谢赫·萨利克 新德里报道——卡希什·拉瓦特于周六前往新德里参加抗议。她没有告诉父母她要去那里。
SHEIKH SAALIQ NEW DELHI — Kashish Rawat traveled to New Delhi on Saturday to protest. She did not tell her parents she was going.
当这位22岁的经济学专业学生抵达印度首都时，她看到了一座面目全非的城市。金属路障堵塞了街道，警察对年轻示威者采取行动，殴打一些人，把另一些人拖上公交车，并驱散了其余的人。抗议者用手机拍摄了警察的暴力行为，这些视频在社交媒体上迅速广为流传。
When the 22-year-old economics student arrived in the Indian capital, she encountered a city transformed. Metal barricades choked the streets as police moved against young demonstrators, beating some, dragging others into buses and chasing away the rest. Protesters filmed the police violence on their phones, and the videos quickly went viral on social media.
这场镇压旨在阻止主要由印度年轻人组成的人群聚集，抗议他们所说的有利于印度总理纳伦德拉·莫迪所在政党的选民名册清洗。但这并没有吓退拉瓦特，她在街头待到了傍晚，躲开了警方的搜捕。“我们哪儿也不去。我们会再次回来，发出我们的声音，”她说。
The crackdown was meant to keep crowds of mostly young Indians from gathering to demonstrate against a purge of voter lists they say favors Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party. It did not deter Rawat, who stayed on the streets until evening, keeping out of the reach of police officers. “We are not going anywhere. We will come back again and make our voices heard,” she said.
本月早些时候，由印度“蟑螂”青年运动领导的抗议活动愈演愈烈。此前，针对选民名册的持续审查自去年以来已经剔除了超过1.3亿个名字。批评人士称，这场运动是出于政治动机，并有可能剥夺数百万更多人的选举权。他们要求选举主管贾内什·库马尔辞职。
Protests led by India’s “Cockroach” youth movement intensified earlier this month over an ongoing review of voter lists that’s already removed more than 130 million names since last year. Critics say the campaign is politically motivated and threatens to disenfranchise millions more. They have demanded the resignation of election chief Gyanesh Kumar.
选举委员会表示，这项工作对于删除重复和不合格的登记信息是必要的。
The Election Commission says the exercise is needed to remove duplicate and ineligible entries.
莫迪尚未公开对这些抗议活动发表评论。他的一些党内领导人则将示威者斥为“无政府主义者”，并在未提供证据的情况下暗示他们得到了外国势力的支持。
Modi has not publicly commented on the protests. Some of his party leaders have dismissed the demonstrators as “anarchists” and suggested, without offering evidence, that they are backed by foreign powers.
这场争端直击印度民主的核心：投票权。这也正在考验在一个在莫迪统治下成长起来的一代人中——莫迪担任总理已超过12年——是否能将日益增长的幻灭感转化为对其次 Hindu 民族主义政府的持续挑战。
The dispute has struck at the heart of Indian democracy: the right to vote. It is also testing whether a generation raised under Modi, who has been prime minister for more than 12 years, can turn its growing disillusionment into a sustained challenge to his Hindu nationalist government.
拉瓦特谈到莫迪时表示：“我不认为他是无所不能的。我认为他只是我们选出来的人。所以我无法理解为什么我们要害怕质问那个家伙。”在莫迪的领导下，印度的民主机构面临着越来越大的压力，批评人士指责其政府削弱了对行政权力的制衡、遏制异见，并针对宗教少数群体（尤其是穆斯林）。新闻自由组织也对独立媒体面临的压力表示关切。
“I don’t see him as almighty,” Rawat said of Modi. “I see him as someone who we have elected. So I don’t understand the reason why we should be scared of questioning that guy.”India’s democratic institutions have come under growing pressure under Modi, with critics accusing his government of weakening checks on executive power, curbing dissent and targeting religious minorities, particularly Muslims . Press freedom groups have also raised concerns about pressure on independent media .
政府拒绝接受这些指责，称其机构依然强健，执法部门针对的是违法行为，而不是异见。
The government rejects the accusations, saying its institutions remain robust and law enforcement targets violations of the law, not dissent.
但对许多印度年轻人来说，他们从小信任的机构未能兑现其承诺。他们看到了一种对异见抱有敌意的政治文化，在这样的文化中，挑战当权者可能会带来伤害。选民名单争议加剧了这些挫败感，为一代人的不满提供了一个共同的诉求。
But for many young Indians, the institutions they grew up trusting are falling short of their promise. They see a political culture hostile to dissent, where challenging those in power can result in harm. The voter list dispute has sharpened those frustrations, giving a generation’s discontent a common cause.
今年夏初，抗议者迫使莫迪的教育部长辞职，这为街头压力转化为政治变革提供了一个罕见的例子。此后他们的动员呼应了其他国家（特别是南亚）更广泛的青年抗议浪潮，在这些国家，Z世代示威者向政治精英发起了挑战。
Earlier this summer, protesters forced the resignation of Modi’s education minister , offering a rare example of street pressure translating into political change. Their mobilization since then has mirrored a wider wave of youth protests in other countries, particularly in South Asia , where Gen Z demonstrators have challenged political elites.
对于19岁的学生玛雅·里贝罗来说，关于选民名单的争议引发了人们对他们一直视为理所当然的民主权利的质疑.在周六的抗议活动中，这位社会学专业学生与两位朋友一同参加，里贝罗表示，他们急于投票，因为他们相信参与民主既是一项权利，也是一种责任。但更多的选民可能被从名单中除名的前景，让里贝罗担心他们的投票权无法得到保障。里贝罗表示，这使得围绕选举程序的斗争变得更加紧迫。
For Maya Ribeiro, a 19-year-old student, the controversy over voter lists has raised questions about a democratic right they had taken for granted. At the protests Saturday, where the sociology student was joined by two friends, Ribeiro said they haded to vote because they believed that participating in a democracy was both a right and a responsibility. But the prospect of more voters being struck from the lists has left Ribeiro worried that their right to vote is not assured. Ribeiro said it has made the fight over the electoral process more urgent.
里贝罗说：“当我们谈论投票这一制度时，这是一个重要的制度，但它是一个需要被清洗的制度。”
“When we talk about the institution of voting, it is an important institution, but it is an institution that needs to be cleansed,” Ribeiro said.
广泛的警方镇压给了年轻印度人另一个上街的理由，抗议者表示。他们称对一场计划中的示威的回应在一个民主国家中是不成比例的。
The sweeping police crackdown has given young Indians another reason to take to the streets, protesters said. They described the response to a planned demonstration as disproportionate in a democracy.
21岁的哲学学生阿里扬·卡贾尼亚表示，这场争议反映了年轻印度人对国家政治体制更广泛的失望。他和其他抗议者，他说，当局可以限制集会和拘留示威者时，他们越来越不确定如何行使言论自由的权利。
Aryan Kajaniya, a 21-year-old philosophy student, said the dispute reflected a broader disillusionment among young Indians with the country’s political system. He and other protesters, he said, were increasingly unsure how to exercise their right to free expression when authorities could restrict gatherings and detain demonstrators.
“人们正积极尝试收集更多关于首都发生的事情的信息。他们正从不同城市加入，但系统正积极试图压制我们，”他说。
“People are actively trying to gather more information about what’s going on in the capital. They are joining in from different cities, but the system is actively trying to suppress us,” he said.
这场运动的影响超越了街头人群。许多抗议者表示，他们不认同任何特定群体或政党，但受到共同关注的驱动。
The movement’s reach extends beyond the crowds on the streets. Many protesters said they do not identify with any particular group or political party, but are driven by shared concerns.
里贝罗表示，朋友之间的对话、家庭中的辩论以及社交媒体的交流，已经把他们的私人挫败感转化为集体行动。
Ribeiro said conversations among friends, debates at home and social media exchanges had turned their private frustration into collective action.
多年来感到无力后，抗议给了像他们这样的年轻印度人重新获得政治能动性的感觉，他们说。这种转变在今年夏天早些时候的“蟑螂”抗议中可见一斑，当时示威者公开嘲讽莫迪，打破了一个长期存在的禁忌。
After years of feeling powerless, the protests had given young Indians like them a renewed sense of political agency, they said. That shift was visible during the “Cockroach” protests earlier this summer, when demonstrators broke a long-standing taboo by openly mocking Modi .
“我确实相信，我们已经到了一个地步，我们如此失望，以至于现在比以往任何时候都更有韧性，”里贝罗说。
“I do believe that we are at a point where we have been so disillusioned that we are now more resilient than ever,” Ribeiro said.
挑战像莫迪这样根深蒂固的领导人并非易事。他主导印度政治已超过十年，他的印度教民族主义政党——印度人民党建立了一支 formidable 的选举机器。反对党一直难以将之前对其政府的不满转化为持续的全国性挑战。
Challenging a leader as entrenched as Modi is no easy task. He has dominated Indian politics for more than a decade, and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party has built a formidable electoral machine. Opposition parties have struggled to turn previous discontent with his government into a sustained national challenge.
青年抗议活动也尚未凝聚成一个连贯的政治替代方案。但对许多人来说，为质疑政府创造空间本身就成了一场斗争。而这代价高昂。
The youth protests have also yet to coalesce into a coherent political alternative. But for many, creating space to question the government has become a fight in itself. And that has come at a cost.
拉瓦特表示，政治已经成为她家庭中紧张关系的一个反复出现的根源。她认为，她父母的观点受到了同情莫迪政党的电视报道的影响，他们之间的分歧有时导致她不再与亲戚说话。
Rawat said politics had become a recurring source of tension in her family. She believes her parents’ views have been shaped by television coverage sympathetic to Modi’s party, and their disagreements have sometimes led her to stop speaking to relatives.
“我确实仍在尽最大努力与他们对话，但我到目前为止一直失败，”她说。
“I do still try my best to have a conversation with them, but I have been failing so far,” she said.
对于里贝罗来说，问题在于年轻的印度人能否将他们的怒火转化为争取透明度和问责制的持久运动。他们表示，抗议活动帮助年轻人认识到他们的声音能够发挥作用。
For Ribeiro, the question is whether young Indians can turn their anger into a sustained movement for transparency and accountability. They said the protests have helped young people recognize that their voices can matter.
“我认为这是很长一段时间以来……我第一次感受到对民主能够做的事情重新燃起的信念，”里贝罗说。
“I think for the first time in a very long time … I have felt a sort of renewed belief in what democracy can do,” Ribeiro said.