今年十月，印度正汇聚起百万场兵变的力量。印度的“蟑螂”——蟑螂人民党（CJP）的支持者——重返街头，以非暴力不合作的方式纪念圣雄甘地诞辰157周年。现场气氛再度呈现出狂欢般的景象：学生众多；一队队女性挽着年轻男子的手臂，齐声高呼，挥拳向天，呐喊着：“贾努，搞定了，兄弟。”
This October, India is a country where a million mutinies are gathering force. India’s “cockroaches” — supporters of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) — are back on the streets, marking Mahatma Gandhi’s 157th birth anniversary with non-violent disobedience. Once again, the atmosphere was carnival-like: plenty of students; a phalanx of marching, fist-waving women, arm-in-arm with young men, punching the air and shouting: “Gyanu, it’s done, bro”.
令人感到超现实的是，他们已经在用过去时态谈论“贾努”——印度首席选举专员贾内什·库马尔。接下来会发生什么——由何种体制或何人接管——这个问题已被搁置。那是以后的事。眼下，抗议者团结一致，传递着单一而集中的信息：他们要求库马尔辞职，因为他被指控操纵选民名单，以利于总理纳伦德拉·莫迪领导的印度人民党。
Surreally enough, they already talk of “Gyanu” — India’s Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar — in the past tense. What will follow — what system or person — is a question that has been put on hold. That’s for later. For now, the protestors are unified with a single, concentrated message: they want Kumar, accused of manipulating voter rolls in favour of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, to resign.
在德里，年轻女性和酷儿学生走上街头，抗议女性安全问题。此前，据称一名17岁女孩在德里东南部的阿斯塔·昆杰公园被三名冒充警察的男子轮奸。与此同时，在孟买，印度理工学院孟买分校二年级工学学士学生萨希尔·瓦科德本月早些时候自杀身亡，其父母已发起无限期绝食抗议，要求逮捕其教师，并指控其遭受严重的种姓歧视骚扰。在马哈拉施特拉邦浦那，马哈拉施特拉邦公共服务委员会的应试者走上街头，因考试舞弊、透明度问题及考试成绩的不确定性等一系列关切，要求主席辞职。
Young women and queer students have taken to the streets over women’s safety in Delhi after a 17-year-old girl was allegedly gang-raped in Aastha Kunj Park in southeast Delhi by three men who posed as police officers. Concurrently in Mumbai, the parents of Sahil Wakode, a second-year BTech student at IIT Bombay, have launched an indefinite hunger strike after he died by suicide earlier this month. They are demanding the arrest of his teachers and alleging severe caste-based harassment. In Pune, Maharashtra Public Service Commission aspirants are on the streets demanding the chairman’s resignation over a range of concerns about alleged examination irregularities, transparency issues and uncertainty surrounding examination results.
印度其余地区——那些未走上街头的人们——则通过电脑或手机屏幕与外界相连，在乐观、悲观、怀疑与愤怒的交替浪潮中起伏。
The rest of India — those not out on the streets — is umbilically tethered to a computer or phone screen, riding alternating currents of buoyancy, pessimism, doubt and rage.
这些动荡抗议活动的突然汇聚，实际上让莫迪政府陷入了国内骚乱的夹击之中。此起彼伏的动荡浪潮标志着国家情绪的危险转变：它有效地将原本分散的Z世代团结起来对抗中央政府，重新激发了反对派的力量，使其成为一股全国性的政治力量，并将原本零散的诉求转化为一个组织严密、高度显眼的运动，而政府已无法再将其压制。
The sudden convergence of these volatile protests has effectively caught the Modi government in a pincer movement of domestic unrest. The overlapping waves of unrest represent a dangerous shift in the national mood, effectively uniting a fragmented Gen Z demographic against the Centre, re-energising and bringing together the opposition as a national force, and transforming disparate grievances into a cohesive, highly visible movement that the government can no longer contain.
此外，德里市中心和孟买部分地区在重兵戒备下处于封锁状态——偏偏是在甘地诞辰日——这进一步加剧了政府在舆论形象上的危机。莫迪已无法提供稳定的治理。如今，他执政所依赖的不再是合法性，而是赤裸裸的武力和恐惧——对失去权力以及随之而来的法律清算的恐惧。在莫迪政治生涯的大部分时间里，等级制度本身就被视为正当性的来源。
Besides, central Delhi and parts of Mumbai are locked down under heavy security — on Gandhi Jayanti, no less — compounding the crisis of optics. Modi no longer provides stable governance. At this point, he rules not by legitimacy but by brute force and fear — of losing power and the legal reckoning that might follow once power is lost. For much of Modi’s political history, hierarchy has carried its own justification.
他的基本信条是：选民应当为他服务，而非他服务选民。当他受欢迎时，这套逻辑确实奏效。他能让人们排队等候自动取款机；能在没有食物、资金或科学依据的情况下实施封锁；能废除克什米尔的特殊宪法地位，并殴打农民和学生。
His foundational axiom is that voters work for him and not the other way around. When he was popular, it worked. He could get us to queue in front of ATMs; lock us down without food, money, or scientific justification; abrogate Kashmir’s special constitutional status and beat up farmers and students.
当他不再受欢迎时，尽管选举委员会主席享有终身豁免权，仍偏袒他、让制度向其倾斜，他甚至可以彻底抛弃民众的支持和民意授权。但如今，他已无法再享有“权力无后果”的奢侈。在三个任期内，他同时掌控着民众赋予的合法性与制度性权力。那个时代已经结束。他已不再拥有2014年那样的民意授权，而媒体、议会、选举委员会或司法机构等任何制度，也都已无力再替他承受冲击。
When he was no longer popular, with the Election Commissioner — protected by lifelong immunity — tilting the system in his favour, he could dispense with popularity as well as a popular mandate altogether. But he no longer has the luxury of power without consequence. For three terms he wielded the combined power of popular legitimacy and institutional control. That era has ended. He no longer has a mandate like the one he had in 2014, and no institution — media, parliament, election commission or judiciary — is left to absorb the shock on his behalf.
抗议活动各不相同，但它们的基本要求却惊人地相似：权力伴随着责任。首席选举专员、印度理工学院孟买的上流种姓教师以及冒充警察的帮派强奸犯都被卷入了同一场清算。
The protests are disparate, but their underlying demand is strikingly similar: power comes with responsibility. The Chief Election Commissioner, the upper-caste teachers at IIT Bombay and the gang rapists who posed as cops are all being pulled into the same reckoning.
7月，印度人民党首次获胜--最终导致教育部长达门德拉·普拉丹（Dharmendra Pradhan）辞职--莫迪退回到办公室，他以前的一些趾高气扬不见了。莫迪的自尊这个巨大的气球被Instagram卷轴和模因的无情嘲笑所刺穿，正在从一千个剪辑中流失。历史会注意到，他的强大政权的第一次裂缝并不是因为选举失败，而是因为普通学生不再相信无能为力。这是三个月内的第二波新抗议活动，挑战了莫迪的不可避免性。
After the CJP’s first victory in July — which culminated in the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan — Modi retreated into his office, with some of his old swagger missing. Pierced by the relentless ridicule of Instagram reels and memes, the giant balloon that is Modi’s self-esteem is leaking from a thousand cuts. History will note that the first cracks in his powerful regime appeared not with an electoral defeat but when ordinary students stopped believing that nothing can be done. This new wave of protests, the second in three months, challenges the inevitability of Modi.
全国范围的抗议活动将持续到整个十月。除了“蟑螂”之外，印度反对党还将在全国范围内组织五场大型集会。除了要求库马尔辞职外，各党还希望恢复选票，而不是电子投票机（EVMs），认为电子投票使选票的记录和计票容易受到操纵。反对派领袖拉胡尔·甘地指责库马尔犯有叛国罪，并警告一旦他被免职，后果将严重。与此同时，莫迪不打算放弃任何权力。
The nationwide protests will continue all through October. Besides the “cockroaches”, India’s opposition parties will organise five big rallies around the nation. Besides the demand for Kumar’s resignation, the parties want a return to ballot papers, rather than Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs), arguing that electronic voting has made the recording and counting of votes vulnerable to manipulation. Leader of the opposition, Rahul Gandhi, has accused Kumar of high treason and warned of consequences once he is removed from the post. Modi, meanwhile, has no plans to yield any of his authority.
他当天从甘地的陵墓开始，在这位非暴力倡导者面前献花，同时在德里和孟买部署准军事警戒线和防暴车辆，以阻止抗议者聚集。通往新德里詹塔尔·曼塔尔——指定抗议地点——的道路已被路障封锁。少数突破封锁的人正被警方拘留。这种讽刺几乎完美得令人难以置信，绝非偶然。周五发生了大规模拘留。周六又有新的拘留。尽管反复遭到拘留，抗议者仍不断返回现场，坚持他们的诉求。
He began the day at Gandhi’s samadhi, laying flowers before the apostle of non-violence while deploying paramilitary cordons and anti-riot vehicles across Delhi and Mumbai to stop protestors from gathering. Roads leading to Jantar Mantar in New Delhi — the designated protest site — are barricaded. The few who get past the blockades are being detained by police. The irony is almost too neat to be accidental. There were mass detentions on Friday. Fresh detentions on Saturday. Despite repeated detentions, protestors keep returning to the sites, pressing their demands.
事实上，莫迪复活了甘地一生政治生涯中所抵抗的那些镇压工具：限制公共集会、宵禁、预防性拘留以及对异见的警察管控。他对权力的掌控越不稳固，就越赤裸裸地诉诸暴力。如果甘地教会了我们什么，那就是权力和暴力的局限性。
Modi has, in fact, revived some of the very instruments of repression that Gandhi spent his political life resisting: restrictions on public assembly, curfews, preventive detention and the policing of dissent. The more precarious his hold on power, the more nakedly he reaches for brute force. If there’s anything Gandhi taught, it was the limits of power and force.
在未来几天，莫迪或许能成功清空街道、监禁抗议者、没收标语牌并压制异见。但他无法做到——至少无法无限期地做到——迫使印度选民相信，权力仅仅因为其强大就是合法的。
Over the coming days, Modi may well succeed in emptying the streets, imprisoning protesters, confiscating placards and silencing dissent. What he will not be able to do, at least not indefinitely, is compel Indian voters to believe that power is legitimate simply because it is powerful.
在印度这样疲惫不堪的民主国家——其制度在不受制约的权力重压下摇摇欲坠——看到印度人以百万计的“兵变”式起义，是我一生中所见过的最美丽的景象之一。这个动荡的月份将是混乱的、不敬的、喧闹的。这一景象也将引发浪漫主义色彩。当审视这个充满非凡视觉能量的年轻运动时，人们会忍不住沉溺于它的纯洁、青春的活力或炽热的愤怒之中。那将是一个错误。
In an exhausted democracy like India’s — with its institutions crumbling under the weight of unchecked power — the sight of Indians rising in a million mutinies is one of the more beautiful things I have seen in my life. The month of agitations is going to be messy, irreverent and noisy. The spectacle will also invite romanticism. There will be a temptation, when looking at this young movement with such extraordinary visual energy, to dwell on its purity, youthful exuberance, or incandescent rage. It would be a mistake.
印度的新抗议文化既不应被浪漫化，也不应被塞进某个狭隘的框架。它是更宏大的、罕见的存在：它是未完成的。
India’s new protest culture should neither be romanticised nor categorised in some tight box. It is something more, something rare: it is unfinished.