“We shall overcome” fills up the air in JNU a day after the bloody Sunday assault tried to embed fear and friction

• Hundreds of students who gathered near the main gate of Jawaharlal Nehru university protesting against the violence on campus.
• On Sunday evening, masked goons entered the campus and beat up students and teachers mercilessly.
• Students from several other colleges gathered outside the gates, family members flew down to Delhi to support their children.
• These are some individual accounts from the protests.

While chants of ‘Hum honge Kamyaab’, the Hindi version of the famous song ‘We shall overcome’, filled the sprawling, even the roads leading to the JNU reflected the tense situation at the campus. Entry was denied for students and staff from the main gate guarded by batteries of policemen. Media personnel were ready to capture any flare up and an ambulance was parked outside for the victims, if any.

After all, the bloody Sunday night was just another violent episode in the debate over the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act and the National Register of Citizens and it is far from resolved.

The anxious spectator

An auto driver sighed as he dropped a passenger outside the gates of the renowned Jawaharlal Nehru University. "Dekho, kaise ho Raha hain yahan". (See, what’s happening here?)

He was talking about the bloody assault by masked men and women on the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) on Sunday evening that left scores injured, hundreds of fellow students in fear, and thousands of people across India watching it on television and mobile screens in shock.


The unusual parents

Ranjana Pasalkar flew down from Pune to support her daughter Shivani who has been studying at JNU since 2015. Shivani, who is pursuing her final year MA in French, was on campus when the violence broke out and saw people being hit by the mob.

“My daughter has been studying for five years. She used to come home in December because exams haven’t happened, registrations are going and now it seems like an indefinite situation. Day after day, the situation here is worsening and I have come here to support her,” said Pasalkar.

The fellowship of the ring had its own battles

The ring of the protestors inside JNU had support from outside too. “The protests have always been about what India stands for. The campus violence at Jamia where the police forces marched inside campus, is different from the way it happened in JNU, but the role of the cops as spectators or perpetrators continues to remain prevalent,” said a student (name withheld on request) from Ambedkar University who was camped outside the campus. She didn’t want her parents to know that she was out to protest.

Yards away from her was Shivangi Bhasin who had fought her family who thought her participation in today’s protests would make no difference. “I broke down yesterday as I heard the news,” Bhasin, a teaching assistant at Ashoka University, told Business Insider. “My involvement started with CAA/NRC. It’s targeting the very nature of our constitution. It is way beyond that bill now, it’s about the government storming into universities trying to frame students as anti-nationals. It’s about fighting for what an intelligent, critical thinking student means to me,” she added.

See Also:
Billionaire Anand Mahindra to Bollywood star Manoj Bajpayee -- these are some of the big reactions to the violence at JNU
JNU attacks: IIT Bombay, Pune film university, National Law School and even the Oxford is protesting against JNU mob attacks