How students are the first line of resistance

Why in the News

Recent student protests, from anti-paper leak agitations to protests against the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, build on a decade of unresolved campus grievances. Protesters now face peace bonds, cases under the anti-terror Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 (UAPA) and the loss of Jantar Mantar as a protest site.

Why are students called the first line of resistance?

1. Early warning: Students are the first section of society to recognise a threat to democracy and to stand up for it.
2. Grievances that return: Grievances suppressed through distortion do not disappear. Left unresolved, they change shape and return as new movements.
3. Older precedent: The anti-Emergency protests also began as a student movement against a fee hike at a Gujarat university.
4. The takeaway: Treating campus protest as a passing outburst misreads it, since each wave carries the unresolved grievances of the last.

Which earlier movements does today’s wave build on?

1. FTII hunger strike: Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) students fasted for 139 days in 2015 against Gajendra Chauhan‘s appointment as chairman. He stayed, but his tenure was cut short.
2. Campus campaigns: Several campus campaigns followed:
   • Occupy UGC, for the non-NET fellowship, a stipend for research scholars without a national eligibility fellowship;
   • Justice for Rohith Vemula and #WhereIsNajeeb;
   • protests against sedition cases on Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) students.
3. Fees and citizenship: Anti-fee hike protests at Panjab University, JNU and Delhi University, and the equal citizenship movement, drew on the same energy.
4. Gender justice: The 2012 Nirbhaya protests, and later protests over the Unnao and Hathras cases and the wrestlers’ harassment complaints, showed students mobilising for justice.

How have the issues and the mode of protest changed?

1. Education policy: The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 was imposed through a press conference and centralises education policy. Students resisted it through the Jantar Mantar 1.0 movement.
2. Memes and reels: Gen Z protests through satire, memes and reels on Instagram, Reddit and YouTube. Showing police in humorous clips signals that this generation no longer fears them.
3. Electoral grievances: Protests over electoral malpractice matter as much as paper leaks, because compromised elections leave peaceful protest as the only route to accountability.
4. Wider youth concerns: Youth also protest over corporate monopoly over jobs, artificial intelligence (AI) and its regulation, the state’s withdrawal from the public sector and global conflict.

How is the state responding, and what do students demand?

1. Peace bonds: Protesters are pressed to sign peace bonds, written undertakings to keep the peace. The All India Students’ Association (AISA) president refused to sign one.
2. Anti-terror law: The UAPA is meant for terror cases and carries strict bail conditions. It is now being used against student activists.
3. Protest sites and unions: The government has denotified Jantar Mantar as a protest site. Campus protests demand restored student union elections.

Challenges

1. Criminalising dissent: Applying an anti-terror law to campus activism turns political disagreement into long pre-trial detention.
2. Shrinking protest space: With designated sites denotified, peaceful assembly has no settled lawful venue in the capital.
3. No elected student voice: Without union elections, campus grievances lack a formal channel and spill onto the streets.

Way Forward

1. Regular union elections: Hold campus elections on a fixed calendar. Eg. The Lyngdoh Committee (2006) guidelines.
2. Notified protest sites: Restore designated spaces for peaceful assembly. Eg. Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan v. Union of India (2018).
3. Narrow use of UAPA: Confine anti-terror charges to terror offences and review pending cases against students.

Conclusion

Student protest in India is a continuous chain in which unresolved grievances return in new forms and on new platforms. Whether the state answers it through campus democracy and open spaces for dissent, or through policing, will decide whether that dissent stays peaceful.

What is the Right to Protest?

1. Constitutional basis: Peaceful protest rests on Article 19(1)(a) (speech and expression) and Article 19(1)(b) (peaceful assembly without arms).
2. Reasonable restrictions: Article 19(3) allows the state to restrict assembly in the interest of public order and India’s sovereignty and integrity.
3. Ramlila Maidan (2012): In In Re: Ramlila Maidan Incident, the Supreme Court held that peaceful protest is a fundamental right the state cannot curtail arbitrarily.
4. Public ways (2020): In Amit Sahni v. Commissioner of Police, on the Shaheen Bagh sit-in, the Court held that public roads cannot be occupied indefinitely.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2026, GS2, 15 marks] To what extent do pressure groups, social movements and corporate lobbies deepen pluralistic democracy in India by representing excluded interests? Analyse whether the growing convergence of corporate wealth and political power poses a threat to the autonomy of formal democratic institutions.”