NO KINGS! YES, DEMOCRACY!!

No crowns. No thrones. No kings. Fighting GOP overreach, oligarchy & power grabs. Join the stand.– No Kings.Org

Democracy and protest are inseparable twins. The right to dissent is not an act of defiance—it is the very heartbeat of a free society. The ability to question authority, to assemble peacefully, to demand accountability, and to speak truth to power is what separates democracy from autocracy. And yet, time and again, those who ascend to the highest seats of power through the winds of protest seem to develop an allergy to dissent the moment they assume office.

India’s political journey has been a study in this paradox. The Congress party, which once harnessed the power of peaceful protest to lead the nation’s freedom struggle, was quick to forget its Gandhian roots after independence. Having mastered Satyagraha as a weapon against colonial oppression, it began to fear and suppress the same tool when used against itself.

Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, had little patience for sustained protest once he was in power. He often preferred to ignore agitations, hoping they would fade away, or responded selectively when they could not be contained. But his government did not hesitate to use the machinery of the state to stifle dissent. Preventive detention laws were used to throttle the Communist movement; the Telangana peasants’ uprising was crushed with force; and the Press (Objectionable Matters) Act of 1951 sought to rein in independent media voices in the name of preserving national unity.

That Act, the first post-independence attempt to control the press, allowed the government to censor or financially penalise publications that dared to question it. Ironically, it echoed the same colonial laws India’s nationalists had fought so hard to dismantle. The law was repealed only after five years of protests, but it left behind a troubling precedent: the state’s instinct to control the narrative was already taking shape. Nehru’s daughter, Indira Gandhi, took this to another level. Through the early 1970s, she attempted to bring censorship in through the backdoor with the Bihar Press Bill, before imposing full-scale press control during the Emergency. That 21-month period remains one of the darkest chapters in India’s democracy. Over a hundred thousand people—political opponents, activists, journalists—were jailed simply for speaking up. The same party that had once preached liberty had now become its most efficient suppressor.

The Telugu-speaking people of India remember another cruel irony of the Nehru era—the Andhra agitation of 1952, during which Potti Sriramulu fasted to death for 56 days demanding a separate state for Telugu speakers. The government’s indifference until his death triggered mass unrest, forcing a reluctant Nehru to concede. Later, similar procrastination marked Congress responses to long-standing demands for a steel plant in Visakhapatnam and separate statehood for Telangana and Andhra, turning manageable protests into mass movements.

Lal Bahadur Shastri, who succeeded Nehru, briefly offered a gentler interlude. He faced the anti-Hindi agitations in Tamil Nadu and food riots in several states but chose negotiation over brute force. His short tenure remains one of the few examples of restraint in the face of public anger.

The Congress’s inability to engage constructively with protest reached its worst expression in the handling of the farmers’ and sharecroppers’ uprisings that gave birth to the Naxalbari movement in 1967. What began as a local struggle for land rights in West Bengal was met with brutal repression, eventually morphing into India’s longest-running internal insurgency. The tragedy of Naxalbari was not merely the violence that followed but the government’s failure to listen before anger turned into rebellion. No democratic system can justify violence, whether by the state or its citizens, but the refusal to address legitimate grievances remains a recurring point of discussion.

Fast forward to 2014. The Bharatiya Janata Party rose to power on the promise of a “Congress-mukt Bharat” — a nation free of corruption, nepotism, and arrogance. Many hoped that a party shaped by the trauma of the Emergency would naturally defend democratic values. The early rhetoric was filled with hope and confidence. But in the years since, that promise has steadily eroded.

The BJP has not only replicated the excesses of the Congress era—it has institutionalised them. Investigative agencies have become weapons against political rivals. Journalists, activists, and opposition leaders face raids, arrests, and intimidation. Sedition laws are invoked for tweets or speeches. The surveillance state has expanded into the digital realm, turning social media into a tool for both propaganda and persecution. The old slogan of “India is Indira and Indira is India” has found a modern echo in the cult of personality around the Prime Minister. Questioning the government is increasingly equated with attacking the nation. Even during the anti-corruption protests that helped bring down the UPA, no one in power had the audacity to label dissenters “anti-Indian.” That line has now been crossed with impunity.

Against this backdrop, the eruption of the “No Kings” movement in the United States offers a striking global parallel. On October 18, more than seven million Americans gathered at over 2,700 locations across all 50 states to declare one simple message: America has no kings, and power belongs to the people. It was both a warning and a reaffirmation — a collective cry against the creeping normalisation of authoritarianism.

The protests, sparked by deep frustrations over inequality, war policies, and government overreach, were disciplined and peaceful. Participants were guided by a code of conduct that explicitly banned weapons, called for de-escalation, and insisted on lawful behaviour. “A core principle behind all No Kings events is a commitment to nonviolent action,” the organisers declared. The clarity of purpose and restraint were reminiscent of the best traditions of civil resistance, from Gandhi to Martin Luther King Jr.

For many Americans, the movement represented a long-overdue pushback against concentrated power and the rise of personality-driven politics. One protester, Danielle Guinto, told CNN she joined the march so that her children would one day know she “stood on the right side of history.” Her reasons—anger over Gaza, healthcare inequities, and tax breaks for the wealthy—were specific, but the sentiment was universal: governments everywhere have grown deaf to the people who elect them.

India’s recent experiences mirror that same crisis of trust. The farmers’ movement that challenged the three farm laws was a landmark in modern Indian democracy—a year-long, disciplined, nonviolent campaign that forced the government to retract its own legislation. The farmers camped on Delhi’s borders through heat, rain, and cold, creating self-sufficient protest communities with kitchens, libraries, and medical tents. They faced relentless vilification from ruling party leaders and sections of the media, who painted them as separatists or anarchists. But the protestors countered propaganda with their own network of truth-tellers, using social media to bypass censorship. The farmers’ victory and the global resonance of No Kings show that peaceful resistance, when rooted in moral conviction and collective patience, still has the power to bend history. The success of both movements lies not merely in their outcomes but in their methods—the discipline, organisation, and clarity of message that disarmed their opponents.

Every protest, at its heart, is a plea for dialogue. It arises when governments stop listening. When dissent is dismissed as rebellion and criticism is painted as betrayal, democracy begins to hollow out from within. Both India and the United States, despite their vastly different political systems, now face a common question: are their leaders still willing to listen?

An old American saying asks, “Where were you when the lights went out?” In India, we have our own version: “Where were you during the Emergency?” These questions transcend time. They are not about the past—they are about conscience. They remind every generation that democracy demands not silence, but participation.

Protests are not threats to democracy; they are its oxygen. They keep governments accountable, awaken public conscience, and remind rulers that their power is borrowed, not owned. The danger lies not in the crowd that shouts, but in the ruler who stops hearing.

The “No Kings” movement, and India’s farmers’ uprising before it, have reignited a timeless truth—that people’s power, when channelled with courage and discipline, can still correct the course of nations. They stand as reminders that democracy is not a gift handed down by governments; it is a living, breathing compact between the governed and those who govern.

In the end, democracy survives not because of those who rule, but because of those who refuse to be ruled like subjects and suppressed. As long as citizens continue to rise, to march, to speak, and to say with conviction that there are no kings in a free land, the light of freedom—however dimmed by fear or fatigue—will never truly go out.

(The columnist is a Mumbai-based author and independent media veteran, running websites and a youtube channel known for his thought-provoking messaging.)