Statement from The Edict regarding ongoing state violence against protesting students

The Editorial Board of The Edict unequivocally condemns the horrific acts of violence directed at students and peaceful protesters on the 20th of July 2026 at Jantar Mantar and surrounding areas in New Delhi. These include the use of police force, multiple accounts of assault, arbitrary detention, intimidation, and the deployment of violence, whether by the state or by those who act with its protection to suppress democratic participation. 

The willingness of any government to answer peaceful dissent with coercion represents not merely an excess of force but a profound failure of democratic responsibility, one that weakens public institutions, erodes constitutional guarantees, and narrows the already fragile space within which citizens are able to question those who govern them.

As a student newspaper, The Edict cannot regard these developments as external to our work or our community. The freedoms upon which journalism depends, the freedom to investigate, to criticize, to publish, and to ask uncomfortable questions without fear of retaliation, are inseparable from the freedoms that protesters exercise when they gather in public and demand accountability from those who wield power. An assault on one necessarily places the other in jeopardy. The suppression of dissent is never confined to the streets for very long; it invariably finds its way into classrooms, newsrooms, libraries, and every institution whose functioning relies upon intellectual independence.

We reject the increasingly familiar proposition that demands for accountability constitute a threat to public order while the unchecked exercise of state power somehow does not. Democracies do not become unstable because citizens ask difficult questions of their governments. They become unstable when governments cease to tolerate those questions altogether. Violence deployed against peaceful assembly cannot be dismissed as an unfortunate administrative response or an isolated lapse in judgment. It reflects a political culture in which criticism is too often treated as disloyalty and disagreement as something to be managed through intimidation rather than answered through reason.

Our solidarity rests first and foremost with the students who have continued to organize despite the risks they now face, with those who have suffered great injury, detention, or harassment for participating in peaceful demonstrations, and with every journalist, academic, worker, and citizen who continues to insist that democratic rights cannot exist only when they are convenient to those in office. The country we will inherit is being shaped by these moments. To remain silent in the face of such violence would be to accept that political participation is conditional upon obedience, that rights endure only until they become inconvenient, and that young people are expected to inherit democracy without ever being permitted to practice it. 

We encourage all Ashokans including but not limited to students, faculty, alumni and fellows to be part of the protest and its surrounding conversations. As we see the youth across the country mobilising, protesting and resisting, now more than ever, we need to contribute in strength, resolve and conviction.

Not participating in a protest that lives and breathes on the fault lines of education is an injustice to the classroom and everything it stands for. Our politics must not live and die in our academic buildings, journals and essays, but find a way to evolve into praxis and change. 

The Editorial Board of The Edict stands in solidarity with all those protesting peacefully across the country. We affirm that dissent is indispensable to democratic life, that accountability is among the highest obligations of public office rather than an attack upon it, and that no citizen, least of all a student, should be met with violence for believing that India is capable of becoming more just than it is today.

Signed,

Anamta Husain, Managing Editor

Avika Mantri, Managing Editor

Maya Ribeiro, Managing Editor

Hiyaneijemmy Das, Opinions Co-Editor

Suryansh Jalan, Opinions Co-Editor

Aishani Misra, Arts and Culture Co-Editor

Nikita Kalra, Arts and Culture Co-Editor

Gauri Deshpande, Political Newsdesk Co-Editor

Ananya Mahnot, News Co-Editor

Antara Kulkarni, News Co-Editor

Ishita Mazumdar, Games Editor 

Aneek Chatterjee, Sports Co-Editor

Maleah Mehta, Sports Co-Editor