India: Young protesters clash with parents loyal to ruling party amid education reform unrest

New Delhi, India – When Kunal Choudhary left Ludhiana in Punjab on July 14 to join Gen Z-led protests in New Delhi, he knew it was nearly a one-way trip, with little chance of returning home anytime soon.

Choudhary, 19, a law student at a private university in Jalandhar, another Punjab city, was among tens of thousands who flocked to the capital to demand education reform after a key medical entrance exam paper was leaked. The incident led to the suicides of more than 20 candidates and sparked nationwide outrage.

The unprecedented challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 12-year government forced Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan to resign and the administration to order an overhaul of the entrance exam, exposing cracks in the seemingly invincible aura of the BJP-led government. Meanwhile, similar protests have continued in other parts of the country.

Deepening family disputes

Choudhary's journey to the New Delhi protests differed from many others. Even after the protest coordination center was cleared and members of the People's Party of Justice (CJP), the satirical online group behind the 36-day protests, announced a halt following Pradhan's resignation on July 25, Choudhary stayed put, saying his life had changed irrevocably. He even celebrated his 19th birthday with fellow protesters and strangers a few days before the protests were called off.

“My father is a BJP and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh [RSS] member, and I used to be an RSS member until I left home for Delhi. I missed my final semester exam because it clashed with the protests. But that was unavoidable. I couldn't sit idle and watch the world around us collapse.”

The RSS is the BJP's ideological parent, a right-wing organization. Founded in 1925 on the model of fascist parties in Europe, this secretive paramilitary outfit runs dozens of Hindu groups with the common goal of turning a constitutionally secular India into a Hindu state. Its most visible activities are weekly neighborhood meetings where men, often in white shirts and khaki shorts, engage in martial arts drills and receive ideological indoctrination.

The RSS, headquartered in Nagpur, Maharashtra, was banned by the government after one of its alleged members assassinated independence icon Mahatma Gandhi in 1948. The ban was lifted the following year, and the organization launched its political wing, the Bharatiya Jan Sangh, in 1951, which became the BJP in 1980. Today, the RSS boasts millions of lifelong members in India and abroad, including Modi and most senior BJP leaders.

“They only teach how to hate Muslims”

Choudhary's father, Jeevan Choudhary, a businessman, has been a lifelong RSS member. The younger Choudhary reluctantly inherited this legacy, having “never really wanted it.”

“They don't teach you anything useful. They only teach how to hate Muslims and Dalits,” he said. Dalits are India's most marginalized caste group, historically treated as “untouchables” until the Indian constitution formally abolished the practice. Discrimination and even violence against the community persist nonetheless.

Choudhary said the biggest issue his family had with the CJP-led movement was that people “don't care about caste, religion, or class – people come together, sit next to each other, and share food.”

“Their brains cannot comprehend something like that,” he said, citing Mohammad Junaid, a Muslim man who appeared in dozens of viral videos serving free food and water to protesters at Jantar Mantar.

A video of Choudhary also went viral on social media during the protests, in which he spoke about the government's alleged corruption and his background as the son of a BJP worker and a former RSS member.

“After my parents watched the video, my father asked me not to say anything wrong about the BJP and RSS. But I said nothing wrong about them. I've experienced this my whole life,” he said.

Choudhary speaks regularly with his parents but has no desire to return home. “The gap between how I see the world and how the people I grew up with see it has become too wide.” He plans to find a telemarketing job to cover expenses and then enroll in a distance-learning course to complete his law degree. He says his mother “quietly supports” him, but returning home anytime soon is out of the question.

He is currently staying at a gurdwara near Jantar Mantar. The Sikh temple opened its doors to everyone during the protests.

“I haven't gone hungry for a single day. Now that the protests are over, finding shelter and food is harder. My wallet, containing some money and ID papers, was stolen, so I have no money left.”

“Don't answer calls from friends at home”

Priya Singh's father, a BJP loyalist, threatened to beat her when she decided to join the Jantar Mantar protests.

“When I went there, I covered my face so my father wouldn't recognize me from photos or videos that I was there because I even told him I would be shouting anti-Modi slogans,” the 24-year-old told Al Jazeera.

Singh's 55-year-old father works for a security firm and holds a “blind faith” in the BJP. When she showed him a video of a police officer sexually assaulting a female protester, her father defended the authorities.

“He said they shouldn't have gone there in the first place because the government had asked them not to protest,” Singh said. “When I said peaceful protest is our constitutional right, he said that doesn't matter. He even said those women who were seriously injured in the protests deserved it because they didn't listen or inform their parents and went to protest.”

Singh is a second-year research scholar at Jamia Millia Islamia University, a centuries-old secular institution founded by Muslims.

“I took the Jamia Millia entrance exam without telling anyone at home and even enrolled in the course without informing them,” she said, adding that her father was upset when she joined an institution whose Urdu and Arabic name means National Islamic University.

“He said the people there would treat me badly and try to convert me to Islam. But he couldn't do anything since I had already enrolled. Now, when I go home, I don't mention my friends or classes to my family. I don't even answer calls from friends when I'm at home,” she said over the phone from the university library.

“Why does she like being beaten?”

About 10 kilometers from Singh is Anjali, 25, a humanities research scholar at Delhi University, who goes by one name.

Born and raised in Bihar, one of India's poorest states, she spent her early years under the “scrutiny of a hot-tempered father” who discriminated between her and her younger brother by neglecting her education and social life while doing the opposite for her brother.

Not just staunch BJP supporters, her parents are also RSS members. Anjali, on the other hand, is a student leader with the All India Students' Association (AISA), the student wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), or CPIML.

Anjali said her turn to left-wing activism was gradual. She started as a Modi fan, but by 2018, the year she stopped taking financial support from her family, something shifted inside her, and she moved to the opposition, joining AISA. She also ran as the presidential candidate for a left-wing coalition in last year's Delhi University Students' Union elections.

Anjali said her mother occasionally watches her give interviews on television news channels. “She'll call and tell me she liked my speech. She's not someone allowed to have her own opinions and hasn't had much education. But my father has a master's in political science and is a learned man. I avoid talking to him whenever I can.”

Still, her parents dismiss her politics, “using every trick to shame me, make me feel inferior, confuse me, and beg me not to waste my life.”

When the Jantar Mantar protests began, her mother often asked where she was. “I'd lie that I was busy studying or working. She'd say she saw me on TV or social media,” Anjali laughed.

On July 20, the day protesters marched to parliament, her mother called in tears, asking if she had been injured in the police baton charge.

“She said she saw what the police did and asked if I was okay. I wasn't. I suffered a ligament injury after the police assault,” Anjali said. While on the phone with her mother, she heard her father comment.

“He said, 'I told you this regime will crush you, and they will spare no one. Why does she like being beaten? Did we raise her just to be beaten?' He also said he knows he's part of this regime, and it has dirty, powerful, and wealthy people, and if anyone tries to change them, they'll be crushed,” Anjali recalled.

Sometimes her father tries to placate her, asking her to convince him of her decisions, but ultimately concludes she's wasting her life on “fake protests” that will lead nowhere.

So when Minister Pradhan resigned, Anjali anticipated the usual dismissive reactions from her parents. But her mother, to her surprise, was joyful, almost proud of what her daughter had been part of. “A historic moment,” Anjali recalled her mother saying. “She said it may have taken time for us to get here, but we proved we could do it.” As for her father, Anjali said he remains silent on the matter, and she continues to ensure they don't meet.

“Seems like you've become a patriot”

Neha Bora is a prime example of how the recent protests have deeply impacted family relationships in India. Bora, 29, is the national president of AISA, the group Anjali is also part of. A research scholar at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, Bora was one of the protesters who fasted for 23 days. Since the protests, she has emerged as one of the most vocal Gen Z critics of the Modi government.

In a recent interview with journalist Barkha Dutt, Bora revealed that her parents – a father who is an army officer and a homemaker mother – are BJP supporters and not “kind” to her left-leaning activism. However, despite their differences, her mother traveled from Bareilly, a city in Uttar Pradesh about 300 kilometers east of New Delhi, to Jantar Mantar after learning of her fast. She even congratulated her daughter when Pradhan resigned.

Prafulla Ketkar, editor of Organiser, the RSS's English weekly, attributes the breakdown of “intergenerational communication channels” in families to several factors. First, grandparents, who serve as a “natural buffer between children and parents,” the disciplinarians, are absent in today's nuclear families. Second is the use of social media.

“Four people live under one roof but essentially talk to four different people on their phones. Everyone is absorbed and shaped by social media conversations that serve their own viewpoints, so they get trapped in echo chambers, leading to a breakdown in intergenerational dialogue,” Ketkar told Al Jazeera, adding that this is also why the RSS encourages family dialogue.

However, he does not view the recent protests as anything unusual. “My problem is not that the government will always be the government, and the police will always be the police. I agree with that. But the issue is, this is happening because of a specific government – that kind of argument is problematic.”

Meanwhile, Anubhav Sengupta, associate professor of sociology at the Manipal Centre for Humanities in the southern state of Karnataka, argues that while older generations have a “more pragmatic approach to socio-political issues, student movements tend to be value-based.” He cited the education reform demands as an example.

“Whether these new but fragmented ideological interpretations will develop into a critique of the ruling establishment remains to be seen, and how older generations will react to it,” he told Al Jazeera.

Sengupta said the protests have sparked “the possibility of ideological dialogue from within.” “In the past, we've seen left or liberal politics confront right-wing ideology. However, the form of that confrontation was 'us' versus 'them.' But in the current protest, we see the slogan 'Jai Shri Ram' ['Victory to Lord Ram'] confronting 'Inqilab zindabad' ['Long live the revolution'] right within the movement's space,” Sengupta said.

Back at the Sikh gurdwara near Jantar Mantar, Choudhary wrestles with similar concerns. He wonders why his parents continue to support a party that, in his view, will find the “next excuse to divide and rule once Muslims are out of the way.”

“Then they'll ask Brahmins not to socialize with lower castes. Then something else. This cycle never ends. And when I ask my parents about all this, they say they just have to support BJP and they can't do anything else. What can you say to that?” he asked.

Choudhary said he recently met an RSS member in New Delhi who had seen his viral video. “I asked him why RSS leaders can't come to New Delhi and ask the government to mend its ways, since they run the BJP.” In response, he told me: 'Seems like you've become a deshbhakt [patriot]. We are not deshbhakt. We have our jobs, and we'll keep doing that.'”

That, Choudhary said, was reassurance enough that he made the right decision. “I can't think like them. They are the bad guys, and I can't live peacefully with them. For me, that's enough.”