When Students Protests Are Criminalised

There is something in the age of eighteen. It knows no fear; in the fiery eyes of an 18-year-old, storms rise. It breaks all bounds, laughs in the face of death. There cannot be a better description of a student. These words are an English translation of a passage from a poem, Atharo Bochor Boyosh (The Age of Eighteen) written by Sukanta Bhattacharya, the iconic poet from Bengal.

I was reading these lines when the news came: 10 students of the Mumbai-based Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) had been detained and charged.

Their crime? They had gathered in the campus to remember writer and human rights activist, G. N. Saibaba, holding his posters and lighting a few candles.

According to the police, this constituted an unlawful assembly. The institute’s administration stated that no permission had been sought.

The students are accused of spreading enmity among communities and harbouring ill will against the nation.

Incidents like this are no longer exceptional in India.

Not long ago, the Delhi Police took action against students who had gathered in solidarity with Palestine in the campus.

Whether it is Jamia Millia Islamia, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), the University of Hyderabad, or educational institutions in Bihar or Kerala, students frequently find themselves in the news.

Not for their academic degrees, but for raising questions that fall outside their official curricula.

Student activism in India is not a new phenomenon.

Only this government has begun treating it as a crime.

Recall the 1960s and the 1970s: whether Presidency University, Kolkata, Patna Science College, or St. Stephen’s, many bright students were drawn to the Naxalite movement.

The state responded with brutal repression, yet the appeal of the movement remained undiminished among students.

Jayaprakash Narayan—now celebrated by the very forces in power—gained his renown through the student movement of 1974.

Before that, the Navnirman Andolan in Gujarat was sustained by students.

Even prior to this government coming to power, the largest public outcry in Delhi—following the Nirbhaya rape case—had been led predominantly by students.

Students were also central to Arvind Kejriwal’s anti-corruption movement.

It was only natural, then, that students would protest when their scholarships were cut—this was in 2015.

Nor was it unnatural that students at Osmania or Hyderabad University would speak up against violence unleashed in the name of beef.

There is no contradiction between the two.

Those familiar with campus life understand that students often speak up for causes that do not concern them directly.

Students frequently feel greater anguish at the suffering of others, more than their own personal difficulties.

When Rohith Vemula took his life on January, 17, 2016, campuses across India erupted in protest. That rebellion was not limited to Dalit students alone. For the first time, the question of caste discrimination became the subject of intense debate within universities. Yet, Rohith himself was not merely a Dalit voice; he was part of a larger student movement. He and his organisation, the Ambedkar Students’ Association, had spoken against the growing discrimination faced by Muslims.

For this, they were branded anti-national and subjected to attack.

It was natural that students came out to protest against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019. They did not know that they would be treated as enemies of the nation for their call for equality. Sharjeel Imam, Gulfisha Fatima, Meeran Haider and other students are in jail for their audacity. But they do not regret. Nor could these long incarcerations deter other students from raising their voices against injustice. Students of JNU, South Asian University, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar University Delhi, and Delhi University—they suffered too. But the resistance continues. Why can’t students learn from these experiences, people wonder? Why can’t people understand this simple thing that injustice must not be tolerated, these students wonder?

Society has never had a single, fixed view of student activism.

Many perceive it as a mental disturbance, a distraction from what they believe should be a student’s “real work”.

Some accuse students of wasting time on politics rather than studying.

Yet, before 2016, students were never called enemies of the nation.

Those who think that Indian students are being misled by subversive, anti-national teachers fail to see what is evident—that to be a student is, by its very nature, to be in rebellion.

Only a few months ago, students in Nepal forced their government to resign.

A year earlier, students in Bangladesh had risen against Sheikh Hasina’s authoritarian rule.

What followed in these cases may not have remained fully under their control, but the initial uprisings were born of an inability to remain silent before injustice.

What their elders could not achieve, the young dared to attempt.

Perhaps students are able to rebel because, unlike adults, they have little to lose. But there is something deeper: a natural restlessness intrinsic to youth.

The 1960s across the globe are remembered for student uprisings. In the US, students refused to fight in the Vietnam War and rose against their own government. They mobilised against racial segregation.

Around the same period, students in Germany and France questioned political authority and cultural conformity.

It was students who rose against the Communist Party in China. The image of a lone man standing before a tank in Tiananmen Square remains humanity’s most powerful symbol of resistance—the spontaneous defiance of injustice and oppression. Whether that man was a student or not, it was the students who had kindled the revolt against the all-powerful Party.

Why do students rebel?

Perhaps because they are most alive to the meaning of freedom. To enter a university is to experience freedom—freedom from the narrowness of one’s geography, family, and inherited culture. For many, this is their first encounter with freedom, their first opportunity to practise it.

When young women ride bicycles across campuses at 11 PM, few ask what they feel in those moments.

It is this lived experience that empowers them to question their vice-chancellor:

Why must hostel gates for girls close at nine while the men’s hostels remain open all night?

The vice-chancellor, steeped in societal proprieties, is scandalised.

Yet, the student who has once tasted freedom can no longer tolerate limits imposed arbitrarily.

Freedom without equality is hollow—and equality without solidarity is meaningless.

It is this yearning for such values that drives students beyond the classroom and into the streets.

For this, the students do not need inspiration or instigation from the elders. As the poet Bhattacharya says, 18 responds to the call of an unknown journey. This is what leads them from books to the streets.

(Views expressed are personal)

Apoorvanand is a teacher and a writer.

This story appeared as Arrested Development, Outlook’s November 1 issue, which explored how the spirit of questioning, debate, and dissent—the lifeblood of true education—is being stifled in universities across the country, where conformity is prized over curiosity, protests are curtailed, and critical thinking is replaced by rote learning, raising urgent questions about the future of student agency, intellectual freedom, and democratic engagement.