Young, confident, and with his eyes on a piece of paper, Sitaram Yechury stood close to an unfazed Indira Gandhi in an unforgettable moment in 1977, captured in a black-and-white photograph alluring in its composition and powerful in its historical significance. A student leader at Jawaharlal Nehru University asked the former Prime Minister of India to resign as Chancellor of the University, only months after the infamous Emergency ended. It was a quiet march that the JNU students led by Yechury had taken to the former Prime Minister’s residence, and their memorandum was heard. Indira Gandhi later resigned from the post of Chancellor.

Student protests, however huge or unprecedented they may seem in the 2020s, have always existed, practiced in one form or another. They have also often pushed the establishment into urgency and action, even when other forms of protest have struggled to make themselves heard.…