Remembering Dhruvajyoti Sahu and Vignesh Shankar

Dhruvajyoti and Vignesh | Photo courtesy: Atharv Salve and RanjanSpeaks

On 15th February 2025, the Ashoka community woke up to the news that it had lost two bright, young, brilliant undergraduate students Dhruvajyoti Sahu and Vignesh Shankar.

Dhruvajyoti, a sophomore, was a member of the Ashoka University Student Government (AUSG) and led the successful protests to remove baggage scanners at the university gates last month. He was a filmmaker, writer, sportsperson, cinephile and a deeply treasured soul.

“This election has changed politics at Ashoka…forever,” declared a Gulaal-covered boy, who looked like he wanted to be standing anywhere but under the limelight. Dhruv, as he was called, was shy, diminutive, and soft. But he was equally firm, convincing, and unwavering too.

Atharv Salve (UG’27), a friend, fellow filmmaker and co-head (with Dhruv) of the production vertical of Navrang, Ashoka’s film society, recalls Dhruv’s engagement with student politics.

“I really wanted him to win,” says Atharv. Dhruv stood for the by-election to a vacant seat in the undergraduate council last November and won with 216 votes. During the campaign, Atharv and Dhruv became acquainted with each other. Their friendship only deepened during the protests and working together at Navrang. Slowly, Dhruv became “a person I looked up to,” he tells us with a short smile on his face.

Atharv and Dhruv’s work camaraderie began with a mutual interest in filmmaking. He was the “biggest cinephile I have ever met,” says Atharv. Dhruv was invested in making films that spoke of social themes and appealed to audiences outside the university. And he wanted to make socially impactful films, remembers Atharv as he calls him a “ politically committed artist and an inspiration.”

But he was more than a filmmaker and a student activist. “He was steeped in ideology. He brought people who are polar opposites together. He was a mediator; a peacemaker,” Naman Jaju (UG’27), a friend, says, sitting on the ground floor of the mess, surrounded by wall paintings and quotes of Babasaheb Ambedkar—a figure Dhruv deeply admired. “I especially remember him now when everything is falling apart,” Naman says.

Dhruv liked processions, gatherings and screenings. He was drawn to anything political and his personality reflected this commitment. Naman takes us through events that point to what politics might have meant for Dhruv. Pausing for a moment, Naman remembers that as a child, Dhruv drew possible scenes of the Mahabharata. He was a creative person. As he grew older, he drew pictures of Stalin, Lenin and the communist party symbol.

“Red was his favourite colour,” recalls Naman, showing us a picture of Dhruv’s room. The walls are decorated with posters of Bob Marley and the shelf just below it is flooded with Arundhati Roy’s novels and Homer’s Iliad.

Everything about Dhruv—his kurtas, his Inquilab tote bag, co-curricular projects, and academic papers—reflected his politics. His books, music and films were centred around politics and love. He had a compilation of 500 films. He would often walk around campus and reach Dosai to eat his favourite Malabar Paratha.

He had a tendency to observe things very minutely, Atharv tells us while searching through his artwork and photographs on Instagram.

During the recent protests, Atharv photographed Dhruv—his speeches and when he stood still observing the sloganeering students outside Gate 2. He held within him the chaos and the calm.

“We admired each other’s work and supported it,” says Atharv while pulling out a voice note that Dhruv had sent him after looking at the pictures he had clicked of the protests. “Atharv, your pictures are so banger today. I love them,” he had said.

Dhruv was working with Naman on a film series on Feluda and had shared an abstract for a feature film for Navrang productions with Atharv. Atharv elaborates that the film is about friendship, love, betrayal and exclusion and that he will continue making it with the production team at Navrang because “we both trusted each other to turn the world around with a camera in our hand”.

Dhruv and Vignesh were no strangers to each other.

Last Spring Semester, they both took Professor Jonathan Gil Harris’ course on Forms of Literature. Commenting on Dhruv’s final essay, Vignesh quoted Ghalib’s Yeh na thee hamaari qismat to remind his classmate that love — love that breaks boundaries of selfhood; love that forges communities — can shatter the fear of loss and, indeed, the ultimate fear of death.

Vignesh was a writer at The Edict’s Sports Desk. He was funny, deeply sensitive, and a dedicated writer. Enthusiastic and ready to try new things, he was an integral part of the Sports Desk’s operations in his time at The Edict; constantly dedicating time and energy to a department he had only just joined. Even though he was a writer in the sports department, he was always eager to pitch to other departments. 

A combat-sport enthusiast, his sporting knowledge was immaculate, yes—but it was always understood that sport was his window into understanding humanity. Vignesh instinctively knew that the beautiful thing about sport, certainly at the college level, was less about what happens with a ball and more to do with the community surrounding it.

Samaah Sheikh (UG '27), a close friend, remembers Vignesh as an empathic writer who “always had something thoughtful to say”. Samaah, who runs a magazine, Gul, had asked Vignesh to join her as a writer-editor.

“He always wanted to know more,” Samaah says recalling how Vignesh read every article link and book she shared with him. He was headstrong, but not stubborn. He listened and genuinely cared about the people around him.

An ardent Liverpool fan, his Twitter account is a love letter to the beauty of the sporting community. If we scroll for a while, we find him passionately defending the loyalty of South-Asian sports fans. We will find him supporting initiatives to make the online community of Liverpool fans more inclusive and initiatives to make football-watching more financially accessible—despite being thousands of miles away from Anfield Road.

It was a heart-wrenching moment for those who knew Vignesh when the iconic You’ll Never Walk Alone played in the atrium after the memorial on Monday, 17th February. Sung before every home game, the anthem is a testament to the concept of togetherness that Vignesh stood for. It symbolises hope for a community repeatedly hit by disaster, negativity and neglect.  For fans of Liverpool, the lyrics of the song have always meant more than simply a rallying cry before a kickabout. It was deeply fitting that Vignesh’s friends played a version of the song sung by a chorus of fans at Anfield and that it was not a singular singer but a community of thousands that Vignesh cared so deeply about, who promised the atrium, “At the end of the storm / There’s a golden sky / And the sweet silver song of the lark.”

To honour Dhruv and Vignesh, we would do well to remember that on 15th February, Ashoka woke up to the news that two bright, young, brilliant members of its community were unfairly wrenched from it. May they rest in peace. And for their sake, may we do better for each other. 

ye kahāñ kī dostī hai ki bane haiñ dost nāseh

koī chārasāz hotā koī ġham-gusār hotā

Mirza Ghalib