives rise to a moral hollowness.

Goebbelsian propaganda would not be needed by the fascists if such hollowness did not exist. And in India Bollywood actors would not be pressurized (as one of them has admitted) into singing ditties like “Modi hai to mumkin hai” if the regime did not have moral hollowness at its core that had to be covered up in this manner.

Students in fact are the one social group that is ideally positioned to contest this moral hollowness. They are innocent, idealistic, informed, thoughtful, and intrepid, with a strong commitment towards and respect for ethical conduct; all these qualities equip them with the capacity to fight against the moral hollowness of regimes that thrive by cynically manipulating people through Goebbelsian propaganda. By the same token however their success in imposing a semblance of ethical behaviour in one instance, as at present, does not signify any change in the system, any more than trapping a leopard can be a precursor to changing its spots.

The students’ demands did not incorporate any change in the system or any institutional change; had they done so, it would have led to much discussion and not spread so rapidly or spontaneously across the country. The contrast here with the kisan agitation is quite striking. Since that was a class agitation in defence of the interests of a basic class, as distinct from an agitation to enforce ethical conduct, its demands were necessarily institutional, to roll back the institutional changes being enacted at the behest of imperialism that presides over a neo-liberal order into which Indian monopoly capital is thoroughly integrated. In the current instance there has been no question of any institutional changes being effected, which is why the neo-fascist regime, having suffered a setback to its image and to the atmosphere of terror it had so assiduously built up, would work overtime to recover lost ground.

It would do so in the days to come by strengthening religious appeals to the majority community, by creating communal incidents, by provoking international incidents on the border (though this last device becomes more difficult with Donald Trump’s penchant for intervening in South Asian affairs), and by attempting to co-opt, or in other ways diminish, the “leadership” (in term of which alone it can perceive movements) of the student agitation.

The student agitation however has played a sterling role in exposing the shenanigans of neo-fascism, above all its cynical use of communalism; in puncturing the myth of the infallibility of the “supreme leader”; and in breaking the atmosphere of terror that had gripped the country for so many years. It has opened the way for a political challenge to neo-fascism that can now be mounted.