Awanish Kumar waves an Indian flag in the midst of a massive crowd assembled on one of Delhi’s wide boulevards. “We will not go along and let the state crush our voices,” says the 30-year-old, one of thousands who have taken to the streets across India in recent days to protest at the arrest of a student union leader.The man who now finds himself at the centre of a political storm is Kanhaiya Kumar (no relation of Awanish). The 28-year-old student leader was detained under a colonial-era sedition law for shouting slogans at a university rally that authorities claimed were “anti-national”.His arrest elevated him into a hate figure for some and a symbolic victim of injustice for others, pitching India into an increasingly polarised debate about patriotism, freedom of expression and the autonomy of universities under the country’s Hindu-nationalist government.
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