- Sonia Gandhi criticised Modi government for treating protesting students as enemies of the nation
- She condemned police brutality against students during protests and recalled past incidents
- Student protests grew over exam leaks and education system decline, met with police violence
Mounting a scathing attack on the Centre over the ongoing student protests and the government's handling of them, Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi on Friday said that the Modi government is treating the protesting students as "enemies of the nation".
In a strongly worded article published in the 'The Hindu' newspaper, Sonia Gandhi has said that students have demanded accountability and educational reforms.
"...But the Modi government has responded to their courage with cowardice and wanton cruelty, treating them not as inheritors of the future but as enemies of the nation", she has written.
She claimed that the 'brutality' perpetrated by the police personnel "functioning under Union Home Minister" on student protesters is hardly unprecedented for this regime.
"We all remember vividly how armed policemen and paramilitary forces ravaged university campuses during the anti-CAA-NRC protests in 2020. The unacceptable excesses against India's women wrestlers can never be erased from our memories," she said.
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She pointed out that peaceful protests by students across India against examination paper leaks and the overall decline in the education system have been gaining momentum in recent weeks.
On July 20, 2026, which she described as a day of infamy, the Delhi Police and the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF's) sought to suppress them with violence, using lathicharges and tear gas, the former Congress chief said.
Gandhi noted that numerous peaceful protesters were injured, and even students heading home were not spared, as police used batons indiscriminately.
"The nation has seen some of the most depressing visuals of youth whose bodies have been scarred by pellets, the use of which would undoubtedly have been approved by Union Home Minister Amit Shah himself," her article read.
"The videos from that day are seared into our memories and have stirred our collective conscience... It is time to say loud and clear: Stop, these are our sons and daughters, our young men and women," Gandhi said.
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She noted that the government's old 'toolkit' of labelling dissent as anti-national has been repurposed to undermine the student protests.
The Modi government has reached deep into its bag of tricks to cast aspersions and peddle conspiracies when what it should have done is to introspect on its policies that have motivated the protests, Gandhi said.
She accused the government of "degrading" India's education landscape and asserted that the country's students have called the Modi regime's bluff.
She emphasised it is a moral, political, and constitutional duty to stand with students and safeguard their future.
"The student protests are a natural consequence of these interrelated forces: today's bleak education landscape, which evokes only hopelessness, and the Modi government's trademark arrogance and unwillingness to be accountable or constructive," Gandhi said in her article.
She opined that the first fundamental issue is the Modi government's retreat from public education. It has reduced the proportion of its total Budget spent on school education by 50% and on higher education by 33 per cent, she pointed out.
"Can anyone see the sense in such an absurd retreat? Over the last 12 years, the Modi government has shut down nearly one lakh public schools while overseeing the opening of 43,000 private schools -- a large chunk of which are run by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which, along with its affiliate organisations, incidentally presides over the largest private school network in India," she said.
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With high-quality, affordable public education inaccessible, families in India have been forced to spend out of pocket to educate their children, Gandhi said.
"But the last nail in the coffin has been the Modi government's consistent and conscious policy of evading accountability and avoiding good-faith conversations on education," Gandhi asserted.
She accused Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan of displaying contempt for accountability by publicly dismissing the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education's recommendations to strengthen the NTA, simply because it had members of the Opposition in it.
His unwillingness to resign from office despite these monumental failures has only further inflamed public opinion, Gandhi said.
