In recent weeks, New Delhi and other Indian cities have witnessed massive anti-government demonstrations and flash protests demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, over allegations of manipulating voter rolls to benefit the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

To prevent students and youth from gathering, the BJP government has used intimidation and force. In addition to arresting protesters, it has heavily barricaded roads, shut down metro stations, and deployed tens of thousands of police and paramilitary personnel, including the Delhi Police, Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), Border Security Force, Indo-Tibetan Border Police, and Sashastra Seema Bal.

Several of these forces are normally deployed along India’s borders or in insurgency-wracked regions. For example, the CRPF companies deployed in the Delhi protests were shifted from former Maoist strongholds in Chhattisgarh and parts of militancy-hit Jammu and Kashmir. In Delhi, these paramilitary forces are being used against unarmed youth activists of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), the All India Students’ Association, and other leftist organizations.

What makes the government’s crackdown particularly reprehensible is that un-uniformed men are being allowed to assault the protesters. These are not isolated incidents; several young women and men have come forward with horrifying accounts of the violence they faced at the hands of these thugs.

Importantly, these men are unleashing violence in full view of the police. They have the blessings of the ruling dispensation.

Photographs and videos circulating on social media show men sporting saffron scarves — saffron is the color of the Sangh Parivar, a family of Hindutva-espousing organizations, of which the BJP is a part — shouting slogans in support of the Narendra Modi government, chasing young men and women, dragging them and beating them up mercilessly with sticks. They are brazen about their violence, describing their victims as “anti-national elements” who “deserve to be thrashed.”

“Delhi Police tum lath bajao, hum tumhare saath hain” (Delhi Police, you wield the baton, we are with you), they chant, egging on the police to beat the protesters.

The police and paramilitary personnel in whose presence the vigilantes acted took no action to force them off the streets. None of them was packed into police vans the way unarmed students were dragged and pushed into buses.

A video filmed during the crackdown on October 10 in central Delhi showed goons beating up young men and women, even minors. When a woman intervened on a male victim’s behalf, the goons can be seen falling upon her, pushing her to the ground, and pulling at her clothes. All this was done in the presence of at least one policeman. The footage showed a policeman eventually intervening, but he did so not to stop the assault or restrain the assailant and detain him, but to lead him away rather gently.

The video triggered anger and outrage in India, forcing the police to eventually detain four men — Raman Saini, Vivekanand alias Vivek, Kapil Kumar, and Ravinder Singh alias Govind Hindu — of the Hindu Raksha Dal (HRD) or Hindu Protection Organization.

Admitting that the four were members of his organization, HRD chief Bhupendra Singh Tomar aka Pinky Bhaiyya described them as “warriors” who were “working for Sanatan Dharma” (literally, universal truth i.e., Hinduism). In an interview with Outlook magazine, Tomar justified the violence they unleashed at the October 10 protests. The CJP activists “tried to vitiate the atmosphere in the country” during the protests at Jantar Mantar in July. “We will deal with these people who are resorting to violence, and we will set them straight. We take pride in our actions, and we will continue to do so,” Tomar said.

Founded in 2013, the Hindu Raksha Dal is among dozens of vigilante groups that have mushroomed under Modi’s rule. They have thrived under the Sangh Parivar’s patronage. Their activists cannot be dismissed as mere street gangs. They are the Sangh Parivar’s foot soldiers and unleash violence to further its Hindutva agenda. Outfits like the HRD and the Bharatiya Gau Raksha Dal (Indian Cow Protection Organization) freely engage in violence as they enjoy state protection.

HRD activists are rarely convicted or punished. Saini, Vivek, Kumar, and Singh were caught on video and were arrested under public pressure, but they were freed on bail soon after. Delhi Police did not raise objections to their release by the courts. On their release, Tomar was there to welcome and garland the four men.

Tomar himself has over 30 cases against him for hate speech, distributing weapons, issuing death threats, damaging property, assault, extortion, and raising inflammatory slogans. The list of complaints and cases against him is long. He has been arrested in a few cases only to be let off on bail soon after. His supporters have an apt slogan to describe this: “Aaj jail, kal bail, aur phir wahi khel” (jail today, bail tomorrow and then again, the same game).

The HRD has carried out dozens of attacks on Muslims, secular Indians, and the BJP’s critics. In 2020, Tomar claimed credit for the attack on students at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi. “JNU is a hotbed of anti-national activities and we cannot tolerate this,” he said, taking “full responsibility” for the violence that left at least 30 people, including teachers and students, injured.

In August 2024, HRD activists burnt down houses and property of Muslims in a slum in Ghaziabad, claiming that they were Bangladeshis living illegally in India. In December 2025, Tomar and his son were arrested for distributing swords in Ghaziabad for the “self-defense” of Hindus.

Outfits like the HRD enable the Sangh Parivar and the BJP government to not only freely unleash illegitimate violence but also deny their links to the perpetrators of such violence. The membership of Sangh Parivar outfits and their fellow travelers is nebulous. Consequently, it is hard to pin such violence on the Modi government.