Dissent as Threat

Dissent as Threat

Neha Bora, Gender and the Securitisation of Youth Protest in South Asia
By Dr Naim Tahir Baig

When a state or a public declares student protest a threat to the nation, the declaration sometimes succeeds and sometimes fails. Dissent as Threat asks when, and why. Its principal case is the 2026 Indian youth movement led by the Cockroach Janta Party with student organisations including AISA, studied through its exam-leak phase (May to August 2026) and its election-roll phase from September 2026.

Dr Naim Tahir Baig builds the study around three claims, each stated so that the evidence could contradict it. First, securitising student dissent has five distinct outcomes, from full and coercive securitisation to partial, contested and failed, and the label "anti-national" alone does not produce a security reality. Second, gendered treatment is part of how the threat is built, with women protest leaders cast as national enemies and as sexual targets, a pattern tested against the treatment of men in comparable roles. Third, similarity across borders is not diffusion, and the book sets its evidence standard for cross-border links before it examines the cases.

The India study is set against earlier Indian episodes and tested on Sri Lanka (2022), Bangladesh (2024) and Nepal (2025). Every case and phase is coded against the same framework, and the book reports which cross-border links are demonstrated, which are plausible and which are resemblance only. A finding of little demonstrated diffusion is treated as a legitimate result.

The book is an outside, document-based study. It claims no insider access, marks and checks translated sources, and states its method and the author's position openly, giving other researchers a rigorous way to study recent movements where fieldwork is closed or unsafe.

Written for scholars and graduate students in international relations, social movements, South Asian studies and gender studies, and for journalists, policy analysts and civil-society researchers who follow youth politics and civil liberties, Dissent as Threat joins securitisation theory, diffusion research and feminist international relations in a single, testable argument.