Picture Credit : @INCIndia/X
In a broadside against the Modi government, Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi has said 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 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 titled ‘An education system’s collapse, young India’s trauma’ published in The Hindu.
She claimed that the ‘brutality’ perpetrated by the police personnel functioning under the direct authority of the Union Home Minister on student protesters is hardly unprecedented for this regime.
“The Modi government routinely uses violence in preference to dialogue. The pattern is clear, from farmers to activists.
The Modi government has not just degraded India’s education landscape but has also made a habit of acting with utter impunity, supreme self-delusion, and… pic.twitter.com/M2wOh6ETsH
— Congress (@INCIndia) July 24, 2026
“We all remember vividly how armed policemen and paramilitary forces ravaged university campuses during the Citizenship (Amendment) Act-National Register of Citizens protests in 2020. The unacceptable excesses against India’s women wrestlers can never be erased from our memories,” she said.
The Modi government has not just degraded India’s education landscape but has also made a habit of acting with “utter impunity, supreme self-delusion, and abject insensitivity”, she alleged.
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.
“Their demands have been straightforward and to the point: accountability from the Government of India and education reform. The Narendra 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 said.
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. Only the government and its captive media are spinning stories around this spontaneous rising tide of protest. It is time to say loud and clear: Stop, these are our sons and daughters, our young men and women,” Gandhi said.
Gandhi accused the Modi government of routinely choosing violence over dialogue.
