The demonstrations have been met with a heavy-handed response from Indian authorities, who locked down the capital, New Delhi, and detained leaders of the burgeoning Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), a youth-led movement that emerged earlier this year. An Indian court on Monday extended the detention of two Cockroach movement leaders, Ashutosh Ranka and Saurav Das.
The movement proved itself a powerful force in Indian politics this summer when it successfully campaigned for the removal of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, who resigned on July 25.
To discuss the protests and what they mean, TIME spoke with Mukul Kesavan, a historian, novelist, and one of India’s best-known writers.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Q: What are these protests actually about? Are they a natural progression from the Cockroach movement’s earlier protests, or something different?
MK: It’s related to the Cockroach movement (CJP) sit-in at Jantar Mantar [a traditional site of protest in the Indian capital] that led to the resignation of the education minister, in that the sit-in created a space for dissent by making Modi’s government back down. But [the Oct. 12 march] was distinct because it was organized by the Congress Party along with other conventional political parties. The CJP had no hand in organizing it, though one of its progressive/left stars, Neha Bora, participated in the march to the Supreme Court. It was also about a distinct issue: the Election Commission’s fiddling with voter rolls.