JNU Row: The volatile history of student protests across the world

"Unhone galat logon ke saath panga le liya hai.... madhumakkhi ke chhatte pe haath mat daaliye...aapko kaha tha. Ab aapne daal liya hai, ab zimmedari aapki. (They've taken on the wrong people… We had told you not to put your hand in the beehive… Now that you have, it's your responsibility)."

That was Dr Rohit, former president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU) and now a faculty member, addressing a rally of students from the university on Feb 14, the day he was heckled by a lawyers' mob at Patiala House Court.

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As the JNU students' face-off with the government lurches from one crisis to another following the arrest of student leader Kanhaiya Kumar on charges of sedition, should we be taking Rohit's warning seriously? Has the Narendra Modi-led NDA government, which has been battling agitation from one university to another through nearly all its tenure, bitten off more than it can chew?

The history of students' protests around the world should give the government pause, especially the unpredictable ways in which they escalated and blew up in the face of government authoritarianism and violence.

Think back to Tiananmen Square, which began as a series of student demonstrations in Chinese universities to protest corruption in the party-government-bureaucracy and demand democratic reforms and freedom of speech. These protests gathered momentum as the students were joined by other disaffected groups, mainly labour unions. It ended in June 1989 with a government crackdown, killing scores of people, some speculating to be even thousands as the exact toll remains disputed.Students were at the forefront of the civil rights movement in the US in the 1960s. It was the Students' Non-Violent Coordination Committee that led the battle against segregation. They organised 'freedom rides' flouting segregation norms in buses and demanded voting rights for coloured people. Another students' organisation, the Students for Democratic Society, turned the tide of public opinion against the Vietnam war in the US. Students took out peace marches, burnt draft cards, raised money for anti-war ads in newspapers, and in 1970, shut down 450 campuses across the country.The 1960s was a momentous decade for student activism in Europe. Students led the opposition to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. One Jan Palach, a student of Charles University, even set himself on fire. Students, backed by labour unions, precipitated the near revolution in Paris in 1968 that ended with the government of Charles De Gaulle announcing elections.Closer home, it was the massacre of students in Dhaka University that precipitated the formation of Bangladesh in 1971.In India, the history of political activism by students goes almost as far back to the formation of the first Western-style higher education institutions in India. In the 1830s, The Young Bengal movement – a band of students at the Hindu College in Calcutta – led by their teacher Henry Derozio, initiated a radical re-think of conservative Hindu social practices.Students across India were dedicated foot soldiers in the Independence movement. In several cases, political consciousness and careers began in schools and college campuses. Take Subhas Chandra Bose, who first attained notoriety for beating up his Brit professor, EP Otten at Presidency College in Kolkata (the very same Hindu College, renamed in 1855) for making racist remarks against Indian students.Calcutta's Presidency College – much like JNU now – was the mecca of student unrest in the 1970s, a reputation fixed in public memory by the central role its students played in the Naxal movement. The militant uprising of peasants in Naxalbari and elsewhere in north Bengal – which has contributed to the term 'Naxalism' to the political lexicon – was a movement led entirely by students. In the 1970s, Elphinstone College in Mumbai was an important centre of radical-left sympathies – many of whom built careers on ideologies they imbibed as students.Several of today's leaders – Arun Jaitley and Ravi Shankar Prasad of the BJP, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and state veteran Lalu Prasad, Prakash and Brinda Karat and Sitaram Yechury of the CPI-M (and nearly all of today's left leaders) – cut their teeth in student politics, notably the anti-Emergency movement and Jayaprakash Narayan's Nav Nirman Andolan of the late 1970s. Ironically, it is these leaders who today epitomise the establishment, undermining the very radical potential of campus politics and intellectual adventurism that made them possible.

"In post-liberalisation India," says Kavita Krishnan, a feminist activist associated with the extreme left CPI (M-L), "there was a move to write off the student movement. The so-called economic reforms, it was said, would fulfil the 'aspirations' of students, and high education would lead to lucrative employment. Students' unions were seen as anachronisms of an outmoded ideology. But two decades on, the high cost of education, rise of private universities and poor quality of intellectual discourse in higher education institutions have exposed these claims."

Events of the last few years, especially in the 20 months of the present government coming into power, seem to echo Krishnan's analysis. Consider the number of agitations that have had universities across the country in ferment – the current fracas in JNU was preceded by Rohith Vemula's suicide at Hyderabad University, which in turn came in the wake of a long-drawn battle between students of FTII and the government. Simultaneous with these were protests against the government's decision to discontinue paid scholarships to research scholars. Then, the tension at Allahabad University where Richa Singh, the first woman president of the students' union, protested at an event where BJP minister Yogi Adityanath was to address the students. Not to forget, the 'Kiss of Love' and 'Pads Against Sexism' campaigns which spread like wildfire throughout campuses last year.

JNU has been the focal point of many protests, major recent flashpoints being the beef ban and screening of Muzaffarpur Baaqi Hai – a documentary about events that led to the 2013 riots. And, a couple of months ago, there was the FIR filed when wardens stopped a havan in one of the hostel rooms, calling it a fire hazard.

"The current fracas needs to be seen in the context of all these attempts to impose a uniform Hindu ideology on the students, especially since the ABVP, after a very long time, got a toe-hold in the union," says Albeena Shakeel, a former president of JNUSU.

Indian politicians, especially those in power, pay regular paeans to India's youth – the "demographic dividend" that will power its bid to be the next global superpower. Narendra Modi himself had begun his bid to be prime minister with an address to students at Delhi's Shri Ram College of Commerce. "India's youth has to be viewed differently. Leaders should see the youth as a new age of power for the nation to progress," he'd said then. And, 20 months into his tenure, perhaps, he's realised that the power of youth is a double-edged sword which must be handled with care, or it can cut both ways.