Students the real hope of India’s democracy

Monday morning’s newspapers shared one common photo on their front pages — that of a bus in Delhi on fire. No ordinary fire: it was a conflagration reminiscent of the 1933 burning down of the Reichstag, blamed on Communists but engineered by Adolf Hitler to enable him to end democracy in Germany.

Seeing this photo, many unsuspecting readers would have believed the Delhi police acted correctly to enter the campus of Jamia Millia University and wreck havoc on students holding peaceful if full-throated demonstrations against the newly-notified Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).

However, the students were not arsonists. Videos exist to show uniformed personnel emptying jerry cans of petrol on the buses. No wonder those furious flames. It made for a compelling photo for our already craven media. And it also made for a compelling case that the police had no choice but to act with the viciousness they did against the students. Fifty students were detained, and their early release is welcome.

The Delhi police are under the direct control of Union home minister Amit Shah, who has been unrelenting in implementing a majoritarian agenda during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s second term. (The unilateral end to Kashmir’s autonomy seems to have slipped from most Indian minds.) He clearly knows how the media can be manipulated so that public opinion is behind any and all strongarm tactics against Muslims. The somnambulant public is easily fooled.

Reacting to the police action at Jamia, students at Aligarh Muslim University tried demonstrating in their fellow students’ support, but were teargassed and water-cannoned by the police (the state force is under the control of Amit Shah’s competitor for a post-Modi dispensation, UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath).

The institution is shut down till January 6. This contempt of and violence against students has long been in exhibit at Jawaharlal Nehru University. It appears that if there is one thing an authoritarian ruler cannot stomach, it is dissent; and that too by young minds apparently impervious to his “Mann ki Baat” and other blathering. What more can be expected from a government comprising persons of dubious education and fake degrees?

The invasion of campuses and beating up of students is in line with the mindset that bequeathed us the CAA (and the National Register of Citizens, NRC). It is meant to consolidate majoritarian rule and force minorities to cower in submission. It is also meant to divert everyone’s attention to our free-falling economy, which the government is apparently too clueless to fix. The police action is condemnable. It shows the home minister in the worst possible light. Thank God for India’s spunky students, who continue to prove that if there is a spark of hope left in India, it resides in our youth.

We are satisfied to note that students on campuses around the country are rising in solidarity with their fellow students at Jamia, and we call on students in more and more universities to demonstrate against this callous, undemocratic and incompetent government.