'Shirtless' protest at AI summit sparks political storm in India
Indian National CongressA "shirtless" protest staged by members of the youth wing of India's main opposition party at the recent high-profile AI summit in Delhi has led to arrests and sparked a political storm in the country.
The demonstration took place on 20 February, the last day of the India AI Impact Summit, when several members of the Indian Youth Congress removed their jackets to reveal T-shirts criticising Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government.
The protesters then took off the T-shirts and held them up, shouting slogans against unemployment and a proposed India-US trade deal which they said would harm farmers, small businesses and the prospects of young people.
Videos of the protest went viral on social media, leading to a debate on its form and place. The five-day summit was pitched as a defining moment for AI in India and the Global South and big names, including Sam Altman and Dario Amodei, had spoken at the event a day before the protest.
So, it was no surprise that the incident became a political flashpoint, with leaders of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) calling it reckless and damaging to India's international image.
The Congress hit back, defending the activists' right to protest and calling the arrests an attack on democratic dissent.
Police alleged the protest was planned with the intention of disrupting the summit. Eight members of the Youth Congress, including the organisation's national president Uday Bhanu Chib, have been arrested on charges that include rioting.
The Youth Congress has denied the allegations. While Chib - who the police alleged was the "main conspirator" - has said he was not present at the protest, other members argue their actions were aimed at the government, not the event itself.
Getty ImagesPolice also alleged that the protesters breached security protocols and that several officers on duty were jostled.
They have registered a case under charges of criminal conspiracy, disobedience of public order, rioting and unlawful assembly.
The Youth Congress has denied any wrongdoing, saying the protest was peaceful.
Chib and five others were arrested over Monday and Tuesday, sparking protests by Youth Congress members.
Chib's mother, Rajni Bala, told reporters that "organising protests in a democracy is a constitutional right. Since when did it become a conspiracy?"
Chib is currently in police custody. The public prosecutor argued in court this week that while Chib was not actually at the protest, he was "communicating and monitoring each and everything" and was the "mastermind".
Chib's lawyer in turn asked for proof of any criminal conspiracy, asking "can we not even handle criticism?"
Getty ImagesThe country's biggest leaders have also weighed in on the incident and traded barbs.
At a recent gathering, Modi criticised the Congress and accused it of tarnishing the country's image.
"We just witnessed the world's largest AI conference in India. But what did the Congress and its ecosystem do? It turned a global event for India into a platform for its dirty and naked politics," he said.
But Congress leader Rahul Gandhi described the arrests as evidence of the government's "dictatorial tendencies", calling the protest "patriotism, not crime".
The episode has also ignited a wider conversation about democratic rights and the boundaries of political protest.
An editorial in The Print website accused the Congress of embarrassing the country at a high-profile global event.
"This kind of needless spectacle over India-US trade deal had nothing to do with the AI Summit. It just demonstrates, once again, how Congress is suffering from a debilitating crisis of imagination," it said.
However, writing in The Indian Express newspaper, MP Manoj Kumar Jha (from the opposition Rashtriya Janata Dal) defended the protest as a deliberate political statement designed to bring dissent into an elite international forum.
"A nation's reputation is not built on the absence of dissent but on the robustness of its institutions and the openness of its public sphere. Democracies derive legitimacy precisely from their ability to accommodate protest without resorting to repression," he wrote.
