New Delhi: The plan became routine. A trusted friend would lock a hostel room from the outside and slip the key into his pocket, making it seem empty. Inside, a student would wait silently — one of the many in hiding across Jawaharlal Nehru University after the Emergency was declared in June 1975.Every day, the hideouts shifted. No one stayed in one place for too long. It was a campus under watch, where friends became jailers and silence was survival. But one evening, the friend — a student from neighbouring IIT Delhi — forgot to return. The next morning, a knock came. Loud. Deliberate. The student inside opened the door, unaware — and was arrested.Inside that room was Sohail Hashmi, now a noted historian and cultural activist, who was then a young student evading a govt crackdown on dissent. This was Emergency-era JNU — a campus of barricaded doors, whispered alerts, and quiet defiance. As Indira Gandhi‘s govt suspended civil liberties and jailed opposition leaders, students at JNU became some of the most organised and persistent voices of resistance. What unfolded in those years is now etched into campus memory as both a story of rebellion, and of personal loss.Hashmi recalled how an underground system sprang into action. News of an imminent police raid to arrest student activists was leaked by one of the police informers, a man the students had befriended. “The university turned into a fortress. Any anti-establishment slogans or posters were torn down. There were three layers of armed police along the ridge,” Hashmi said. “They crouched behind Aravalli rocks with guns. Some of them walked among us, dressed as students. Police informers were everywhere. Still, we found ways to resist.”An informal yet sophisticated system was set up. Rooms were shuffled, hideouts rotated, and locking duties assigned to volunteers. A code of silence emerged. No one talked. Underground bulletins criticising the govt, covering national and campus news, were typed, stencilled, and quietly slipped under hostel doors at night. “We used stencils to print hundreds of copies of the paper called The Resistance. To date, the police have not found out where we printed it on campus,” Hashmi said.One arrest, he remembers vividly. “We organised a university shutdown, but Maneka Gandhi, daughter-in-law of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, insisted on taking her classes. The students tried to stop her. She later complained that she was obstructed,” he said. “Soon after, an Ambassador car drove into the campus. A tall man stormed out, dragged Prabir (Purkayastha) by his collar, and shoved him into the car. They came looking for DP Tripathi, but took Prabir by mistake,” he added, with a slight laugh.Purkayastha, a student at JNU, spent the remainder of the Emergency in jail under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA), a draconian law that allowed imprisonment without trial.In Delhi, the Emergency came down like a hammer. On June 25, 1975, Prime Minister Gandhi declared the Emergency, citing threats to internal security. Thousands of political opponents were jailed overnight. Press freedoms were curtailed, civil liberties suspended. Universities such as JNU, where leftist student unions flourished, quickly became targets of the state.Not all arrests were accidents. Some were pre-emptive. Communist leader and former SFI activist Prakash Karat, a key figure in student politics, said he wasn’t even in Delhi when the Emergency was announced. “I was warned in advance that they would be looking for me, so I went underground,” Karat said. “Later, we organised a three-day strike and shut down the campus. The vice-chancellor suspended many students and blacklisted others from readmission.“He added, “The strong sentiment against the Gandhi govt’s policies had long been brewing. In Bihar, the JP movement emerged as an uprising against corruption and misrule. In West Bengal, the Left fiercely resisted central authoritarianism. There was a growing mood of defiance across the country.”Even under intense surveillance, students found subtle yet potent ways to protest. One such moment came during a university event where the then education minister was invited as the chief guest. “A circular was informally issued — no slogans, no disruptions,” a former student recalled. “We sat quietly throughout the programme. But the moment the minister stood up to speak, the entire audience, except university officials, silently rose and walked out. It was a mass protest in silence.”Not every story from that time was one of revolution. Some carry the weight of deep personal pain. Ranjana Kumari, now a prominent women’s rights activist, said: “I was a student and got arrested. I spent one night in custody at Hauz Khas police station with my boyfriend, now my husband. My younger sister was arrested too. She spent six months in jail in Varanasi. My father had a heart attack and died from the stress. The whole family suffered as we fought for democracy and freedom.“Fifty years later, those who have lived through the Emergency remember the paradox of that era. There was fear, yes, but there was also an unrelenting desire for liberty. At JNU, this took the form of camaraderie and codes, of calculated risks and whispered resistance.Today, the corridors of the university echo with newer debates. But the stories from 1975 still resurface. A time when rooms became safe houses, students walked out in silent protest, and a generation that refused to be silenced.One message these alumni have for the new generation of student activists is: “Stand up for your rights.”
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