When the Head Is Held High

If students force the government to accept responsibility for paper leaks, they would establish a principle the Modi-Shah regime has spent 12 years avoiding with remarkable success.

For years, a large section of Indians have watched silently as the state has gone after people it did not consider its own. Kashmiris. Muslims. Adivasis. Dalits. Farmers. Activists. Journalists.

The assumption has been that they are coming for them, not for us.

Someone would invariably respond to this silence by invoking Martin Niemöller:

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

Maybe — just maybe — enough Indians are beginning to understand that they will eventually come for them too.

Because this time, they came for students who may not be ideological opponents of the RSS/BJP — students who are not from JNU or Jamia.

That they were engaged in a non-violent protest offered them no protection. Delhi Police, the Central Reserve Police Force and the Rapid Action Force all operate under Amit Shah’s Home Ministry. They responded with the kind of brutality that has become a hallmark of the security apparatus he oversees.

Ravi, a 24-year-old e-rickshaw driver, was admitted to intensive care with a brain bleed after a police officer repeatedly struck him on the head until he collapsed.

Sakshi, 21, was brought to hospital unconscious and suffering from asphyxiation. She was unable to breathe independently and had to be intubated and placed on a ventilator.

Nootan Toppo, 32, said a projectile tore away part of her right ear along with her earring. She underwent surgery, while her medico-legal report recorded a “suspected gunshot injury”.

Sahil Lochab, a 19-year-old student who wanted to join the police, underwent surgery after a projectile pierced his right eye. An AIIMS official confirmed pellet injuries and doctors have said there is only a 1% chance that he recovers high eyesight.

There is more documentary evidence of pellet injuries. The Hindustan Times reviewed the Safdarjung Hospital medico-legal report of a reporter, which described wounds on his waist and hands as “pellet injury marks” and recorded a “physical assault with pellet gun at Jantar Mantar at 4 pm”.

Separately, India Today obtained the medico-legal report of an unnamed 25-year-old protester who sustained around 20 pellet wounds on his back and right elbow.

This would be the first known use of pellet guns for crowd control in Delhi. Until now, in the imagination of “mainland” India, pellet guns were weapons used on people in Kashmir — people who were apparently not quite our own, even if the land certainly was.

The Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), has said it is “verifying media reports” on the use of pellet guns by the Rapid Action Force (RAF).

If – as the medical evidence increasingly suggests – pellet guns and rubber bullets were used against students, the purpose was not merely crowd control. It was to instil fear, to make sure others thought twice before coming out onto the streets.

Except it has not worked. The threat of violence is real. Yet the way young Indians have continued to come out, especially since the police crackdown on July 20, speaks of extraordinary courage, defiance and the desperation of a generation that feels it has nothing left to lose.

While the regime has met the protesters with violence, the students have responded with humour, irreverence and creativity. Their memes, songs, mock interviews, posters and videos have travelled far beyond Jantar Mantar.

They have mocked ministers, television anchors, their own parents, and the wider ecosystem that has either ignored them or tried to discredit them. They have taken insults aimed at unemployed young people and turned them into symbols of solidarity.

They are, in many ways, what the regime and its enablers are not. They can make a joke and, just as importantly, take one. The regime and its sycophants are comfortable with humour only when they control the punchline.

But beneath all the humour and wit is one consistent and entirely serious demand: accountability.

The students want Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan to resign. The latest NEET (National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test) paper leak happened under his watch, and they want him held accountable.

This is not an isolated failure. When NEET was engulfed by allegations of leaks and irregularities in 2024, Pradhan initially insisted there was no evidence of a paper leak or corruption. Within days, he was admitting an “institutional failure” and taking “moral responsibility” — that particularly Indian form of responsibility that involves no actual consequences.

The same month, the education ministry cancelled UGC-NET (University Grants Commission-National Eligibility Test) just one day after it was held, saying its integrity may have been compromised.

A parliamentary committee later found that five of the 14 major examinations conducted by the NTA (National Testing Agency) in 2024 suffered serious problems: NEET-UG was leaked, three examinations were postponed and CUET (Common University Entrance Test) results were delayed.

The failures continued this year at the CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education). The board introduced a new On-Screen Marking system for Class 12 examinations, under which scanned answer sheets were evaluated digitally.

The scandal broke when Vedant Srivastava, a Class 12 student, posted on X that the Physics answer sheet supplied to him by the board was not his. The handwriting and answers belonged to somebody else. CBSE eventually admitted an “inadvertent exchange”, sent him his actual paper and corrected his marks.

His post opened the floodgates, with students reporting mismatched scripts, missing pages and glaring marking errors.

Two other teenagers then did work that a whole range of institutions should have been doing. Sarthak Sidhant investigated the questionable selection of the private contractor running the system, while Nisarga Adhikary exposed serious security vulnerabilities in the marking portal.

The latest NEET leak is therefore not an aberration in an otherwise well-functioning ministry. Pradhan has presided over repeated paper leaks, compromised examinations, marking scandals and questionable contracts. That is why the students are right to refuse to budge until he resigns.

Pradhan is probably dispensable for the Narendra Modi- Amit Shah regime. The question is not really about the man they are protecting. It is about the principle of accountability and the precedent his resignation would set. They also know that the buck probably won’t stop with him, as it should not in a government where ministers have no real power.

This refusal to accept accountability is the very foundation of this regime.

The clearest indication came from Modi himself. In a BBC interview after the 2002 Gujarat riots, he was asked whether there was anything he would have done differently as chief minister. He did not say that he would have protected people better, acted faster or managed the police differently. “One area where I could have done things differently,” he said, was “how to handle the media.”

Because the media held him accountable in 2002, unlike now.

Over the last 12 years, the Modi regime has escaped accountability for one failure after another. The disastrous handling of Covid-19; the absurd and enormously damaging decision to demonetise 86% of the country’s currency; the failure to fulfil its promise to double farmers’ incomes by 2022; the deepening unemployment crisis; the persistent economic slowdown and widening inequality; the failure to prevent Manipur from descending into prolonged ethnic violence; the failure to prevent terrorist attacks. The list can go on.

No one has been held accountable.

That is why Pradhan’s resignation matters beyond the fate of one minister. If students force the government to accept responsibility for paper leaks, they would establish a principle the Modi-Shah regime has spent 12 years avoiding with remarkable success.

Because what happens if the demand for accountability begins to move upwards?

What happens when Modi’s next failure comes to light? What happens if the chorus grows for Amit Shah to answer for the violence unleashed by forces under his home ministry, including the possible use of pellet guns against students?

What happens if people start asking why Ajit Doval, who has served as national security adviser through the Pathankot, Pulwama, Pahalgam and Red Fort attacks, has never been held accountable for failures of intelligence or security?

For 12 years, whenever the question of responsibility has arisen, the answer has always been that someone else is responsible. Nehru. The Mughals. Pakistan. The CIA. Bangladeshis. George Soros. State governments. The opposition. Protesters. Citizens themselves.

Anyone but the people actually running the country.

This time, so far, the students are seeing right through the bullshit.