As thousands of Indians took to the streets in at least 10 cities on Wednesday evening to protest the recent spate of lynchings against Muslims and other communal- and caste-based violence, many others took their criticism and analysis of the #NotInMyName protests online and into Op-Ed pages.

The day of protests had been sparked off by a Facebook post by filmmaker Saba Dewan, who was horrified by the killing of a young Muslim boy on the outskirts of Delhi last week. As news of the event spread and others organised similar efforts in other cities, the protest took on a larger message: Raising voices against the spurt in violence against Muslims, and the impunity with which many perpetrators seem to be operating.

This reason was important enough for many to attend the rally, and yet some simply had to note the absurdity of having to come onto the streets to protest against something that is both blatantly illegal and ought to be shocking to any society.

Massive turnout at the #NotInMyName protest in Delhi. Can't believe people have to protest lynchings. In 2017. pic.twitter.com/awExprwLWe — Vidya (@VidyaKrishnan) June 28, 2017

But there was also plenty of analysis as well as criticism – of the protest, of the protestors, of the framing of the debate and of how much any of this matters.

The idea behind the entire protest seemed to be clarified most eloquently by Pratap Bhanu Mehta in a column entitled, “May the silent be damned.”

“This violence is now united by one single thread, of showing minorities their place. All of us are innocent till proven guilty; minorities, whether on a train, driving a truck, transporting cattle, distributing sweets, are guilty until proven innocent. This violence seeks to alter the fundamental moral and constitutional order: The victim of the lynching is presented as the criminal, while the ideologies that justify this killing enjoy the patronage of the state. This is what makes it induce so much fear. A fear exacerbated by the fact that our public conscience seems to have been all but dismantled. “

Saba Dewan, the filmmaker whose Facebook post led to the protests, took the conversation forward from the point about a “dismantled” public conscience.

“We want to convey that whatever is happening in the society is not happening in our name; I do not approve of it.”

But #NotInMyName, though it echoes the slogans of Americans protesting the Vietnam war in the 1970s, was for some an odd framing of the protest. Writing in the News Minute, Rajesh Rajamani said that the very name of the protest made it seem like the #NotAllMen response to comments about systemic misogyny and structural gender inequality.

“...The #NotInMyName campaign takes the focus away from Brahmanism, which is at the core of the Hindu religion, and its scriptures that sanction social inequality and allow for violence to preserve its unequal structure. But the campaign makes great effort to tell us how upper caste liberals are nice, progressive people who have nothing to do with the violence. Instead of speaking against the structural oppression and violence, both these campaigns allow self-righteous individuals to give themselves a clean chit.”

Ashley Tellis, writing in the same publication, disagreed. Saying there is a difference between Hinduism and Hindutva and between acknowledging structural discrimination, and using it as a reason to declare protests like this irrelevant.

“All analogical thinking is flawed but the analogy between ‘Not In My Name’ and ‘Not all Men’ as campaigns is simply absurd. ‘Not In My Name’ does not segregate a subsection of any group. It speaks for a My that is representative of every secular citizen in the country and that includes those of us who are marked non-citizens but still believe in the secular and the democratic. ‘Not All Men’ speaks of a subset of men who think they are not violent. ‘Not In My Name’ is a radical disavowal of the politics of hate committed in the name of citizens in a secular democracy. It is the same as the ‘Not My Conscience’ placards that we held when we protested against the President killing Afzal Guru in the name of the nation’s ‘collective conscience.’ And we were beaten by Hindu goons from across the road in Jantar Mantar who were not Brahmins at all.”

Writing in the Huffington Post, Shivam Vij offered a different critique. Vij argued that the framing of the debate and its approach represented reactionary thinking from liberals who had handed over the initiative to the Right.

“Liberals think they can take on Hindutva on its turf and defeat it. That this is not possible should be obvious after the experience since Babri. The only way Hindutva could be defeated is to change the keywords of political discourse from the ones Hindutva wants – cows, meat, Muslims – to the ones it is more apologetic about, such as violence against Dalits, farmers’ agitations, the distress faced by small traders due to demonetisation and GST.”

Swapan Dasgupta, a commentator who was appointed to the Rajya Sabha by the Bharatiya Janata Party government, claimed that those who were angered by communal violence and speaking out against lynching were doing so because they had lost their influence in Delhi.

“Modi has created a new moral economy centred on the projection of indigenous values and a complete rejection of the entitlement culture that defined the earlier Congress governments. Yes, in the process, there has been a marginalization of global cosmopolitanism and a repudiation of the old elites who were tainted by the brush of special privileges. This has undoubtedly led to some over-zealousness and some shows of triumphalism. These must be corrected. But the demand for throwing the baby out with the bathwater is also tantamount to the return of the ancien régime. Despite their pious veneer, today’s protests personify the anger of those who have lost power and access to it. “

Others took issue with some of the specific motifs of the protest, such as a “lynch map” of India since 2015. The map in its original form had been based on lynching attempts against Muslims over the last few years, as a way of highlighting the communal, majoritarian violence that has spread of late. Yet by not including the horrific lynching of a police officer in Kashmir, the map represented what some saw was the selectivity of the protestors.

This is why #NotInMyName cannot be in my name. From Kashmir, Zahid, lynched by Hindu mob near Jammu, finds place, but no Ayub Pandith. Why? pic.twitter.com/J0R09X8JcV — Rahul Pandita (@rahulpandita) June 28, 2017

Vivek Surendran, writing in India Today, argued that lynching is becoming the new normal, and that the trend goes back to before the advent of the BJP government at the Centre – albeit, while admitting that most prominent lynching attacks involved Hindu mobs beating poor, often Muslim people to death.

In Swarajya, R Jagannathan, quoting Surendran’s piece as evidence that the BJP is not directly connected to the violence, insists that the root causes of the lynching have more to do with the way the police functions in India.

“The only way to fix the problem of mob justice is to start with police reform. This means the top levels of policemen need to be depoliticised, by making the selections relatively apolitical and independent. At best, the political authorities should be given two or three options for choosing police chiefs by an independent police commission; alternatively, police bosses should be chosen something like the vigilance chief: with the Chief Justice of the High Court, the Chief Minister and the state opposition leader forming a three-man panel for final selection.”

Despite many supporters of the current government rubbishing the protestors’ arguments, insisting that it is anti-national to criticise lynch mobs and attempting to tarnish the movement, Prime Minister Narendra Modi appeared to respond to the critique the following day, even if he did not mention the protestors by name.

We are a land of non violence. We are the land of Mahatma Gandhi. Why do we forget that: PM @narendramodi — PMO India (@PMOIndia) June 29, 2017

Killing people in the name of Gau Bhakti is not acceptable. This is not something Mahatma Gandhi would approve: PM @narendramodi — PMO India (@PMOIndia) June 29, 2017

As a society, there is no place for violence: PM @narendramodi — PMO India (@PMOIndia) June 29, 2017

No person in this nation has the right to take the law in his or her own hands in this country: PM @narendramodi — PMO India (@PMOIndia) June 29, 2017