The day of the Chauri Chaura protest dawned, thick with tension. Thousands, then tens of thousands, gathered in the fields and dusty roads outside the police station. The local British magistrate and his contingent of Indian police, expecting a riotous mob, were met instead by a silent, disciplined sea of humanity. The sheer numbers were overwhelming, but the order was unnerving.
Adav, receiving real-time updates through his covert network and the Codex's [Social Analysis] module, tracked every movement, every British counter-measure. His "Ghadar agents," visible only by their quiet authority, directed the immense crowd. They formed an impenetrable, yet completely non-violent, blockade. No one threw stones. No one chanted threats. They simply were there, a solid, unmoving wall of human bodies that brought all movement, all commerce, all normal function to a standstill.
The police, armed and frustrated, tried to disperse them. They pushed, they shoved, they issued threats. They fired warning shots into the air. But the crowd, guided by Adav's hidden marshals, held its ground. When a line was pushed back, it immediately reformed. When a leader was arrested, another calmly stepped into their place. There was no chaos, no retaliatory violence that could justify a harsh crackdown. The standoff lasted not hours, but two full days, the silence of the crowd louder and more terrifying than any roar of a riot.
The British administration was baffled and unnerved. How do you combat a force that refuses to fight, yet refuses to move? How do you restore order when there is no disorder to suppress, only a silent, immense obstruction? The economic impact was immediate and severe, worse than the brief regional shutdown Adav had orchestrated years prior. This was a direct, disciplined challenge to their authority that they had no historical precedent for countering.