I have been following this platform for a very long time, keeping track of how youngsters like me are slowly carving out of their shielded, yet corrupted eggshell, to face all that is wrong in this world. I never thought of being so desperate for my voice to be heard, on behalf of every student of GB Pant Government Engineering College, Delhi.
Our struggle should have started a long time ago. Ten years to be precise, right when this institution was spared an abandoned hostel building of another polytechnic college. We were promised much more. We accepted and endured the wait. We patiently waited for 10 long years. However, the wicked claws of greedy individuals with their greedy souls didn’t spare us. They took all of it. Everything that was ours. They gave it away to another institution and left us with nothing. Zilch.
So, two months ago, we started to fuel our campaign to make people aware. Slowly and silently, we started to raise our voice the way an engineering student is expected to. We still weren’t heard. We stayed in the college at night, since obviously, this is what a hostel is built for. We took classes, let the fire of our struggle burn quietly and waited for the correct conscience to sneak into the hearts of our administration, the government and the people. Yet, all in vain.
But we had to move forward. So, one of our teachers, with a crazy idea to change the world, to make the society ‘ethical’, decided to sit on a hunger strike, for a cause that gives him no personal benefit. To remind you, a hunger strike, not in a way the political leaders do. We are engineers, ethical, logical and truthful. He and some of my very own dearest friends and seniors decided to eat or drink nothing but water until the government listened or anyone else did.
Now, this might have stirred up the conscience of some people because one hopeless day, tired and scared of the regular threats, amidst all the injustice, we found that people from Swaraj Abhiyan came to support us. We thought, maybe now we stand a chance against the people with power, who by all means want to let the story of our struggle go unheard and sink into the never-ending abyss where only crazy people are thought to have raised their voice.
Our professor was on the 10th day of his hunger strike, totally worn out physically, yet mentally strong as a mountain. While we were at home, contemplating our next step to keep the campaign going on, we found that a large force of police had come and taken our professor forcefully to AIIMS, claiming that the doctors had said, that he was in a very serious condition. We know he must be admitted, but not with brute force, but his own will. Not when many of us were not there to state a point.
And this incident was the threshold of my patience. I am not much of a writer. I do not know how to make people sympathise with me. However, I want the voices of all the students of my college to be heard right now and immediately. And I want you to do that for me. Because we are not going to stop, anyhow. But now, because you know our story, it is your choice to be the silent spectator of injustice and unfairness or take a stand. It’s all that it takes to create history.
Here is a press note released by the students of GB Pant Government Engineering College, Delhi.
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