On reporting resistance and resilience
A journalist reflects on the nature of political protest by contrasting traditional event-based reporting with Howard Caygill’s philosophy of resistance as a sustained human capacity. The article highlights the endurance and composure of protesters at Jantar Mantar, framing their actions as a transformative 'resistant subjectivity' rather than just a series of confrontations.
Why it matters
It challenges the conventional media narrative that reduces complex social movements to mere statistics of conflict, offering a deeper philosophical framework for understanding long-term civil disobedience.
W hen my professor Jyoti Dalal introduced me to British Philosopher Howard Caygill’s book, On Resistance: A Philosophy of Defiance , little did I know that I would find myself returning to its pages after reporting on the student protests in Jantar Mantar and Sansad Marg.
As journalists, we are trained to report resistance as an event. We count protesters, detentions, First Information Reports (FIRs) and injuries. We report when a march begins, when the police intervene, and when the crowd disperses. We instinctively ask whether the protest succeeded or failed. Caygill, however, asks a different question.
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