Kolkata: I had taken the train from Bagha Jatin to Sealdah to join the rally called by the left student and youth groups and CJP. Soon the carriage I occupied began to echo with slogans of a kind I had never heard before. They were raw, politically incorrect, unfiltered. In that moment I understood I had stepped into an experience entirely new to me.
The precincts of Sealdah station were so densely thronged that movement became a struggle. Friends were lost in the press within moments. Even after half an hour, the crowds continued to swell. Caught in the heart of the procession, I had to jostle constantly to hold my ground. The energy was electric, undeniable.
Schoolchildren in uniform walked beside their parents; others carried handmade placards and posters scrawled with irreverent wit. I watched them closely, this vast, unprecedented sea of people for whom no simple explanation of numbers seemed possible. Long after we reached Esplanade, the march kept pouring in, wave upon wave, for another hour or more.
From Instagram Reels to Kolkata’s Biggest Student March
What lingered most was the mood. The gestures and rhythms spoke volumes about the politics of this gathering. These participants had learned their craft from Instagram reels and the theatre of Jantar Mantar. Slogans collided freely: Inquilab Zindabad blending into Bande Mataram and Bharat Mata ki Jai; calls for resignation mingling with Modi shaala bharwa hai, Desh bachao, Modi hatao, and of course their disdain for godi media, along with the sharp couplets on fear and division. Traditional left slogans fell flat, unanswered.
These were mostly first-timers, their chants forged in the glow of mobile screens.
Everywhere one saw gestures lifted straight from those digital reels. Packets of ORS and water were offered at corners, strangers fanned fellow marchers, Melody toffees passed hand to hand, even mocking demands for the police to deploy their water cannons. I saw a boy cleaning the Esplanade with meticulous care, a discipline absorbed from YouTube and Instagram. There was a mood of festivity and irreverence that was hard to miss. One of my students attending her very first rally summed it up perfectly: “It’s a rally for a serious cause by not-so-serious people.” That was true. They mocked the regime but did not take themselves too seriously. The memes and posters were political yet funny, the kind I had never seen before in any rally in Kolkata. After the rally was over, nobody left the Esplanade crossing. They made it their own space, shouting slogans, socialising, and quietly taking over the centre of the city.
In these small acts lay a quiet chronicle of how politics was being remade.
This Wasn’t Just a Rally. It Was a Generational Revolt
Yet the central question remained: who were these people, and how had they turned out in such staggering numbers? A rally called at such short notice had drawn crowds far beyond what the left student organisations, who led the march, could have mobilised on their own. They were vastly outnumbered by students who had come independently.
Demographically, 90 per cent or more belonged to the age group of 15 to 20. They seemed to possess their own ecosystem, one that made this turnout possible. Slogans learned, memes generated. I guess that there was scarcely a school or college in Kolkata from which at least one group had not joined. They were treating the protest as a trend they could not afford to miss. When was the last time student anger against a regime had become both trendy and hip? I have no answer.
In their incoherence and irreverence lay a deep yearning for politics, a language and ethos that needed to be understood, distilled, and carried back to them by those serious about the craft. As an old man once said: from the people, and to the people.
When one stands in the midst of something historic, its full significance can be easy to miss. Yet there is unmistakably a pan-Indian upsurge underway, a generation that has known only one kind of ruling-class politics and is now thoroughly tired of it.
Let that sink in
