Neha Bora | The permanence of agitation

“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. Maybe many of us won’t be here to greet her, but on a quiet day, if I listen very carefully, I can hear her breathing.” In 2024, Neha Bora cited this quote by Arundhati Roy, calling her work a “bridge to the possibility of a different or better world”.

Today, amid widespread protests in Delhi against the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls and state crackdown, Neha, 29, a PhD student from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and a non-binary person who uses they/them pronouns, stands at the centre of the movement. Neha, the current president of the All India Students’ Association (AISA), the student wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) Liberation, came into the national spotlight during a 23-day hunger strike at Jantar Mantar that began on June 28. The protest culminated in the resignation of then Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.

For Neha and their team, they are doing “nothing different from what they have been doing over the last few years” — protesting for what they believe in. Videos of Neha being detained by the police during protests in the city four years ago are resurfacing, drawing comparisons with footage of the activist’s recent detention.

Recently, however, people Neha supported in the past have come forward to back the youth protest. One example is the survivor of the Unnao rape case, whose cause had prompted Neha to protest earlier. The goodwill Neha has built through years of activism is now translating into support from all quarters, say Neha’s comrades.

Hailing from Uttarakhand, Neha’s political journey began with a theatre group during the undergraduate years in Delhi University. Neha’s family supports the BJP government that the young leader is determined to challenge, but attitudes within the family have begun to shift. Since the Jantar Mantar protest, Neha’s mother has been supporting their activism in her own way — by calling to remind them to rest and be ready for the next protest. Police action and detentions sometimes frighten people close to Neha. But Neha seems to be undeterred. “We’ve taken to the streets knowing that we can be detained, roughed up, bruised. But what about the people who are being bruised, broken, raped, and killed for no fault of theirs?” Neha said recently.

On the frontlines

Even away from the public eye, Neha speaks softly, but the voice rises while talking about how women and queer people have borne the brunt of the BJP’s ire. They will therefore be on the “frontlines of the resistance”, says the AISA president. Neha has worked on gender issues for years, from protesting the release on bail of the men convicted of raping Bilkis Bano to serving as the student representative on their college’s Internal Complaints Committee. For this generation, humour is a way of responding to all that is wrong with the system, Neha says. They speak its language: calling Gyanesh Kumar “Gyanu”, using memes to connect with one another and livestreaming protests. None of this is a coincidence, Neha says, recognising that a generation often viewed with a sense of “mysticism” likes to “break fear with comedy and satire”. Having studied in Delhi University, Ambedkar University and JNU, Neha is a familiar figure among students in the capital, many of whom have rallied behind the protest. Support has continued to pour in. Among those who visited the hunger strikers, including Neha, at Jantar Mantar in June and July was Arundhati Roy, who thanked them for their struggle.