In a sweeping directive that could reshape India’s internal security playbook, Union Home Minister Amit Shah has ordered a comprehensive study of every major protest since 1974 tracing patterns, probing funding trails, and identifying “behind-the-scenes players” to craft a new national protest-prevention protocol.
The bombshell directive came at the closed-door ‘National Security Strategies Conference 2025’, hosted by the Intelligence Bureau in New Delhi, where Shah tasked the Bureau of Police Research & Development (BPR&D) with dissecting half a century of mass agitations, from the JP Movement and Emergency-era unrest to the anti-CAA protests and farmers’ marches.
Amit's move follows series of uprising in Indian neighbours Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal those toppled governments there and recent unrests in Indian states of Bihar and Manipur.
What’s being investigated?
Root causes and triggers of protests
“Financial aspects” — Who funded them? Where did the money flow?
Final outcomes — Did they achieve political or social change?
Hidden actors — NGOs, foreign entities, political operatives?
Follow the money trail
Shah has roped in financial sleuths — the Enforcement Directorate (ED), Financial Intelligence Unit-India (FIU-IND), and the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) — to track suspicious funding patterns. These agencies will also develop an SOP to detect terror networks through financial irregularities, treating protest financing as a potential national security threat.
Punjab in focus
The Home Minister has separately ordered the NIA, BSF, and NCB to devise “out-of-the-box” strategies to dismantle Khalistani-criminal nexuses in Punjab — including relocating jailed masterminds to prisons outside the state to break communication chains.
Religious congregations under microscope
In parallel, BPR&D will study religious gatherings nationwide to prevent stampedes and crowd disasters — crafting SOPs for real-time monitoring, crowd control, and intelligence-led management of mega-events like Kumbh Mela or Eid congregations.
Official Statement: “A protest is not just about placards — it’s often a chessboard. We need to know who moves the pawns, who funds the game, and how to stop vested interests from turning dissent into destabilization,” a senior government source told The Indian Express.
Why 1974?
The year marks the beginning of the JP Movement, a mass uprising that eventually led to the Emergency. Analysts say the choice signals intent to understand how protest movements evolve into political earthquakes and how to defuse them before they erupt.
With state police forces now mobilizing decades-old CID files and intelligence units sharpening their financial forensics, India is gearing up for its most ambitious, and controversial, protest post-mortem in history.