My grandfather was once in jail.

As a kid, I’d pronounce this with a little flush of pride. My grandpa! Way back in the 1941.

As a young man, my maternal grandfather became involved with student politics and wrote rousing poems, neither of which the British government cared for. A warrant was issued. He went underground, but was eventually arrested.

I know nothing of his jail stint except that he wrote more Urdu poetry and learnt the Hindi (Devanagari) script. I did ask once if his mother was mad at him for getting arrested. She was upset, he said, mainly on account of the family’s reputation. His marriage had been fixed, but after his arrest the girl’s side broke off the engagement. Clearly, not everyone thought it was such a fine thing to go to jail – not even in the name of the freedom.

My pride rested on the fact that Grandpa was a political prisoner. So was the Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi, and our first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and the tallest leaders of India’s freedom struggle. Some were charged with “sedition”, causing disaffection towards the government, but that didn’t stop them. They courted arrest, confronted police batons and went on hunger strikes. They emerged from jail with their heads held high. Then came freedom. On 15 August 1947, at the stroke of midnight, politicking was no longer quite the same. Inquilab Zindabad – “Long Live the Revolution” – became a fraught slogan. My grandfather was no longer so political. The sedition law stayed on the books.

I grew up thinking of politics as a grubby thing. Student politics was painted as particularly dangerous. A good kid was supposed to walk in the opposite direction if she saw one of those wannabe politicians, those who had connections with actual politicians.

One heard stories of semi-authentic students, young men in their late 20s and early 30s who kept signing up for courses so they could remain eligible for student council elections or, at least, could influence the outcome by bullying others. In 1983, a state-appointed panel had recommended putting an end to campus elections in the state of Bihar, and to ban teachers from contesting elections at local, state or national levels. Their report quoted a teacher of Patna University as saying that every third student carried arms, and there were over a hundred cases of stabbing each year. Subsequently, Patna University did not conduct student union elections for nearly 28 years. This wasn’t so unusual: student elections have been banned by several Indian states in the decades since independence, but I had little cause for worry. I was enrolled at a girls-only college run by nuns. Violence was as likely as snowfall in a desert. Political awakening was as unlikely. I’d opted for sociology and economics along with English literature, but our teachers didn’t discuss politics or how it impacts the economy. Some would dictate notes that we’d copy, longhand, in our notebooks. We’d mug up on notes, rocking back and forth in bed late into the night before exams: three definitions of money, eight types of marriages recognised in traditional Indian society. Why Macbeth killed the king. We didn’t discuss why kings, or prime ministers, get assassinated.

At 18, we were eligible to vote for parliament. Almost as soon as we entered college, we, at least in theory, decided weighty matters like whether food and education should be universal rights, whether there would be blood on the streets in the name of religion, how much affirmative action was acceptable. College elections, on the other hand, decided nothing.

The student council chose a head girl, who got to wear a saree and make a polite speech at the college annual day celebrations. Elected reps didn’t voice grievances. They wore badges and were occasionally assigned minding duties, keeping order and so on. Still, we talked about candidates as if it mattered. “This one seems ambitious. That one is suddenly friendly. Too proud.”

Mahatma Gandhi leading the Salt March in protest against the government monopoly on salt production. Photograph: Central Press/Getty Images

Perhaps to give us a taste of future participation in democracy, the secrecy of the ballot was maintained. The year I was up for class rep, my heart went boom boom boom once counting began. I was afraid I’d only get one vote, which would be my own, so perhaps I shouldn’t have voted for myself? Surely it is better to declare that even you have no faith in yourself, if nobody else does? But I got my badge after all.

Most of our parents wouldn’t have wanted us to do more than wear a badge. They wanted us to pass exams, pick up a bit of culture or sports. They didn’t want us involved with unions. Suspicious as they were of politics, the middle and upper classes have a horror of collective action. The phrase I’d heard grown-ups use was “ganging up”. Workers “ganged up”; students “got misled”. CEOs and businessmen “demonstrated leadership”.

It wasn’t just parents and college administrators. It was our pop culture too. Movies in the 1980s and 1990s showed aggressive students forcing others to boycott classes, preventing teachers from teaching, threatening violence. Some stories were rooted in reality. Friends at bigger universities said lumpen leaders did try to force the administration to postpone exams and there were real concerns they’d lose a whole year. News reports informed us about vice-chancellors needing guns to ward off mobs. A depoliticised campus was the safest bet. Yet, it was in a thoroughly depoliticised environment that I had my first brush with collective action.

I was the student who rarely bunked class, who participated in dances and plays, exercised on schedule, worked on the college magazine, didn’t complain about the food in the hostel mess. Then, one Sunday, a discreet meeting was held. A bunch of girls wanted to do something about the quality of the food, the way it was served (someone was insulted when she went back for second helpings). Perhaps there were other grievances, though none were mine. But the girls asked if I’d support them and I agreed.

The chosen method of protest was skipping a meal. In the corridor outside the mess, we sat on the floor in a neat row, each girl doing something appropriate: reading, sewing, embroidering. The warden walked past, asked what was up. We said nothing.

The word aazaadi, freedom, is a red rag. It is a lit fuse. It forces us to ask, freedom from what?

I have no clear memory of how we dispersed. Perhaps the warden asked us to go back to our rooms and we did. Later we were summoned and asked to explain that little piece of drama. I remember quailing under the unfamiliar glare of disapproval: You too, Annie? I’m disappointed!

The food did not change much, and I didn’t think there was a lot wrong with it in the first place. But that one hour – sitting there, refusing to eat, quietly reading a book – achieved something. It introduced me to a tool called non-cooperation. I’d read about it. Mahatma Gandhi had used it against the British. Now I understood it.

One of the first photos I uploaded on Facebook has me holding a placard that says: Dow, don’t feed us with poison.

I was reluctant to upload photos initially. Why put my face out there for strangers to look at? But once I decided to face the world, I chose a political image even though I wasn’t a card-carrying member of any party. I still struggled to talk to people who wore their political affiliations on their sleeves. But a lot had changed between me being an undergraduate at a safe campus in 1999 and being a reporter at a news magazine in 2004.

I’d been walking past India Gate in New Delhi when I saw a bunch of people holding placards and lighting candles. The protest was against the Dow Chemical Company, the American corporation that had not taken full responsibility for the 1984 toxic gas leak in Bhopal. Hundreds of thousands were sick and over16,000 died as a result of the leak. Warren Anderson, the American who headed Union Carbide, the international corporation that controlled the Indian subsidiary (Union Carbide India Limited), never saw the inside of an Indian jail. This was the twentieth anniversary protest, and it took me less than five minutes to stop watching and join in.

One of the activists held a placard that said: Dow, take your shit back. Union Carbide sold its stake and was eventually acquired by Dow Chemical Company in 2001. Conveniently, Dow acquired the business but not its toxic tail. There remained hundreds of tonnes of hazardous waste in Bhopal. People were struggling with disability. Babies were still being born with birth defects. The 20th anniversary was followed by the 25th, then the 30th. Dow never felt compelled to take its shit back.

Survivors of the Bhopal gas disaster and activists burn an effigy and hold a protest against Dow Chemical in front of a Union Carbide premises in India. Photograph: gagan nayar/Hindustan Times via Getty Images

In 2016, some students of Jawaharlal Nehru University were protesting the execution of Afzal Guru, a Kashmiri accused of conspiring towards the 2001 terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament. The protest was organised by left-leaning students. Matters spun out of control, with unnamed outsiders showing up and raising what were described as “anti-India” slogans. A rival group of students from the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), known to be affiliated with the RSS, had summoned a television crew to the campus. Soon the event snowballed into a national debate. Journalists were either provided doctored videos or certain newsrooms doctored videos in a manner that presented leftist student leaders as anti-India.

The president of the student council, Kanhaiya Kumar, was arrested for sedition. Warrants were issued against five others. A year later, the court ruled that there was no basis for a case of sedition. The state-appointed vice-chancellor’s response was to recommend that an army tank be installed on campus, to instil feelings of nationalism.

Last year, Ramjas College of Delhi University was hosting a seminar called Cultures of Protest. Two prominent JNU students were invited. The seminar was disrupted by students affiliated with the ABVP. The bogey of anti-India slogans was raised again. Violence broke out. An associate professor was brutally attacked, leading to serious injuries and hospitalisation. Allegations of sedition and criminal conspiracy were tossed around. Again, the police found that video footage of “anti-national slogans” was likely doctored.

Elsewhere too, students and teachers have been accused of anti-national activities as a way of getting them to shut up, stop wrestling with ideas of citizenship. More than one institution of higher learning has postponed or cancelled seminars for fear of similar violence.

The slogans made it clear what they were about: freedom from hunger, from capitalism, casteism, communalism.

These allegations don’t necessarily flow from a challenge to the idea of India, such as through separatist movements, armed rebels or forced displacement. The flimsiest excuse suffices. At Punjab University, students protesting a sudden fee hike were charged with sedition. Students of Lucknow University were beaten and arrested for waving black flags at the chief minister. Blocking his convoy was described as a “security breach”. The University of Hyderabad, which had also witnessed protests, tried to get admission seekers to sign an undertaking to the effect that they would not participate in protests that are not “in accordance with” university rules. The most shocking response came in September 2017, when female students at Banaras Hindu University (BHU) protested sexual harassment on campus and the administration refused to ensure their safety. None of the women was armed. The vice-chancellor called the police anyway and the women were beaten. He later made a derisive statement about “those who are not committed to the nation”. He had earlier said in an interview that the administration was working to prevent BHU from turning into JNU.

There is indeed a great gulf between the two. When JNU students were arrested, the professors responded by holding a series of open-air lectures on nationalism. When the BHU women were beaten, none of the professors made any public response. BHU has discriminatory rules for women. They are not given the same wi-fi access as men and are denied meat in the hostel mess. That evening curfew descends much sooner for female students barely makes news; it is so at most women’s hostels across the country. In fact, there is an ongoing campaign in Delhi against discriminatory timings and higher hostel fees for women, called Pinjra Tod. The phrase means “break the cage”. Clearly, it is a cry for freedom and as such it is viewed as a national security risk – as students of Delhi University’s Hindu College discovered. The administration contacted parents, claiming that their children were involved with “terrorist and unethical” organisations. The organisation mentioned was Pinjra Tod.

The word aazaadi, freedom, is a red rag. It is a lit fuse. It forces us to ask, freedom from what? Television channels have been fiercely debating campus politics but they refuse to ask honest questions: what does it mean to be a free citizen? What sort of nation are we? Why are women still in cages?

Indian students shout slogans during a protest at the Jadavpur University against the arrest of a Jawaharlal Nehru University student union president Kanhaiya Kumar. Photograph: Debajyoti Das/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Again and again, aggressive questions are thrust at students: “Have you been sent to college to study or to do politics?” “Why should the taxpayer subsidise you?” For women, there’s an additional smackdown: “Were you sent to college only so you could bring shame upon the family?”

When JNU was at the heart of the sedition storm last year, a politician from the ruling party, BJP, chose a peculiar mix of wild allegations to stigmatise the students. He claimed that 50,000 pieces of bone, 3,000 used condoms, 500 used abortion injections and 10,000 cigarette butts were found on campus every single day, and that men and women danced naked at cultural events. He was spelling out the worst prejudices and deepest anxieties of upper-caste India – drinking, meat-eating, sexually active young people, and women who have control over their own bodies.

Many young people responded with glee and bravado. There were jokes about said politician digging into dustbins and fishing out used condoms.

However, the question of freedom – from whom? to do what?– hung heavy in the air. When Kanhaiya Kumar was released on bail, instead of retreating into a quiet corner, the students at JNU rallied around as he boldly led a chant for aazaadi. This time, the slogans made it clear what they were about: freedom from hunger, from capitalism, casteism, communalism. Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!

Politics is life and death. I know this now. There is no such thing as being apolitical. Each citizen makes a daily, hourly political choice in asking – or failing to ask – what life, and what sort of death, belongs to which of her compatriots. Will it be a slow-dripping night of death for a malnourished woman trying to give birth? Will it be the silent, airless death of a newborn in a government hospital that runs out of oxygen? Will it be the screaming deaths of people tortured to extract confessions for which no evidence is ever found? Or death via lynching by a manufactured mob? Will it be a life jangling with rewards given to men who beat and rape the poorest women? Is it going to be a life spent paying taxes that go to pay the salaries of such men? Is it going to be a life spent watching helplessly as your own parents get older without the assurance of medical aid?

Questions of bread and meat, potatoes and clean water, ambulances and abortions – they make the state nervous, and nervous rulers can be dangerous. But the greater danger is citizens who don’t want to hear the answers.

My grandfather was in jail at 25. He must have been afraid of being beaten. Or getting sick and dying. It must have crossed his mind that he wasn’t sent to college to do politics. He could have returned to his village, become a farmer of sorts. He was a young man who could have made the status quo work for him, who could have chosen to benefit from the disenfranchisement of the poor and the illiterate. I wonder, if he were alive and watching virulent televised debates where leaders tell students not to do politics, what would Grandpa say? What would he think of a people grown suspicious of a once-beloved word, aazaadi?

Sometimes I think he’d join a protest. Some days I think, no, he’d gently change the subject and talk of poetry instead. Perhaps he could be persuaded to recite one of his old poems, the one about the young braves of Hindustan who stood in the line of bullets and did not flinch. He might even advise the young to keep their heads down and get a university degree. But of this, I am certain: if they refused to keep their heads down, he would secretly be a little more proud of them.