Addressing a large gathering of young women in Pune during a student outreach programme called ‘Chhatron Ki Goonj’ on 22 August, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said that an “adarsh naari” — an ideal woman — in India is “put in three boxes”. She is seen only “as a daughter, as a wife, or as a mother.” Gandhi added that there was “nothing wrong with being seen as one of these, but it cannot be your only identity”.

Over five weeks this summer, my travels have taken me to Delhi, Chennai and Sri City, Bangalore, Mumbai and Pune. I arrived roughly two weeks before the Jantar Mantar march to Parliament. The sea change after that march is unmistakable. The public sphere is freer, and the discussions far less constrained by fear. I would normally have predicted that the Hindu nationalist elite would lambast the protests of the young — their mockery, their satire, their choice of words and images for India’s post-2014 establishment — as Bharatiya sanskriti ke virudh (against Indian culture), even an insult to it

Yamini Aiyar is a Visiting Professor of Practice at Watson School of International and Public Affairs at Brown University.

In The Discovery of India, Jawaharlal Nehru made an observation about MK Gandhi, capturing a feeling that was experienced widely but never articulated as sharply. To slightly paraphrase Nehru: “The dominant impulse in India under British rule was that of fear; pervasive, oppressive, strangling fear; fear of… the police; fear of the official class; fear of the laws meant to suppress and of prison… And then Gandhi came… Suddenly, as it were, the black pall of fear was lifted from the people’s shoulders.”

Federalism is not just about institutional arrangements; it is about accommodating India's many identities. The erosion of that principle of accommodation helps explain many of the institutional problems we see today.

We have a unique opportunity to rebuild an education system worthy of our youth