Watch students marching for JNU in Delhi in a protest powered by flowers
A huge turnout and a counter campaign.
Unlike recent protest marches by students, Thursday's show of solidarity with the students of Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi was completely devoid of violence. The march, where more than 10,000 people turned out, took to flower power. The organisers had asked participants to carry flowers to anyone who resisted or obstructed them.
The video below is a heartening moment in the conflict between university students and some TV news channels that have been shrilly insisting that JNU is anti-national. ZEE News is among these channels, and here the news channel's journalist, surrounded by JNU students holding out flowers, can do nothing but smile, as students joke with him about how the flowers have been paid for by tax money.
Former JNU Student Union President Sucheta De gave a rousing speech at the protest march. Countering claims that the university is an "elite" institution, she talked about how students from every part of the country study there.
"If democracy has to survive, then the sedition laws will have to go." No person has ever been punished for sedition since Independence, she argued, but the law still exists as a tool for the government to create frenzy.
At the other end of the spectrum, a video campaign titled #iWillNotTolerate has been launched, with participants recording videos of what they will not tolerate. A mash-up of some of those appeared on the YouTube channel I Support Narendra Modi. With rousing music as background, people tell the camera what they will not tolerate.
