As a student who decided to protest for the sake of ‘azaadi ‘ of speech and dissent , it was quite clear to me that when I reach Ramjas on Wednesday  to join my fellow students, The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) supporters were not going to be peaceful . Afterall , a student political party capable of assault  and vandalism were hardly going to show restraint. As soon as I reached the venue, many of my friends had already been attacked and were bleeding. It was surprising that as students of Ramjas college, we had to show our ID cards to enter. Despite this, when I entered the campus, ABVP protestors were already inside, in hundreds threatening to throw us out of the college.

Before the planned march could start, Ramjas college students were attacked by ABVP supporters and around 100 students in Ramjas were locked inside the campus as the peaceful march started to take place outside the college. We sat inside the college by the canteen and amphitheater area, pleading with the police to go outside—a request that was constantly denied. At this point, two separate incidents were taking place, inside and outside the college grounds. Inside Ramjas, students and teachers hunkered down and sang songs. ABVP members unfurled the national flags, waving and chanting “bharat mata ki jai” and “desh ke gaddar”while the police tried to hold them off us. At one point, a teacher was attacked with a chair in front of the police who did nothing to intervene claiming “we are trying to do our duty”. We all received calls from our friends outside about the state of affairs outside. Many members of the ABVP openly threatened us and the faculty. When asked to show their ID cards to prove their affiliation to the college, as we did, they threatened the authority of the police and the teachers, some of them with impunity–“tu kaun hota hai humse ID maangney wala (who are you to ask about our IDs)”.
It was at this point that some of them clarified why they were there. They claimed we were being misguided, pawns for an agenda that the professors are trying to put against the nation and that the JNU and DU professors were enacting a policy of ‘divide and rule‘ by inviting an ‘anti-nationalist’ like Umar Khalid on campus. Some even claimed that we were sensationalizing the event against the ABVPs in an attempt to foster votes for the All India Students’ Association. There was, however, one member who was ready to talk to us and engage in discussion. He was soon taken away amidst conversation by some other member who said “desh drohi sebaat nahi hingi (conversations will not be engaged with anti-nationalists)”. The impression I got was that the ABVP themselves have zero clarity regarding why they were there; and their understanding of why we were there of the reasons for the event in the first place. Fighting for Ramjas is definitely not about Left Wing or Right Wing politics, nor is it about anti-nationalism or garnering votes. Fighting for Ramjas is personal for every student as the very identity of a student is at stake. The power to think and engage in discussion with each other is not something that should be protested against and to resort to violence instead of discourse is unacceptable.