JNU needs to introspect about its role in sabotaging the movements of marginalised groups. In the past six years, JNU has, even if unwittingly, served as a tool for the Narendra Modi dispensation to divert attention from mass movements, including the protests against Rohith Vemula’s suicide in 2016 and the ongoing pushback against the citizenship law and the police brutality at Jamia Millia Islamia and Aligarh Muslim University. JNU’s privileged student leaders have hijacked such mass movement by foregrounding issues specific to their university. They have been helped along by lelf-liberal professors at various elite universities. Why is it that the citizenship law protests and the police brutality in Jamia and AMU did not compel them to come out on the streets en masse, but the mob violence in JNU did? Why is it that Dr Payal Tadvi’s suicide, caused by caste hatred, in the heart of a megapolis did not force left-liberal teachers to stand with placards in their hands? What stops JNU’s “progressive” teachers and student leaders from asking serious questions about the incarceration of Bhim Army chief Chandrasekhar Azad? What keeps “progressive” faculty members at elite institutions from opposing the regressive Economically Weaker Sections quota and using their influence to mobilise opinion against it, nationally and internationally?