Riots have returned to the streets in Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Oceania. The world is witnessing different waves of riots across the globe. French cities are burning. From Albania, Bangladesh, Britain and Germany to Nepal, France and the USA, riots are increasingly used as a mode of expression against the shrinking political space within bourgeois democracy. Democratic states and governments are becoming authoritarian; they behave like street criminals, undermining citizenship rights and upholding the interests of crony capitalist classes. The capitalist classes and their ruling allies have formed an alliance with reactionary right-wing forces to represent their interests with the help of states and governments across the world.
Indian youth and students are not rioting; they are protesting against a government that promised the moon but delivered marginalisation in all spheres of life and society. Just as Adolf Hitler selectively condemned riots in Germany when it served his interests and called rioters “paid agents,” Mohan Bhagwat, chief of RSS, has not only criticised protesters but draws an unfounded comparison between European riots and protesting Indian youth and students. The comparison is not only fraudulent but also designed to undermine constitutional democracy in India, where protest is a constitutional right. Bhagwat expresses concern for India while denying the same space of expression to young people and students who are on the streets to reclaim their rights and the republic. Comparing democratic protest in India with riots in Europe serves to further dismantle democracy and shrink democratic space in India. Such a comparison will only fuel violence—violence already visible in the conduct of the Delhi police, which behaves like street thugs.
Historically, from the first Egyptian riots against Ptolemy V Epiphanes in 205–186 BCE to the recent riots in France on 17 October 2026, the records of riots reveal that political suppression, economic exploitation, social alienation, cultural marginalisation, religious persecution, and authoritarianism breed riots and violence. Riots over the last three centuries reveal that they are fundamentally directed against exploitative power and a capitalist system that alienates and marginalises people and their rights while breeding conditions of exploitation, marginalisation, and inequality. This system produces conditions in which authoritarian and right-wing forces occupy the shrinking democratic space in the name of protecting culture, religion, and the nation.
Riots are also products of injustice perpetuated by an unjust system maintained by capitalist ruling classes and their right-wing and reactionary henchmen. Growing inequalities, exploitation, injustice, unemployment, hunger, homelessness, poverty, and various forms of discrimination produce conditions for violent riots. Without these conditions and issues, there would be neither crime nor riots. Instead of addressing these inhuman and undemocratic issues that people face in their everyday lives, the English ruling classes developed and imposed the British Riot Act of 1714, which was designed to control collective disturbances and riots in the name of public order. Rioters are not criminals but the criminalisation of riot was designed to control political protests against governments in the name of controlling riots. Various versions of this act are in operation in Britain and across the world today. This law was designed not only to control riots but also to control political struggles against power. It was not designed to empower people but to protect power—the power of capital and the privileged politics of governing elites.
Riots are not natural; they are a response to repressive regimes of power and reflect the shrinking democratic and liberal space in which individuals can freely express and exercise their rights as human beings. Anti-riot laws have failed and will continue to fail to control riots as long as structural discrimination, institutionalised exploitation, and inequality persist. Without addressing these grievances, anti-riot laws will be ineffective. They only aid authoritarian regimes in using them against the people. Those who participate in riots are not the cause of riots; rather, those who refuse to listen to people are the ones who cause and are responsible for riots around the world. The world today is not under the Nazi regime, but ruling classes behave like Nazis by banning protests, dismantling civil liberties, and outlawing anti-government protests in the name of nationalism and patriotism.
Without public dissent, there is no difference between democracy and authoritarianism. Bourgeois democracy demands an opposition-free democracy in which compliance is the only rule of governance. Therefore, riots show the crisis of bourgeois governance, where democracy is reduced to a set of policy and regulatory compliances serving the needs of bourgeois society and where a few controls the lives and livelihoods of the majority. Therefore, unorganised riots need to be converted into organised revolutions to transform and reclaim a radical democracy that works to empower people and address their needs and desires. People’s democracy is the only way to create a society free from riots. People have fought and won in history, and the present will be no different. Resistance to power is the only way of democratising society, economy and culture.
The writer teaches at London Metropolitan University.
