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Over the past few days, students of the Jawaharlal Nehru University have inexplicably been labelled terrorists, anti-nationals and threats to Indian democracy. Kanhaiya Kumar, the president of the JNU student union was picked up by the police on Saturday, and so far eight students of the union have been suspended.

Commenting on these inflated aspersions of danger, AISA's Sucheta De (video above) mockingly confirms, "This university is a dangerous place." Describing her own experience within the University when she joined it 2005, she jokes about how mind boggling the cultural experience was for her at times.

Students are accorded a space for discourse and debate, overcoming barriers of caste, class, gender and language to create an environment where anyone can become a student leader, she says.

If this nation means its people, then those oppressed masses are not just accepted here, but also made political leaders, she adds. "The nation must know that this is JNU", she says. De was the president of the AISA earlier.

Taking on the comparisons drawn between students of JNU getting a subsidised education and Lance Naik Hanamanthappa Koppad, one of the soldiers who died tragically recently in Siachen, De raises the question of why our soldiers are stationed there and why there is no effort made to resolve the issue.

Addressing the fact that student protests have been erupting over the country at a furious rate, she says that JNU now joins other universities in their struggle. She calls this a fight against the idea of knowledge, and one that will be fought and won.

She ends by saying, "JNU will stay the way it always has. That it is for the nation and will live and die for it."