It is an unusually warm Sunday afternoon in Budapest, close to 30°C. Most locals seem to be celebrating the weather while I curse the unexpected tropical assault. Seems like the Chennai heat has arrived here with me. “Perfect day for a protest,” remarks Anna, the friend I am walking with. A few hundreds have assembled close to Elisabeth Bridge, a miniature likeness of the Golden Gate, which connects the two halves of Hungary’s capital — Buda and Pest — over the Danube. Despite the blinding sun we can spot hordes of heads in the distance. As we inch closer, I see people holding placards, or waving EU and Hungarian flags. Others are busy on their smartphones.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s hardline stance on immigration has attracted sharp criticism across the continent. And some of the voices of dissent are coming from the 52-year-old leader’s own people. The strong measures to curb the inflow of migrants into Europe — including the use of teargas and water cannons by Hungarian riot police at the Serbian border — have been roundly condemned. The protest we are at is certainly not the first on the issue. There was another just the day before. At best, it looks like restrained dissent, almost dignified in approach.

I am curious to know what the placards say. A fellow protester translates for me. ‘Shame on you, Viktor Orban’, says one. Another has more signs and letters than words: ; ‘OV =/ Hungary’, namely, ‘the government is not representative of the people’s views’. There are also banners emblazoned with ‘Egyutt (Together 2014)’, the name of an opposition liberal party. I soon learn from a journalist that the party’s leader has organised this protest. He will give a speech, followed by one from a poet-activist. The cynic in me is already weighing how much of this endeavour is protest, and how much political opportunism.

The crowd moves, falling into the rhythm of a stroll. The energy levels are in tandem with a Sunday afternoon. “There are many old people,” Anna observes, adding that in her home country, Poland, the younger population would have been the obvious majority at a protest like this. Here it is a mixed crowd, with a surprising number of older people. Anna and I soon find ourselves discussing the various factors that spur people’s participation in a protest. Most people are likely to be indifferent to any cause that does not affect them directly, I say. Selfish, perhaps, but justified too. Especially for certain sections of society that are busy making ends meet to think beyond the business of life... Some consciously refuse to be politically active, to engage with what is an intellectual and moral burden at the end of the day.

As social science students, we delude ourselves that we have an understanding of society and people, making us feel both noble and important.

The Danube is gleaming on our left, and the cityfolk who are here to do nothing more than lounge around the river on a Sunday end up gawking at the protesters. Some instinctively take pictures.

At strategic points are what appear to be television crews with fancier cameras. We feel like celebrities, important and momentous. As we walk under the Chain Bridge, a chant rises in Hungarian: ‘Shame on you, Viktor Orban’. I wonder if back in India, a protest with such cries would pass muster in the current political climate. Not that we aren’t deeply critical of our government, I tell Anna. The op-ed columns can be scathing. But our criticism is blunted by sophisticated language. Verbal expression, especially in a protest, is relatively crude, but direct and bolder.

I am not sure this protest is giving off quite that impression though.

“Are protests frequent here?” I ask Kristof, who is from Budapest. “Oh, of course! There is one every other month… Usually in opposition to some new policy or announcement by the government.” This perhaps explains the protest’s defining character — dull and ceremonial, the words almost rhetorical. Like a sad cultural remnant of a once highly political, spirited Europe. “It is a middle-class routine,” Kristof adds, “like a Sunday lunch.”

In the days that followed, Hungary brought in new, stricter laws on migration. It criminalises those who cross the border, as the government turns a deaf ear to the many pleas for asylum. Perhaps there will be another protest the following week. And the week after that.

This one, my first in a new country, seemed like a rather long walk. “How long was that stretch,” I ask, as the protest comes to an end. One, maybe two kilometres, someone shouts out. Is that all? It’s fine, I guess. The protest has been tweeted, instagrammed, relayed on television. And as graduate students of a university, we’ve shared notes on the subject.

The ritual is complete.

Niharika Mallimadugulais a freelance writer, currently in Budapest

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