Protests erupted across the country on Thursday with the biggest march being staged by students and teachers in Delhi against the arrest of JNU Students’ Union President Kanhaiya Kumar’s arrest that is increasingly being perceived as an attack against the student community and freedom of expression.

Visuals of the JNUSU president being attacked in the court premises by lawyers sympathetic to the BJP added to the outrage as over 10,000 students and teachers marched from Mandi House to Jantar Mantar in Delhi. Teachers including Zoya Hasan, Tanika Sarkar, JNU Teachers’ Association President Ajay Patnaik, Delhi University Teachers’ Association (DUTA) President Nandita Narain were present as were delegations of students and teachers from Jamia Millia Islamia, Aligarh Muslim University, Delhi University and South Asian University.

The gathering was largely addressed by Left leaders – CPI(M) politburo member Brinda Karat, CPI General Secretary Sudhakar Reddy and party MP D. Raja and Amarjeet Kaur besides others such as D. P. Tripathi, NCP leader and former President of the JNUSU.

“What we are witnessing is not just an arrest but an attempt to curb freedom by goons of the RSS. With state power and police support, they are trying to enforce a unidimensional worldview and repugnant ideology on us. All democratic forces and liberal voices must resist these efforts,” said Brinda Karat, addressing the gathering. D. P. Tripathi, who was imprisoned during the Emergency, said, “JNU is not an ordinary institution. It was at the forefront of the fight and resistance against the Emergency. No government should undermine the voice of the students.”

Similar scenes were witnessed in at least ten cities including Kolkata, Bangaluru, Patna, Jaipur, Guwahati, Hyderabad and Chennai where students took to the streets to demand Kanhaiya Kumar’s release. In Ahmedabad, the RSS’s student wing Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad took out a procession to protest against “anti-national” slogans in JNU. In Patna, members of the CPI(ML)(Liberation)’s student wing All India Students Association (AISA) took out a rally where there were clashes between AISA and ABVP. The police intervened and chased the protesting students.

In Kolkata, ABVP activists march to Jadavpur University against alleged anti-national slogans raised in the University campus some days back. They tried to enter the campus but were stopped by the police and Left-wing students who formed a human chain around the campus to ensure that the ABVP rally does not enter the campus.

In Guwahati, artistes, teachers, students and farmers march on the streets under the aegis of Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS) shouting slogans against violence inside a court complex in Delhi which they said were part of a “planned design” by RSS-BJP to create an “atmosphere of terror.”

“Today RSS-BJP is dictating to us on everything – what to wear, what to eat, what to see and what to say. It is a fully fascist attitude... Kanhaiya is a symbol of protest and right to freedom of speech,” KMSS president Akhil Gogoi said.

“Different tribal communities, including Bodos with whom BJP has formed an alliance for the Assam Assembly polls, were seeking either separate states or Independence, but will the Modi government dare to label them anti-nationals,” he asked. “This protest march is not to support Pakistan or anti-nationals, but to oppose the new definition of nationalism by RSS and BJP,” he said.

In Chennai, folk singer Kovan and over 50 others were detained by the police for protesting and raising slogans against the BJP-led government at Centre.

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