The Swadeshi Jagaran Manch’s protest against Starlink pushes on a door the government is already holding shut, as its record shows
About forty people walked the roundabout on Teen Murti Marg to the gate of Chanakyapuri police station, a distance you could cover in under a minute, on Friday to protest against Elon Musk’s Starlink. The walk was called by the Swadeshi Jagaran Manch. Nobody joined them on the way, and nobody seemed to be watching, except the police and the press, who between them probably outnumbered the protesters.
When asked about Starlink and Elon Musk, most knew very little about either. “These foreign powers wish to come to India once again and loot us of our resources by enforcing their own rules and regulations,” one of the spokespersons from the SJM said. It is a strange thing to stand in the diplomatic enclave, a few hundred metres from half the embassies in Delhi, and watch a protest against a foreign billionaire that the foreign billionaire will never hear about.
"There have been multiple revelations about Elon Musk’s way of functioning and his technology. It has come to our attention that if the Government wants to close the internet connection, Elon Musk’s Starlink will oppose it. They can take our data outside of India without our permission. This is something we have come to know for the first time. And it is for this reason that the government has asked for clarification, and instead of clarifying, Musk used his social media platform to create unrest in India.” SJM national co-convener Ashwani Mahajan said of the entire episode.
Musk’s Comments on India
In the first week of October 2026, Musk wrote on X that certain people were blocking Starlink to protect a monopolistic hold on India’s telecom market. The next day he tweeted, “Is Ambani the real boss of India?”
Rahul Gandhi then entered the exchange with “Welcome to India, Elon. Wait till you discover the other guy.” It was obvious that the Leader of the Opposition was hinting at another Indian businessman, Gautam Adani. Musk thanked him and called the situation troubling. A US billionaire and the LoP had found common cause against the Indian government, discussions on which made great waves on social media.
On 13 October, the SJM answered. Mahajan asked the government to block Starlink on security grounds, and pointed out that Musk had made allegations against Indian businesses and the government instead of answering the questions put to his company regarding safety and regulation. He listed the places where he said satellite internet had caused trouble, among them Ukraine, Iran, Russia, China, Taiwan and Sudan. Then he brought in Trump. If Washington imposes heavy tariffs in the name of national security, then India is within its rights to block Starlink on the same grounds. The RSS-affiliated SJM did not stop here, and promised a nationwide protest against Musk and Starlink.
However, the mood was very different in February 2025. Modi, in Washington for his first visit since Trump’s return, met Musk at Blair House before going to the White House. Modi said they had talked about space, mobility, technology and innovation. Starlink’s licence application was pending with the Department of Telecommunications, and the general expectation was that something would come of the meeting. Twenty months on, the licence is still unissued.
History of Swadeshi Jagaran Manch
SJM was founded in 1991, and Dattopant Thengadi, who also founded the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh and the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh, was among its founders. Thangadi was a Sangh pracharak, and SJM came up in the era of the WTO and opposed it from the start. Its best years came with the BJP in power. Thangadi went after Vajpayee’s push for FDI in retail, media and insurance, and the way disinvestment was done. In July 2000, the SJM accused the government of backing out of its promise to promote swadeshi and announced a countrywide stir.
There’s an odd thing about the SJM. It has been most effective when its own people were in office, and it has been awkward or mute ever since. The pattern was set earlier than that, over Enron. Around the 1996 election, Maharashtra’s Sena-BJP government brought the Dabhol power project back from the brink of cancellation, and the SJM’s S. Gurumurthy accused it of sacrificing principle for political expediency and said the Manch would resist the project.
Then, in May 1996, during the thirteen days Vajpayee spent as Prime Minister, his government approved extending the Centre’s counter-guarantee to Dabhol’s revised first-phase capacity. The chief minister announced in August 1995 that phase I would be scrapped and phase II cancelled. This was not because of the SJM’s protest, but rather the World Bank’s concerns about the project’s viability.
During the UPA years, it did not completely disappear but became relatively weak. However, in September 2012, it organised countrywide protests against FDI in retail, with dharnas and effigy burning. In the same year, it joined more than 150 organisations in Delhi and declared war on the UPA’s policy. But the campaign was fought alongside the opposition, and BJP leaders were happy to borrow its language. It was an ally of the party out of power, and not much more.
After the BJP won in 2014, the very next year, the Modi government retained the UPA’s policy of allowing 51 per cent FDI in multi-brand retail. Mahajan wrote to the Prime Minister that the Manch was pained and betrayed, and accused the government of a U-turn. His demands were not met and his accusations not entertained.
This brings us back to Teen Murti Marg. In May 2025, the Manch was protesting in Delhi over Turkey’s support for Pakistan. Now it is Musk. Both are good targets, because both are foreign and neither will argue back. The Musk campaign has an added attraction. The government has not given Starlink its licence, and Musk has accused the government of stalling, so the SJM is pushing on a door the government is already holding shut. It can look like pressure and cost nothing. One reading of the forty people on the road is that they were not trying to move the government at all. They were simply reiterating the stance that the Modi government has already taken regarding safety and regulation.
![Members of the Swadeshi Jagaran Manch pressure group protest against Starlink and Elon Musk in New Delhi on Friday, (right) Manch national co-convener Ashwani Mahajan [Photo: Nikhil Chauhan]](https://governancenow.com/temp/starlink.jpeg "Members of the Swadeshi Jagaran Manch pressure group protest against Starlink and Elon Musk in New Delhi on Friday, (right) Manch national co-convener Ashwani Mahajan [Photo: Nikhil Chauhan]")
