Absent From Parliament Amid Uproar Over Police Action, Modi ‘Forgives’ Protesters For Using Expletives

New Delhi: In his first explicit acknowledgement of the youth agitation that culminated in Delhi's biggest protest in years and precipitated the first resignation from his cabinet under public pressure, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday (July 31) expressed “shock” at female protesters using expletives and said he wished to forgive such “misled children”.

He did not mention the use of force, including pellet guns, by Union government-controlled personnel to quell the protest march towards parliament on July 20 – an issue over which parliament has been logjammed for over ten days – or the cases against protesters that various police forces are in the process of withdrawing.

Releasing his fifth self-recorded mobile video in the wake of the July 20 protest, Modi in another late-night message opened with a greeting to “friends” and acknowledged the Cockroach Janta Party's 36-day sit-in at Delhi's Jantar Mantar Road for the first time, saying “the country and the world have seen” what happened there.

Modi then got to his point: “Some mischievous children have used expletives,” he said, adding that “such words have been used that are not befitting of any civilised society”. Some protesters used abusive language towards his late mother in addition to himself, he continued.

The prime minister said he was shocked that female protesters used expletives. “Today I want to say that mistakes do happen in one's childhood. And in childhood one also has an opportunity to mend their ways. After all, this is what childhood is. That is why, while I can understand the anger that is in society, it is a ‘cultural shock’ that our daughters can speak such language.”

But he has decided to forgive such “misled” protesters for using expletives. “It is time to embrace these children and show them the way. These are misled children, and it is our job to show them the way. Punishing them, making them run hither and thither in the courts, torturing them in society – we cannot change the situation like this. I want to forgive them.”

Such youths must learn from their “mistakes”, the prime minister repeatedly said in his close to three-minute-long video. “Come, children. Let us move ahead together for the country. Let us learn something new. Let us learn from our mistakes too and go forth with our dreams … I live for you, I wear myself out for your bright future.”

Modi's focus on some protesters' use of expletives comes as the Noida police has lodged an FIR against a girl following a complaint that she used ‘abusive and objectionable’ language against the PM, invoking BNS sections pertaining to insults meant to provoke a breach of the peace, statements conducive to public mischief and defamation. The Delhi police too has reportedly registered cases against posts targeting the prime minister.

However, there have also been instances of social media users doxxing and issuing rape threats to some female protesters who had gone to Jantar Mantar, including on the pretext that they ‘abused’ Modi or ‘insulted’ the Army, The Hindu's Suruchi Kumari reported early on Friday.

That aspect did not figure in Modi's address – nor did police personnel's use of force against largely peaceful protesters who attempted to march to parliament on the 20th to demand then-Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan's resignation. The Rapid Action Force is documented to have fired pellets at demonstrators using pump-action shotguns, a method that activists decry for being highly indiscriminate and which severely damaged the right eye of a 19-year-old man that day.

Both Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah – to whose ministry the Delhi police and the Rapid Action Force (via the Central Reserve Police Force) report – have been absent from the ongoing monsoon session of parliament even as opposition MPs in both Houses have disrupted proceedings demanding the latter's presence.

Hours before Modi released his video late on Friday, Cockroach Janta Party chief Abhijeet Dipke had addressed the use of expletives by alleged social media operatives of the BJP's ‘IT cell’ against dissidents.

“When will cases be lodged against them? But it isn't just about the BJP's IT cell. Everyone remembers what words their MP, Ramesh Bidhuri, had used against a fellow member of parliament,” said Dipke, referring to the former South Delhi MP's use of Islamphobic slurs to refer to the Bahujan Samaj Party's Danish Ali within the Lok Sabha. Modi had not responded to that incident.

Friday's video was also the fourth one Modi posted late at night, coming out on his X account at 11:06 pm. Three of his four other self-recorded videos were released at a similar time.

His first video came on July 23, three days after the march to parliament demanding Pradhan's resignation in light of the two NEET-UG paper leaks over the last three years among other things.

Pradhan tendered his resignation the next day, and after the government agreed to drop cases against protesters in addition to compensating the families of NEET aspirants who died by suicide after the May 2026 leak, the Cockroach Janta Party called off its stir.

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