Column | 'We were the Gen Z of that moment’: student leader Aishe Ghosh
Student leader Aishe Ghosh reflects on her experiences during the 2019 anti-CAA/NRC protests in India, drawing parallels to current youth-led movements. She discusses her political evolution from a student activist at JNU to a national figure in the SFI.
Why it matters
The piece provides a personal perspective on the history of student activism in India and how past protest movements influence the current generation's political engagement.
Long before the police lathi-charged the Gen Z protesters in Delhi, Aishe Ghosh was attacked by masked men wielding iron rods, sticks and acid, on her college campus in January 2020, as the police stood by. A photo of the petite student leader, injured after she confronted the attackers, blood pouring down her forehead, went viral then.
Ghosh, now 30, was at the Jantar Mantar protests from the start and participated in a symbolic three-day fast when activist Sonam Wangchuk was hauled out of the venue by the Delhi Police. Her postmortem of the biggest protest India has seen in years is important because she was at the forefront of the 2019 protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC). “We were the Gen Z of that moment,” she says, confirming that she feels a strong sense of déjà vu.
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