Calm amid chaos: Protest, police, peace & harmony

The July 20 protest near Jantar Mantar and Tolstoy Lane brought a massive crowd face to face with heavy police deployment in a confined area. Despite the pressure and allegations under verification, the episode has renewed focus on restraint, dialogue and public civility.

In Short

• Independent estimates put the crowd at 1 to 1.3 lakh people
• About 5,000 police personnel managed the gathering in a cramped area
• Injuries stayed limited, with most treated and discharged the same day

In the heat of public protest, it is easy to forget a simple truth: police personnel and protesters alike are human beings first. They come from the same society, by and large, and carry the same range of temperaments — humble and assertive, spiritual and pragmatic — and share the same capacity for both restraint and impulse. The events of July 20 near Jantar Mantar and Tolstoy Lane offered a vivid reminder of this shared humanity and of the quiet strength that restraint can still command in a polarised moment.

Independent estimates place the gathering at roughly 1 to 1.3 lakh people. Against this, some 5,000 personnel in uniform were deployed. The organisers themselves had given an undertaking that the numbers would remain below 1,000. The topography of the area cannot comfortably accommodate far larger crowds, and the absence of adequate loudspeakers limited the organisers’ ability to maintain clear channels of communication. Yet, despite the scale and the pressures of a confined space, there was no loss of life despite a stampede-like situation. Grievous injuries remained in single digits on both sides; one young woman required intensive care but has since been shifted to a normal ward and is out of danger. Most people were discharged on the same day, though a few police personnel suffered fractures. Simple injuries numbered around 200 on each side — less than 0.5 per cent of those present. These figures are not trivial. They reflect an overwhelming majority, among both protesters and police, who chose peace over aggression under extraordinarily challenging and confrontational circumstances.

This collective restraint deserves recognition. As a society, we demonstrated a high degree of adherence to the indigenous principles of ahimsa, karuna and shanti. More than 99 per cent of those present, regardless of the side they stood on, remained pro-peace. That is no small achievement in a charged atmosphere. It affirms that the deeper values of compassion and self-control continue to shape public conduct even when tempers run high.

At the same time, an unplanned and rapidly expanding crowd rarely functions with the coherence of individual reason. Once a gathering gains strength, elements within it — or outside it — may introduce disorder, vandalism or attempts to breach secured spaces. Parliament is not a public park. Established procedures exist for citizens to enter its premises with dignity and witness the working of democratic institutions. An uncontrolled influx of such magnitude would have tested the limits of order in ways that no responsible society should welcome. Managing such a situation requires circumstantial judgement from the police, who, being human, are not immune to the instinct of self-preservation under perceived threat. The force itself mirrors the diversity of the society from which it is drawn; it is neither monolithic nor angelic.

Both sides, therefore, share responsibility for maintaining harmony. Communication, mutual awareness and disciplined conduct cannot be the duty of one party alone. We must ruminate on root causes, mental frameworks, psychological triggers and patterns of hostility. Where video footage, still under verification, appears to show the use of pellet guns or the crossing of basic decency — particularly the use of vulgar abuse directed at the departed mother of a public figure — society must pause. Because loss is both intellectual and moral. Criticism of policies and institutions is protected expression. Gratuitous insults directed at those who never hold any public office and bear no responsibility for the grievance at hand diminish the quality of public discourse.

What is needed now is not further polarisation but the cultivation of what B.R. Ambedkar, drawing on John Dewey, called social endosmosis: the free and open flow of ideas, differences and perspectives across opposing groups. We must approach one another as tabula rasa in the empiricist sense of John Locke — without fixed preconceptions, willing to examine evidence, reason and circumstance afresh. Positions should be reached through logic and openness, not defended after the fact. Reason, debate and the democratic processes of bargaining and negotiation must remain the preferred instruments of change.

Here, the Buddhist notion of the Middle Path offers practical guidance: neither passive surrender nor aggressive confrontation, but finely measured, well-calibrated and meticulously crafted engagement. This reminds us to seek the logic that favours the opponent’s perspective and to keep open the possibility of revising our own. In families where one member may serve in uniform and another join a protest, the conflict is often intra-familial. Treating fellow citizens as members of an extended family makes dialogue not merely desirable but natural.

Violence in movements has, in many democracies, sometimes forced concessions. That pattern sets a dangerous precedent: it teaches future mobilisations that force yields results faster than patient negotiation. The battlefield must remain one of ideas, opinions and mental propositions, not of physical bodies. Cultivating non-violence through intellectual labour — beginning in schools — is essential so that, even amid chaos, minds remain free of aggression.

In a democratic republic, every citizen is, in a sense, a policeman without a uniform, and every policeman a citizen in uniform. Both roles demand the same underlying virtues: restraint, fairness and a commitment to the constitutional order. Emotionally charged binaries serve no one. The path forward lies in dialogue, in the democratic processes of bargaining and negotiation, and in the steady recovery of a public culture that prizes reason, mutual recognition and peace, as well as an egalitarian and just order.

The events of July 20 showed that such a culture is still within reach. The task now is to deepen it — through honest self-examination, open conversation and a shared refusal to let hostility define our common life.

The conduct of every individual in the public sphere should be of such a character that it naturally inspires the other person to respond with kindness, humility and a spirit of harmonious brotherhood. Every human being carries within themselves two opposing sets of virtues. The first embodies peace, compassion, harmony, sensitivity, love and empathy. The second consists of aggression, violence, retaliation, ferocity and the instinct for brute dominance.

Our behaviour, body language, demeanour and even the subtle emotional energy we radiate should be so balanced, dignified and compassionate that they gently awaken the nobler virtues in others while allowing their harsher impulses to remain dormant. The highest form of human conduct is not merely to display virtue ourselves, but to evoke virtue in those around us — silently, effortlessly and without coercion. Perhaps, in this way, we can cultivate our collective consciousness so that we do not abandon basic civility even for a moment.

- Ends
Vipul Anekant is Additional Deputy Commissioner with Delhi Police and was on the spot at the time of the events described. These are his personal views.