Villainised, vilified and rusticated: the high price of dissent on JNU campus

For five Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student leaders, the past month has turned campus activism into a battle for academic survival as suspensions, arrests, and disciplinary inquiries threaten to derail their PhDs and future careers.

“I keep wondering why I am in this situation. But then I realise that the other people who fought for us to be here built these spaces. I owe it to them to keep fighting,” said Aditi Mishra, JNU Students’ Union (JNUSU) president, who, instead of working on campus issues, is now spending her time questioning the “curbs on student dissent”.