Students march for democracy, decry saffron tyranny

Thousands of students from different universities took out a march in the heart of the national capital to protest the arrest of the JNU student Kanhaiya Kumar on Thursday.

“If India is RSS, then I am anti-national,” read a placard. Students, sporting T-shirts printed with Kumar’s face, raised slogans for his unconditional release and denounced the acts of the BJP government.

Terming it the beginning of “Indian Spring”, CPM MP M B Rajesh equated the march with the Arab Spring and expanded the debate from the case of Kanhaiya to the suppression of democratic voices in an institutionalised manner by the BJP government.

“We have witnessed this in other parts of the world too, where the power of students has uprooted authoritarian regimes. I think here also the situation has worsened to such a level where anything can happen. Ignoring the power of youth will prove very costly for the Modi government,’’ said Rajesh.

Students from JNU, Jamia Milia Islamia, South Asian University, Ambedkar University, National School of Drama (NSD) and Delhi University started from near the Mandi House Metro station and marched through the busy Barakhamba road before arriving at Jantar Mantar.

The march was led by a mini-truck from where leaders like Brinda Karat, D Raja, Rajesh and Yogendra Yadav addressed the students.

“The BJP and RSS are destroying the Constitution in the name of nationalism. On the pretext of this false nationalism, a student has been arrested,’’ said Brinda Karat.

“The country is governed by the Constitution written by B R Ambedkar and not by the bhajan-chanting RSS ideologues. The home minister of the country was in such a hurry that without verifying the authenticity of the incident, tweeted that all the students involved in the incident are anti-national,’’ she added.

Apart from the BJP and the  RSS, the students were particularly unhappy by the way Delhi police handled the episode.