When India’s Gen Z-led protesters return to Delhi this weekend for demonstrations seeking the resignation of the country’s top election official, one of the prominent faces at the forefront will be that of a 29-year-old PhD student.
Neha Bora is a theatre artist and activist who has been with the All India Students’ Association (Aisa), a Left-wing organisation known for campus politics, for the past decade and been its president for the past two years.
But Neha’s – who uses “they” and “them” as personal pronouns – visibility is no longer limited to campuses.
Viral videos over the past few days show them being dragged through the street by a group of female police officials, climbing on top of police barricades, raising their fist and shouting slogans, and being detained.
Photos of them smiling while being carried away by policewomen have also gone viral.
In a recent BBC Bangla interview, Neha played down the attention they’ve been receiving.
“I know it happened in front of the camera so it seems like it’s something different,” they said. “But I have seen all student activists with the Left doing the same things that I have been doing. It’s just that there is a camera on me, so people think something different is happening.”
The attention on Neha comes at a time when several high-profile protests are being held on India’s streets in what is being seen as one of the biggest challenges to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 12 years in power.
There’s the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) – a Gen Z-led online satirical movement – that held weeks-long protests in Delhi in the summer over education reforms. It ended in July only after education minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation.
Separately, some of India’s opposition parties, especially the Congress, have also taken to the streets over electoral reforms. For the past few days, videos of Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra being shoved and jostled and detained have gone viral and made headlines in India.
Saturday’s protest in Delhi has been called by the CJP, which is seeking the resignation of India’s Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar over allegations of manipulating electoral rolls to favour Modi’s BJP. Both the Election Commission and the BJP have rejected the accusation.
Although not a member of the CJP, Neha has said their group would also participate.
