Raising concerns regarding repeated infrastructure-related incidents across campuses, students of the University of Delhi organised a protest at the Faculty of Arts.
Students of the University of Delhi staged a protest at the Faculty of Arts earlier this week over alleged negligence regarding campus infrastructure and student safety. NSUI member Gopal Choudhary reportedly led the demonstration. Students raised concerns over a series of infrastructure-related incidents reported across various colleges and departments under the university.
Demonstrators demanded immediate structural safety audits of university buildings, urgent repair work in deteriorating facilities, and greater administrative accountability regarding campus safety measures.
Following the protests and growing concerns regarding campus infrastructure, the Delhi University administration has now reportedly instructed colleges and departments to conduct proper structural and electrical safety inspections across campuses. However, there is no official statement from the University administration regarding this decision.
Among the demands raised during the protest was the provision of life insurance and compensation support for students injured in infrastructure failures within university premises. Protesters also called upon the administration to publicly address recent incidents and implement preventive measures to avoid similar occurrences in the future.
In an interview with the Editorial Team of DU Beat, Gopal mentioned,
We have given the administration of DU an ultimatum of 21 days. During this time, we want them to conduct thorough inspection of all DU colleges and suspend classes as well as exams in campuses with poor infrastructure. Otherwise we will again stage a hunger strike until stricter actions are taken. We are also planning to file a RTI in 1-2 days time for how the annual budget is spent in every college. When we approached the administration of DU, they pointed us towards the individual colleges. And the admin in the colleges pointed us back to the VC. There is no end to this cycle and both of them are equally responsible. At the end they’ll have to work together if change is desired.
Other than that, we are protesting for water coolers and ORS facilities in every classroom during the exam season in light of the prevalent heatwave. In addition to this, the 66.67% attendance criteria is also problematic. I will be attending a meeting on Monday with the administration to address these concerns.”
Slogans such as “DU Campus or Danger Zone” and “Have we come here to study or die?” were seen on placards and raised during the demonstration, reflecting concerns among students regarding safety conditions on campus.
The protest follows a recent incident reported at the Department of Botany, Faculty of Science, on 4 May 2026 during an ongoing MSc practical examination. According to statements circulated online, the false ceiling of Lab Room No. 26 allegedly collapsed between 3:45 and 4:00 PM, along with a projector and nearby panels, while students were writing their examination.
One student reportedly sustained a severe head injury requiring several stitches and was taken to a nearby hospital in Civil Lines. Another student allegedly suffered minor shoulder injuries. The incident prompted renewed discussion among students regarding the structural condition of university buildings and the response mechanisms available during emergencies.
Visuals from the protest showed students assembled with placards and banners outside the Faculty of Arts premises, with slogans reportedly focusing on student safety and institutional accountability. Protesters alleged that multiple warnings and complaints regarding infrastructure conditions had previously been raised across colleges.
After many drafts and meetings the final date sheet was uploaded, changing the examination dates for Semester 6th and 8th students. This comes after the final date for filling the examination form with late fee passed on the 7th of May.
On 7th May, between 7:18PM and 7:25PM, the examination date sheet got updated by Delhi University, changing the exam dates for Semester 6 and 8 students. This change came a few hours before the last time students of regular, NCWEB (Non-Collegiate Women’s Education Board), and SOL (School of Open Learning) could fill up the examination form with late fees.
The final date sheet has preponed the exams for 6th and 8th semester. Exams will now take place earlier. As an example, previously DSE exams for semester 8 were to be conducted on 18th May, 15th, 17th and 18th of June respectively but now it will be conducted on the 18th and 20th May, and 7th and 14th June,2026. Similarly, many semester 6 exams are now pre-poned to end by the 4th of June.
Many final semester students had complained about the month-long gap between exams and wished for their exams to get concluded timely without huge gaps due to job opportunities and admission deadlines. Rahul Jhansla, Vice President of DUSU, had submitted a written application to the Dean of Student Welfare regarding the DU examination date sheet for the aforementioned reasons.
According to Rahul Jhansla, the DU administration had kept the initial gap in consideration for the UPSC prelims; however, they later stated that they would speak to the Controller of Examinations to reduce the gap in the later period.
The examination notice released on 4th May further announced that students currently in their 6th semester could opt for exiting in the SLC portal in June or July, instead of choosing to pursue the additional 4th Year added by the NEP 2020.
Students are advised to check their admit cards for the May-June 2026 examination, which is live on the SLC portal. Many students have also reported that their admit cards show ‘EXTCR” on the column ‘paper type’ causing further confusion. However, they have been informed by teachers that it will not be an issue if it continues to show even after the correction.
Even though the final date sheet has now been released, many students have expressed frustration at the constantly changing date sheet since it disrupts plans for studying and travelling back home. It also highlights poor planning and lack of communication on the University’s behalf as many students continue to question whether or not this shall be the final timetable, despite the official notice.
On 30th April, Hansraj College issued a notice terminating the suspensions of 29 out of 30 students; however, Parth Srivastava’s suspension remains in effect. He has approached the High Court of Delhi under Article 226 and has argued that the suspension violates Parth’s fundamental rights under Articles 14, 19(1)(a), and 21 of the Constitution.
Hansraj College terminated the suspension of 29 out of 30 students who were suspended due to alleged defamation, violence, indiscipline and misconduct, which had occurred after the college fest, Confluence 2026. However, one student, Parth Srivastava, the former president of the student union of Hansraj College, is still suspended, and the matter has reached the High Court of Delhi.
However, Parth Srivastava is still suspended and has filed a petition to the Delhi High Court challenging his suspension on multiple grounds, including “defaming the college through social media platforms” and using “derogatory language.”
On 29th April, Justice Jasmeet Singh issued a notice which allowed Parth Srivastava to enter the campus to fill his examination form as the last date was on 30th April. The notice also stated that the petitioner will not cause any disruption in the college. But he wasn’t allowed to attend his farewell.
Parth Srivastava in conversation with DU Beat
He told DU Beat,
“The person who gave all of his four years to the college and its students was specifically not allowed to attend his own farewell through explicit instructions mentioned in the notice/poster. It was truly very disheartening and shattering for me.”
Filed under Article 226 of the Constitution, pleas that his suspension, which was declared on 20th April, be squashed. In a report by Newslaundry, “[t]he petition argues that the suspension violates Parth’s fundamental rights under Articles 14, 19(1)(a), and 21 of the Constitution–the rights to equality, free speech, and life and dignity.” It has also challenged the legitimacy of the Special Core Sub-Discipline Committee, which suspended him.
The petition also seeks to restore all the academic benefits throughout the suspension period and ensure the petitioner is permitted to attend all classes, participate in academic activities, and continue his education without interruption. This had all begun on February 9th, when a controversy arose because the principal of Hansraj College had used the campus for her son’s wedding, which caused a protest that raised questions about the use of public resources for private use.
Later, around February 12 and 16, another controversy sparked by allegations of NIRF data manipulation. Multiple RTIs were filed by Parth, who later received a disciplinary notice with no charges specified. Later, he filed a complaint with the Central Vigilance Commission on 31st March and then, on 20th April, received his suspension letter.
“After the irregularities highlighted by my RTI application and a CVC complaint were forwarded to the CVO, DU on 16th April, my suspension notice was issued just four days later. Further, suspension notices issued to others during the same period have been revoked, while action against me continues, raising concerns about selective targeting,”
Parth Srivastava mentioned in an interview with DU Beat.
On April 1st, the college had uploaded the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), which prohibited the students from speaking to the media without prior permission, posting defamatory content on social media, and recording meetings or administrative discussions.
On the day of the college fest, many decisions by the college administration, like restrictions on external artists and forcibly concluding the fest early on day one, caused a 20-hour sit-in protest. Many misogynistic remarks were allegedly made to the female protesters by the principal. The college administration gave in, however, on Day 2 of the fest, but the poor crowd management led to physical violence, harassment, and uncontrolled chaos, which led to police intervention.
Parth admitted to posting videos that criticised the college over fee hikes and administration issues.
Parth’s lawyer, Shaurya Vikram, argued that the suspension order is illegal and driven by malice. According to him, the order was issued without any charges, evidence, or clarification of the committee’s authority, making it invalid. He also pointed out that Delhi University stated in 2023 that it cannot regulate staff social media activity, questioning why the same principle shouldn’t apply to students.
In an exclusive interview with the editorial team of DU Beat, he mentioned that:
“ I was targeted because I’m the only one who’s willing to raise a voice. I received emails from the Special Disciplinary Committee formed by the administration of Hansraj without any proof, show-cause notice or relevant information. People allegedly brought knives and guns to the fest, and their faces were all over the internet, yet no action was taken against them. When a civil crime like alleged “defamation” carries so much weight compared to serious crimes like that, it raises concerns about the priorities of our institutions and the environment they are creating. I have been part of the same administration during my tenure, and I know exactly what goes on there, so I am not one to back down from a fight. We trust the Hon’ble Delhi High Court and the student community that we will get justice. ”
Principal Rama Sharma defended the suspension, saying it was needed to maintain order. She criticised students for making false claims and defaming the college on social media. However, she added that most students come to Hansraj College to study, and their academics shouldn’t be disrupted, as it is a “very prestigious college.”
The next hearing for the court case is on 8th May, 2026.
Where does the future of press lie? Does it even lie, or is it just another petrified reality waiting to become a manufactured myth?
A free press is said to be the fourth pillar of a democratic nation, or at least that was the norm. It is regarded widely as a highly potent part of a larger system of checks and balances that keep the nation tied together through politics, economics, justice and beyond. And it is the association of “free” with press that preserves it as a critical component especially at a turning moment in time like today where news is filtered for profitability and truth itself is accustomed to be molded like clay.
As a student journalist working for about a year now, in the limited time that I’ve found myself associated with this field, I’ve learned beyond the good-to-knows, that is, the way to stir up a headline or chase a story—the past months have pushed me to a larger realisation of what it truly means to listen, who gets to be heard, and what are the costs of speaking up.
India is a country of too many people from too many regions and too many diversities—here, too is to be regarded as liberating, as is the term “overpopulating” in overflowing our landscape with stories far more than the news channels or filmmakers can ever fully capture. ‘Untold stories’ in India thus becomes more than a buzzword but experiences lived and unheard, but yet a reality that finds itself limited again to the mainstream. In the ‘unhearing’ of such stories, what renders invisible is the people for whom it is not a story: those who are too marginal, too inconvenient, or worse, too disruptive to even be considered for Page 4, let alone front headlines.
Before I had the vocabulary for it, I had already felt patriarchy shape my world. Before I understood class, I had already encountered the sharp divide between those who have and those who do not. Yet, as an urban upper-caste individual, there also remains parts of my inherited identity that are silent; I just had the privilege to never notice or question them because they were stories I did not hear because I did not have to ever live through them. Journalism, at its best, breaks that silence.
I would like to believe that I have come of age at a time when the institution of journalism itself feels increasingly fragile by the passing day. This decline of the freedom of the press is not relatively new, but perhaps more visible to the eye of the common layman who continue to persist beyond the scholars, writers, journalists, and critics that have lived and died warning us about censorship, the corrosion of independent media, and the damage this does to the very ecology of democracy that journalism is meant to sustain. These warnings are not breaking news (pun intended), but the familiarity of such a warning may be part of the problem.
In conversations, I have found myself realising the unsettling reality that the risks of pursuing journalism often seem to outweigh the rewards: the best-paying positions frequently exist within systems that are deeply entangled with power and the ABCs of journalism are negotiated on the daily, unfortunately resulting in the death of the fourth pillar and a failure of what it truly stands to support. Yet in between the fading light, student journalism presents itself as something radically different: as something not yet entangled in the futile war between politics and spectacle.
I remember an ideation meeting we had for the DU Beat Print edition; I mentioned, almost apologetically, the opening of a new café on campus as the news tip of the week. It didn’t feel like “real news” to me, given what “real” had been ingrained into me, and it wasn’t until my editor responded with something that I realised that journalism, especially student journalism, is not only about documenting crises but also to function as an archival. It preserves the textures of everyday life, the clothes people wore, the food they ate, the spaces they gathered in, and the conversations they had. Journalism becomes a record of that very existence that tells future readers what happened, alongside how it felt to live through it.
In the brief and privileged opportunities that I’ve had to step into larger mainstream newsrooms, I’ve come to notice the behind the scenes of press production that positions itself as neutral, but is rarely unbiased. Behind every headline and breaking news, is a thorough process of filtration and of calculation: the economy of news, who funds it, who controls it, and most importantly who benefits from it. It is perhaps as ‘1984’ as it gets.
As we encounter days of what is meant to be a celebration such as International Press Freedom day, I instead find myself lingering in thoughts of the words edited out and the stories that are censored before the screens can ever house them. It is perhaps uncomfortable to think of how easily we scrutinise dissent and how quickly a protest is delegitimised, especially in student-led spaces where frequently power speaks louder than truth. But it is within such thoughts, and the questioning of such realities that possibility emerges: student journalism, independent media houses, and smaller platforms continue to carve out within the controlled mainstream such spaces of resistance even without the reach of resources. What they rely on though is by far the most important tool of journalism: the willingness to ask difficult questions and seek it answers.
Perhaps in reimagining the future of freedom, of truth, and of journalism in a landscape that silences, the Big 4 hides behind the smaller newsrooms, campus publications, independent newsletters, local reporting and spaces where journalism is still driven by curiosity instead of control. Question what you read and what is shown to you: interrogate and listen in between what is left unsaid. The strength of the fourth pillar does not only depend on those who build it but equally so on those who engage with it.
While protests at LSR continue for the removal of the Principal’s video featured on BJP’s official Instagram page, debates spark on institutional identity, political freedom, and the student’s right to dissent.
After the protests staged at LSR on the 15th of April over the Principal’s video on Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam being featured on the official Instagram page of the Bharatiya Janata Party came to an inconclusive end, the Principal, Dr. Kanika K. Ahuja issued an official statement to The Indian Express. She stated,
The views were shared in the video in an individual capacity. While I hold the office of the Principal, it is important to distinguish between personal intellectual engagement with a social subject and a formal institutional communique.”
Addressing the college’s reiterated commitment to maintaining the ‘apolitical’ stance, she said, “The college’s commitment to an apolitical environment refers to an absence of partisan affiliation not a detachment from critical social discourse.” She further addressed the alleged “saffronisation” on campus through selectively inviting speakers by adding,
The selection of speakers and the organisation of events are decentralised processes at LSR. These decisions are primarily driven by the respective student societies in consultation with their faculty advisors.”
These clarifications come in the wake of the student-led protest held on campus where students across departments and years organised sit-ins at the lower foyer—the immediate area outside the auditorium, adjacent to the Principal’s Office—along with the adjoining corridors, staircases, and outdoor spaces to raise concerns regarding the circulation of this video, which they believed to be in direct opposition to the college’s stated ‘apolitical’ stance that has been reiterated to close down exhibitions, refuse approval of speakers, and hinder free political expression on campus.
In a clarification issued by the students through a statement they refute accusations of being against the Women’s Reservation Bill. The statement published through an anonymous Instagram account reads, “Contrary to the disinformation at the moment—the students of LSR are not mobs protesting against the Women’s Reservation Bill which was talked about by Principal, Ms. Kanika K. Ahuja. The students are conducting a PEACE PROTEST at the moment against the hypocritical stance on apoliticality that our Principal uses to dismiss the girls when they attempt to talk about critical discourses, creative freedom…”. To the students of LSR who stress on their protest as peaceful—one that they reasserted with a floral arrangement reading “We Come in Peace” against the accusations of being a “mob” as asserted by a faculty member—their primary cause of dissent is the featuring of the Principal’s video where she is identified not in an individual capacity but as the Principal of Lady Shri Ram College on the official Instagram Page of BJP.
Image of the floral arranged shared by anonymous source.
While Ahuja reported to the Indian Express that, “I, staff advisors, faculty and others in the administration have remained in active dialogue with students to address campus concerns”, students report otherwise. During a brief interaction with students on the day of the protest, which multiple attendees reported as lasting less than fifteen minutes, Ahuja reportedly presented documents of communication and stated that the video was originally recorded for the Ministry of Women and Child Development but was uploaded by the BJP without her permission.
When asked if any actions had been taken to get the video removed, the students reported that no such action had been initiated, and that the Principal informed that gathering that she would “consider” sending an email for removal of the video. Similarly, on the second day of the sit-in, that is 16th April, she allegedly did not show up to the auditorium after her presence was requested by the protesting students, who complied with her initial request of an audience at the Auditorium instead of the Lower Foyer.
Following the protest on 15th April, which ended in the Principal walking-off in lieu of what she termed as “disrespect”, the administration of the college sent an email quoting a directive issued by the University of Delhi’s Proctor’s Office on March 23, 2026. The notice emphasised the need for prior approval from the concerned authorities for organising protests and demonstrations on the institution’s grounds. It further said that failing to comply with these requirements could result in disciplinary action, and asked students to follow the directive and continue attending classes.
Screenshot of Notification from LSR Administration.
Multiple students reported that the administration had been calling their guardians and parents to report their involvement in the protest, which they viewed as a clear violation of their rights. Additionally, the Students’ Union of Lady Shri Ram College of 2025-26 and 2026-27 issued a joint statement across liaison groups: they wrote,
We the Student Union of Lady Shri Ram College, wish to state unequivocally that we are not the organisers, convenors, or leaders of the protest currently taking place within the college premises…As elected representatives, our role is limited to facilitating communication and ensuring that the concerns of the students are conveyed appropriately to the relevant authorities.”
As news channels and social media pages continue a widespread reporting on the protest, the students of LSR involved in the sit-ins released a statement through the anonymous Instagram Page to “please represent the truth of our protest to the public so it doesn’t have the false narratives attached to it.” This request comes in light of multiple accounts on X accusing the protestors to be “Left-wing students (backed by terrorist org SFI) [who] not only made the Principal captive but also almost tried to lynch her and her daughter, just because she made a video supporting the women’s bill.”
Multiple such statements trying to relegate the protests to a political party have been actively refuted as the students’ demand remains the same—removal of the video, issuing a public clarification, avoiding external speakers on campus without proper background checks, ensuring all political engagements remain strictly non-partisan on campus, and ultimately reaffirming the institution’s commitment to secular and democratic values.
Multiple students have reported that during the first day of the protest, that is 15th March, a certain faculty member had been recording videos of the protesting students, many of whom were minors, without their consent. On informing the Principal regarding the same, including a case of alleged manhandling by the aforementioned Professor, the Principal reportedly stated that she would believe her colleague over the students in light of an adjacent incident which was brought up without the involved student’s consent. A deletion of such videos and photographs have been immediately demanded by the students, which the Principal reportedly agreed to.
Prominent public figures like Anish Gawande and Akhilesh Yadav have stepped up in support of the protesting students of Lady Shri Ram College; the former wrote on his Instagram story, “Very important clarification. You cannot demand that the students remain apolitical while the administration toes a political line.”
Screenshot of Anish Gawande’s Instagram Story
A student in conversation with DU Beat said,
We’re fighting to protect the ethos of our institution. What we’re seeing right now is a spread of convenient misinformation led by the principal, which is shaping a narrative against her own community, against her own students. That is unacceptable.”
This protest against the actions of Dr. Ahuja is however not the first incident of outrage by the student body of Lady Shri Ram College, but follows the sexist and Islamophobic comments passed by ex-diplomat Deepak Vohra in the presence of the Principal during an event organised within the college.
However, while the outrage continues, it is to be noted that while the online community of students supporting the protest remains at large numbers of 1000+ across multiple channels, on-campus limited students have actively engaged in the sit-ins. At the same time, student responses have been mixed; while a section of the students are concerned about institutional consistency and the larger implications of the Principal’s involvement on a particular party’s platform, others wholeheartedly welcome her stance. They emphasise an individual’s right to participate in public affairs, especially those involving women’s representation; a LinkedIn user from LSR writes,
“At the end of the day, she is not only our Principal but also an individual entitled to her own thoughts and opinions, just as each of us.”
On this, Principal Ahuja reported to Times Now, “Roughly 175 students participated in the protest out of around 4000 enrolled on campus. They do not represent the majority.” The separation of the personal from the political has at large remained the cause of support towards the Principal’s video, which claims to remain stationed only upon the Bill, and not upon the political party.
These recent developments across Delhi University and in particular within LSR, with respect to the conversations between the students and the administration during times of dissent, which remain inconclusive, point to a larger question of autonomy, authority, and hierarchy within college spaces, particularly on colleges that allege to be ‘apolitical’ but in practice remain otherwise. If to be or not to be [political] is the question, then the shaping of this incident, especially for a campus like LSR which has a long-standing history of intellectual inquiry, student engagement, and expression of free speech, shall determine the long-term implications of how college spaces are reconstructed, for both the students and the administrators.
Caste survives by making oppression feel deserved and superiority feel accessible. In such a system, everyone is both oppressed and oppressor.
How does one preserve a system of oppression? You convince them that their place in society isn’t imposed, it’s deserved and therefore personal. Capitalism tells you that your lack of hard work brought you here. Caste tells you that your karma brought you here. But here’s where it goes a step further—it tells you that you are still better off.
“The oppressed tend themselves to become oppressors”, says Paulo Freire. However, in this system, we do not have a single oppressor or a single oppressed. While we use loose binaries of upper-caste and lower-caste, Ambedkar identifies a defining feature as “graded inequality”. Nearly every caste has a sub-caste, and every sub-caste has another beneath it. Each layer is granted the psychosocial right to superiority over another. Everyone gets a chance to oppress and to be oppressed.
This isn’t just symptomatic of a system; it’s structurally inbuilt. And this makes caste particularly enduring.
We see graded inequality in the shunning of marriage across sub-castes, in tensions between land-owning OBC communities and landless Dalits, and in the contempt sometimes directed toward sewer workers and sanitation labourers even within marginalised groups. The system offers just enough social power to prevent the question, “Why am I oppressed?” It consoles you with the maxim that “at least I am not them”.
A system is born where oppression feels like power, serving as nicotine to its dignity-starved victims. Marxist thinkers locate “false consciousness” as a feature of capitalism, the misrecognition of one’s position within capitalism. Caste does something more relational. Violence and discrimination towards the rung below you don’t feel like a replication of your oppression. It feels like a distance from it. It feels like upward immobility.
Some have pointed to this dynamic in examining domestic violence in Dalit households. Persistent humiliation and economic frustration can cause emasculation and frustration, which is sometimes displaced onto women in the household. Dalit women thus become the “oppressed of the oppressed”. Systematically refusing respect and opportunity often reproduces microcosms of the hierarchies. Caste functions neatly, offering another layer to produce internally engineered exclusion.
Sub-oppression also operates through aspiration. M.N. Srinivas’ concept of Sanskritisation describes how marginalised castes imitate upper-caste rituals, food practices, and cultural codes to pursue social mobility. But imitation often means the preproduction of exclusion. Distancing oneself from those deemed “impure”—through altered food patterns, marriage boundaries, or discriminatory practices—becomes a performance of respectability. In seeking validation from a savarna order, one internalises its hierarchies.
To Ambedkar, fraternity was the moral foundation of democracy, a recognition of shared humanity and shared humiliation. Graded inequality makes such recognition impossible. It does not just institutionalise inequality—it actually incentivises complicity. When society is arranged in a descending order of worthiness, it prevents horizontal solidarity from forming. Each group negotiates its oppression by asserting dominance over another, fragmenting anger and replacing it with competitive hierarchy.
How do you revolt when you are both victim and perpetrator?
N.B.- I owe my theorisations and links heavily to the ideas disseminated by the lectures and work of Dr Sanchita Khurana, Asst. Prof., MSCFW, DU.
Graffiti haunts the liminal space between the abject and central, the impure and pure, the legal and the illegal. Post-graffiti in Delhi has seen a significant change in its ideological affiliations and creations when compared to the genesis of the art form in Philadelphia in 1967.
By the 1980s, the industrial economy of America had been voraciously replaced by the service economy characterised by its turning of “culture into resource” (phrase borrowed from George Yúdice). The “creative economy” was born, and along with it, the global narrative of the “creative city”. The creative city is always in competition with other global “world cities”, viewed as dedicated drivers of social growth and economic change through the capital generated by cultural productions as opposed to tangible “products” of the industry. Delhi was not immune to this shift. Dr. Khurana remarks, “Gautam Bhan (2009) notes that contemporary India has been shaped by the transformation to liberal market economies, a focus on developing world class cities and increasingly aspirational attitudes of the middle classes.” She further argues that we may, in this neoliberalisation of the Indian market economy, incipient in the 90s, locate the “emergence of the urban in Indian political economy.”
This inchoate neoliberal urbanism came with the need to aestheticise and beautify urban spaces. While this meant state-sanctioned projects of wall art and street murals to “decorate” urban space, it also meant the cleansing of the abject and marginal from the same space, i.e. political graffiti in direct contestation with the semiotics of urban arrangement. The contrast between state-sanctioned and/or internationally funded citizen–artist group collaborations flourishing within the neoliberalist state and Jadavpur University facing scathing allegations for its Pro-Palestine and “Azaad Kashmir” graffiti reveals this duality, repeating JNU’s history with the same. The need to co-opt the politics of graffiti is made clear in its signification as lying outside the semiotic and symbolic order of the state. The symbolic order refers to the patriarchal construction of a law, power, state and language that excludes the filthy feminine and its rhythmic, disordered imagination. Alistair Pennycook summarises this well; he argues that graffiti is an act of counterliteracy that “challenges, mimics, and carnivalizes the relations between text, private ownership, and the control of public space.” The Kristevan “abject” and its refusal to be purified is echoed here. For Kristeva, the abject constitutes the boundaries of the inner consciousness that always threatens to break in and disrupt the self as constructed within the symbolic order. The abject becomes the haunting peripheral presence, or absence—“something rejected from which one does not part”, as Kristeva describes. One recalls also the Freudian unheimliche, or the uncanny. The word unheimliche literally translates to “unhomely”. Peter Brooks writes about the unheimliche: “a monstrous potentiality so close to us—so close to home—that we have repressed its possibility and assigned an un as the mark of censorship on what is indeed too heimisch(homely)for comfort.” The abject, or the unheimliche, then becomes an irrepressible fragment of the consciousness and identity, or, within our context, the purified urban space; always contesting, haunting and resisting purification.
The aesthetic categories of “beauty” and “dirt” within the context of the Indian neoliberal “revanchist” state reveal strong associations with nationalist and classicist narratives of “upper-class hygiene and middle-class civility”(quoting Dr Khurana). Neil Smith identifies this revanchism as rooted in an exclusionary attitude towards minorities within an urban space and in urban discourses reflecting the interests of the hegemonic state.
While the street art popular during this time—a part of the “cultural economy” of the newly born “creative city” of Delhi—was situated intellectually in its apparent reclaiming of urban space and a critique of the commercialised and elitist “gallery artist”, a close look at the class biases and the ideologically and investment driven state-sanctions of these projects deconstructs this spurious claim. Nancy Adajania observes, “Art that uses the public domain as site and resource does not automatically become radical because it is made outside the hallowed confines of a gallery or because it sidesteps the commodity nature of art. It requires constant negotiations with the authorities and diverse publics it comes into contact with.” This illusion of citizen-agency and autonomy as granted by the state is a device through which to subtly govern them from within. It utilises the neoliberal citizen’s capacity for self-governance. Slater and Illes explain, “…in Foucauldian terms, governmentality uses aesthetics to penetrate the subject more deeply, to tap into our capacity for self-government. If power has become life-like, it has also become art-like.” The Foucauldian “neoliberal subject” represents a government that exists through the psychologies of individuals and societies. To conclude, I quote Foucault:
“An enabling state that will govern without governing ‘society’—governing by acting on the
choices and self-steering properties of individuals, families, communities, organisations. This entails a twin process of autonomisation plus responsibilisation—opening free space for the choices of individual actors whilst enwrapping these autonomised actors within new forms of control (italics mine).”
Universities are full of courses. But when I looked around the University of Delhi, I realised something surprising: there was no structured self-defence course for students. Instead of accepting that gap, I decided to try something ambitious—build one.
On 4 February 2026, a group of students gathered at Jesus and Mary College for a self-defence training session. The session marked the launch of a university-approved self-defence certificate course I had spent more than a year conceptualising and developing. At first glance, it looked like any other skill-based class on campus. But what most people in that moment did not realise was that the course they were participating in had not existed anywhere within the framework of the University of Delhi just a year earlier.
The idea began with a simple question I could not ignore: what does Delhi University not yet have?
DU offers countless opportunities for students to lead, organise, and participate. There are societies dedicated to music, theatre, debating, entrepreneurship, consulting and almost every imaginable interest. Yet while exploring the ecosystem of student activities across different colleges, one gap stood out. There was no structured, skill-based self-defence training functioning as a formal course within the university system.
In a city where conversations about safety are constant, that absence felt striking.
More than a year ago, I began working on what I initially imagined was a self-defence society. But the idea quickly grew into something larger. Instead of creating another student organisation, I began developing what would eventually become a university-approved certificate course in self-defence, designed with a defined syllabus, duration, and institutional structure.
Turning that possibility into reality meant translating the idea into a structured and institutionally viable course. I developed the concept, designed its structure and syllabus, prepared the documentation required for institutional approval, and worked on several other aspects of building and sustaining the initiative that continue even today.
Before pursuing approvals, however, one question mattered more than anything else: would students actually want this? To find out, I circulated a student interest form more than a year ago. The response was immediate: over 100 students signed up. When registrations later opened for the official course, the number once again crossed 100.
Notably, this response came primarily from outreach among women students at Jesus and Mary College alone, suggesting how strong the demand could become as the course expands further across DU. The course runs for approximately two to three months, allowing students to engage with the training in a structured and sustained way.
The proposal then moved through multiple stages of review and coordination. It received approval from the principal of Jesus and Mary College, where the course is currently being conducted, and was subsequently approved by the University of Delhi under the Skill Development Cell. With these approvals, the self-defence certificate course I had developed finally moved from proposal to reality.
Transforming the concept into an operational course required sustained work, revisions, and coordination across different levels of the institution. To the best of my knowledge, this stands among the first instances of a student independently conceptualising and launching a university-approved certificate course within Delhi University.
In a university as large and layered as the University of Delhi, where most institutional courses are typically introduced through administrative channels, the possibility of a student initiating and building one from the ground up is relatively rare.
The course began with a pilot batch at Jesus and Mary College, with the long-term goal of expanding it across multiple colleges within DU so that more students can access structured self-defence training.
It integrates both practical and theoretical learning. Students undergo hands-on self-defence and martial arts training designed for real-life situations, while the theoretical component introduces legal awareness, protective laws, and psychological insights related to recognising vulnerability and potential threats. The aim of the training is not aggression but preparedness, which is equipping students with awareness, confidence, and the ability to respond when necessary.
The sessions are currently being conducted in collaboration with the Indian Army, whose involvement has brought discipline and technical expertise to the training. At the same time, the initiative remains open to collaborations with other institutions, organisations, and experts who share the goal of strengthening practical safety awareness among students.
The response from students has been overwhelmingly encouraging, with many participants even asking for longer sessions.
Watching students train in something that once existed only as an idea was a moment I still find difficult to fully describe. Standing there and seeing the sessions actually taking place felt almost unreal. For a brief moment, I genuinely could not believe what I was seeing, that something which had existed only as months of drafts, meetings, revisions, and persistent work had finally come to life in a real classroom.
It was also a reminder that universities are not only places where students participate in systems that already exist. They are also places where those systems can be created. I never set out simply to hold a title. I wanted to build something that would remain even after I graduate. Something different and not the usual. What began as a question has now become a functioning, university-recognised certificate course impacting more than a hundred students. Sometimes change in large institutions does not begin with policy or reform. Sometimes it begins with a student who simply refuses to believe that “this doesn’t exist yet” is a good enough reason for it to stay that way.
Tvisha Talwar
(3rd year B.A. (Hons) Sociology student at Jesus and Mary College, University of Delhi)
A lesson in the other of visuality, narrative desire, and body politics, Joyland revels in a deconstructive tune. Combining metaphors of emancipation, murder, and desolation, it is a masterclass in queer filmography and instructive in scripting the body and inscribing jouissance into celluloid.
Sadiq’s Joyland (2022) is at times blasphemous and at times gorgeous, and, indeed, overwhelmingly both. The film bears an unimaginable density of truth, longing and grim premonitions. The vision is immense, distilled masterfully into delicate symbolism. The lights are equally brilliant, dispersed, a little out of reach, as happiness always is; the film does well to teach us. Haider’s (Ali Junejo) fragile frame, Biba’s (Alina Khan) ferocity, Mumtaz’s (Rasti Farooq) intrepid and boundless sense of self, and Nucchi’s (Sarwat Gilani) finally shattered feminine reserve, shelter abrasive and tender acts of resistance within themselves. The film is hardly an embittered tirade against a maiming and smothering patriarch (Salmaan Peerzada)—and it might as well have been a nifty jab at the phallo-monarchic imperial image that the throne he sits on is a wheelchair, himself limp as his enterprise. Rather, it locates its inexorable moment in the agonised body writhing for desire. That desire could and does possess the ability to simultaneously root and uproot patriarchal machinery; that desire wields a fearsome transformative aspect, altering societies and the bodies that inhabit networks of social relations, extraordinarily informs the narrative’s creative purpose.
Sadiq and his cast communicate in images. The wheelchair that inverts the patrilineal image; the blood pooling on the floor from the goat sacrificed by Mumtaz and not Haider that perverts the role of ‘the male in violence’, of ‘the male of violence’; the garish neon stars resting on the face of Haider and Biba, speaking, as if to the deeply moved voyeur, “Here are star-struck lovers”, quite literally; the eponymous Joyland itself that acts as a tether between the two bereft women as they lament the last time they ‘came’—came into orgasm, came into love, came into the privilege of expression encoding homoerotic desire. The most prodigious of images is set aside for the end, for it carries the full force of the film’s vision: the enormity of the ocean that Haider offers himself to—a distinct maritime metaphor of liberation. Mumtaz, like Antigone (her brick-prison the marriage), frees herself in death. Nucchi frees herself in snapping back at her husband and silencing him. Haider frees himself continually throughout the film: in joining Biba’s troupe as a dancer, allowing himself to be clad in a femininity that he had hitherto inhumed deep underneath a blistering masculinity that was not his own; in turning, in naked dance, and offering himself up to Biba so that he could be “had”; in undressing as he floats into the ocean, a final act of self-emancipation. The path of desire is not tread alone, the film emphasises repeatedly in the relationships that overtly or clandestinely unfurl before the audience. Haider’s queer, alternative desire finds company in Biba. Mumtaz’s barren, burning body finds company in the silhouette of a self-pleasuring stranger, the patriarch’s loneliness is balmed by the company of the neighbouring widow. They all want desperately to breathe, to maul the facade they force upon themselves. Normative codes of socialised and embodied desire stand utterly dismantled in the face of the altered bodies that come alive in the company of other desires, not at the cost of them.
The deconstructive attempt does not stop at questions of desire. Gendered structures are threatened in the womb itself. The grotesque images and suggestions of Mumtaz’s partially conscious and unconscious attempts to kill the male baby in her womb on the patriarch’s birthday produce resistance at the level of the genome and by cumulative affective force, gendered civilisational organisation. It is as if she declares that she would not allow another one to replace the patriarch, to smith the murderous shackles of the household onto another woman, or man, for that matter.
The film’s genius does not rest here. It manages to portray a complicated queerness in Haider that manifests in both his relationship with Mumtaz and his relationship with Biba. While the latter is quite glaringly obvious, albeit rocky, the former is not to be understood as a relationship that stifles Haider’s queerness. If anything, it helps construct who Haider is and what he means to himself and the world around him. The only person that Mumtaz feels a semblance of desire with is Haider, a desire to explore herself and to dwell outside of herself. There is a subversive ripeness in their relationship that we are allowed to view through the memory of Haider’s proposal to Mumtaz—her consent is of paramount importance to him. It is a ripeness that exists in their conversations, in their friendship, and in Mumtaz’s defending his implicit femininity. When Haider falls apart, Mumtaz collects him. When Mumtaz despairs, Haider, in his capacity, comforts her. They hold each other in the film till they are wedged apart by the expectation of a child, and thereafter the child itself. It is not Haider who kills Mumtaz; it is clear by the end.
A devastating ode to the desiring body and the body in desire, Joyland wields the peculiar ability to draw out the rage, the love, the lust and the fear in both the performer and the performed upon, the performance and the performed for. Working with vastly ambiguous affections, Joyland lures out, and sometimes wrenches free, a raw humanity that waltzes constantly at the precipice of danger, at the peril of its own self, and perhaps it is this reckless audacity that finally speaks to the audience.
It’s 2026, and the regimes load weapons not just for resources, but to harness strength from women’s reproductive capacities, turning bodies into battlegrounds of control.
On Katie Couric’s podcast, Gloria Steinem, feminist luminary and a political activist, was posed the provocative query: “What if men bore the burden of pregnancy?” With a spark of irreverent genius, she invoked the legendary civil rights lawyer Flo Kennedy: “If men could get pregnant, abortion would be enshrined as a sacrament.”
Today’s reality continuously reminds us how categorical gendered discrimination is forged through the tools of regime control. A very evident string of this reality is shown in the overturning of Roe v Wade in 2022. Imagine residing in a nation where 45% of pregnancies are unintended, only to learn from a conservative Supreme Court that your choice to abort rests at the mercy of your state. University of Colorado reports confirm the fallacy: since the judgment, 14 states have banned abortion outright, 11 more enforce prior illegal gestational limits, and one in three women of childbearing age now lives under such restrictions.
Regimes intensify their choreography of control over women’s bodily autonomy through calculated legislative manoeuvres, as exemplified by Russia’s draft bill—slated for State Duma review in March 2026—proposing a total abortion ban. What renders this story profoundly disturbing is the absolute prohibition, lacking any exceptions, already enshrined in countries like El Salvador, Vatican City, Malta, the Philippines, Madagascar, and numerous African nations, where even miscarriages or rape cases can incur imprisonment. Regimes’ political immaturity assumes restrictive anti-abortion laws erect protective boundaries around life. Instead, they unleash catastrophe: unsafe, unskilled, unregulated back-alley procedures.
Reproductive politics persistently shape regimes’ status quo and the legislation they craft to cling to power. Bodily autonomy directly threatens entrenched power structures, rendering the enforcement of laws on an already marginalised half of the population a convenient pretext for those in authority. The death of Mahsa Amini in 2022 remains a deadly reminder of how power corrupts and is prosecuted at a woman who refuses to comply with the theocratic assumptions of how a woman is supposed to be.
Disciplining women’s bodies and choices has long served as a potent tool for suppressing dissent, instilling internalised weakness by surrendering bodily agency to the state. Yet this sparks a profound debate: the fetus’s right to life, precariously suspended between ethical ambiguity and legal contention, making it hard to have a broad-based consensus over it. India navigates this adeptly under Article 21’s right to life and liberty, permitting abortions up to 20 weeks—and 24 weeks in exceptional cases—prioritising the severity of the cases, such as deformity of the foetus; however, this has to be approved by the Medical Board.
Simone Debauvoir poses this existentialist crisis perfectly: “Is my body a site of freedom or a tool of oppression?” Patriarchal structure, time and again reinforce the agenda of collective surveillance over personal freedom. Maya Angelou’s ‘Still I Rise’ powerfully embodies the resilience of women of colour, rising against oppression with unapologetic strength.
The conception of power and the body intertwine inextricably, with history revealing women’s reproductive capacities as instruments of domination. From China’s one-child policy enforcing quotas through forced abortions and sterilisations, to Nazi Germany’s Lebensborn program coercing Aryan women into multiple pregnancies for racial expansion, regimes have wielded demographics as weapons. Forced sterilisations—from Peru’s targeting of Indigenous women to India’s emergency-era campaigns—sustain graphs of control, reducing half the population to vessels for sadistic agendas of supremacy and subjugation.
