Like the scholar quoted above, not everyone in India’s most prominent ‘red’ campus is engaged with student politics. But some of them are uneasy, at the very least, about the police presence in campus and the arrest of Kanhaiya, the Students’ Union President.

Kanhaiya, a member of the All India Students Federation (AISF), which is affiliated to the Communist Party of India (CPI) has been arrested on charges of sedition. The police has also demanded that five other students, who organised the event, accused of being ‘anti-national’, be turned over to them by the university.