Given major divergences in their respective political traditions, the key values of the protesting youth in India and Bangladesh’s July Uprising are markedly different: It is the Indian Gen Z that should set an example for the Bangladeshi youth.

Radicalism in politics is unavoidable. In any political movement, there is a radical flank which thinks that the point of politics is outbidding people on their own side — like asking for “regime change” when a protest against voter exclusion is going on. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Whether a radical flank helps or hurts a movement depends also on the conjunctural correctness, not just political correctness, of the demand. Politics is a temporal art as much as it is temperamental: It often matters who demands when, rather than who demands what.

The anti-SIR protests are ripe for being one-upped by a radical flank.…