I write this story with tears in my eyes not because I’m a journalist seeing another protest but because I am a mother.
What is being seen from Delhi’s Jantar Mantar are not just disturbing visuals — they are horrifying. They compel every parent in this country to ask an uncomfortable question: What kind of future are we making for our children?
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So thousands of young people have come together and demanded something that should bring no young people out into the streets doing a protest- blame the Indian education system. What has they received instead of dialogues, accountability or even evidence of reassurance but lathis, stones, tear gas abuse and harassment. Those who swore to defend students — the institutions with which they are meant to engage — have become obstacles between those very same students and their basic right to be heard.
But in all the craziness are images I cannot shake from my mind.
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Not of violence, not of broken barricades, but something called exceptional courage- the courage of Special People. Some are unable to see, some are unable to walk, some cannot hear properly and yet they arrived.
Not merely because the battle was wholly theirs, but because education is a right that all students in India deserve to get irrespective of anything.
A young man in a wheelchair, his shirt shredded during the police action, carried himself with quiet dignity despite his wounds.
“We are fighting for our rights. We are not committing a crime. My shirt got torn. I was beaten with sticks. I could hear only from one ear since that day but I am here to fight.”
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His words carried no hatred, only pain and determination.
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A blind student from Delhi University stood next to him — not asking for help but offering it. He was handing out bottles of water to tired demonstrators.
“I came here as a volunteer. I am blind andI represent the 450 to 500 students who are blind. So far, 11 students have committed suicide and that deeply affected me. I am a citizen of this country so it was my responsibility to be here and fight. This is not a political thing.”
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He could not see the protest. However, he recognized the injustice more clearly than most who decide to look away.
A similarly young man on a wheelchair had journeyed from Maharashtra. He was a Jawaharlal Nehru University graduate who showed up with friends because not speaking out was an impossibility anymore. “We came here because the government has done nothing. We have come here to get answers. We have hope: if not, we would never make it over here. The key to fix every student’s life is to fix India Education.”
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There was a handicapped person from Nagpur.
He was not sloganeering, he was not speaking to the crowd, he stood there just serving without putting his name or face into free cups of tea for strangers to make sure that those with struggles had enough warmth to survive.
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His kindness also became the loudest statement of all in a protest full of slogans. Often, these people are put in the category of “disabled.”
Yet there they were at Jantar Mantar, sounding like what many of us have painfully forgotten—concerned, brave people standing even if it hurt and question the Government.
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Maybe the disability is not physical, maybe the true disability is apathy.
Everyone expects someone else to be brave enough to fight for a better tomorrow, but what happens when those that cannot see are leading the crowd, when those that even cannot walk are ahead of the pack?
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So what is the excuse for the rest of us?
The students protesting at Jantar Mantar are not asking for alms, they are asking for justice.
In there are the few of India’s strongest souls who reminded us that courage is defined by fighting skills, but rather by the willingness to stand when it matters.
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If these able people can fight for the future of education in India against all odds that life threw at them till now, what’s your excuse?
