St. Stephen’s College, an oasis of political tranquillity that sends no representative to the Delhi University Students Union, on Wednesday somewhat recalled a sight of late associated with Hong Kong.

Students gathered under colourful umbrellas on the main lawns of Stephen’s to express solidarity with live-wire issues that are vexing Indian campuses as well as streets.

Some of the Stephen’s students had walked out of their classrooms — possibly the first time in nearly 30 years.

Protests are rare, muted and very peaceful in the college where students’ union elections are contested only by independents and groups unaffiliated to political parties.

The last time some classes were boycotted here, a teacher said, was during the anti-Mandal Commission agitation in 1990. Today, the classes were empty after 10am.

“We had a peaceful march, following which we read the preamble to the Constitution, and sang the civil rights anthem We Shall Overcome, and (Faiz Ahmed) Faiz’s Hum Dekhenge. At 1pm, we joined a bigger protest at the arts faculty of (DU),” Raman Mohora, the president of the college’s Students Union Society, told The Telegraph.

Mohora added that it was the simmering antipathy towards the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) that boiled over after the rampage in Jawaharlal Nehru University — at the other end of the capital — that led to Wednesday’s strike. Few in the college now could recall such a precedent.

These factors had pushed students on several campuses in the national capital region to support the nationwide labour strike on Wednesday.

“The nature of the movement against the CAA and the NRC (National Register of Citizens) is organic and students have come together on this, irrespective of social class or region. We felt that we had to lend our voice against the repeated violence by goons and police on campuses. We’ve seen it in the past too in DU in 2017. Enough is enough,” Mohora added.