When India is witnessing one of its most prominent and creative student protests of the Narendra Modi era led by young people against the NEET paper leaks and the declining state of education, demanding the resignation of the education minister, premier educational institutions of India have attempted to curb any form of solidarity that may emerge from their staff or students. These attempts have taken forms of advisory, bureaucratic processes as well as indirect threats towards career prospects. IIT Roorkee issued an advisory asking its students and staff to refrain from any form of political activity without the approval of the institute. IIT Madras had followed in asking its student body to delete their video supporting the protests from social media. Delhi University in their advisory, asked students to stay away from the protest and wrote “such activities can also pose serious risks to students’ personal safety and significantly impact their academic progress and professional opportunities”. Jawaharlal Nehru University followed the same pattern and asked its students and staff to stay away from Jantar Mantar. The advisory also warned about possible legal and disciplinary action if anyone failed to comply. This was following an advisory issued by Association of Indian Universities to universities and higher educational institutions to counsel students away from the protests.These tactics violate the fundamental rights of students and staff who are not only members of the institutions but of the country. The banning of participation in ‘political activity’ restricts the citizen from participating in the democracy. By putting caveats on a citizen’s freedom, like seeking permission, or by asking them to delete their videos, these institutions carry out the task of censorship for political parties and show their allegiance to power. What is even more serious is how some universities use the language of care and safety to ask their members to stay away from protest sites. The advisories issued by the institutes are not historically unprecedented – they were also done by the British. An incident in Assam shows us why this is a bad idea. The Cunningham CircularThe British Raj had followed similar tactics to prevent students from joining the Civil Disobedience Movement of 1930. Initially, in the context of Assam, despite the appeal from young Congress leaders like Omeo Kumar Das, one of the founding members of Assam Chatro Sammilon and an active member of the Civil Disobedience Movement in Assam, to join the movement, the response from the students was half-hearted. However, following the arrest of Nehru on April 14 and Gandhi on May 5, in 1930, the rate of participation grew significantly. We have seen similar events take place in the Jantar Mantar protest where the participation increased after educator Sonam Wangchuk was taken away from the protest site to a hospital while on a hunger-strike.The day after Gandhi’s arrest, the students of Assam boycotted their institutions to demonstrate their solidarity. The British authorities imposed Section 144 in areas like Tezpur, Nagaon, and Dhubri but failed to have any impact on the demonstrations by the students. Following this, John Richard Cunningham, the then Director of Public Instruction, issued a circular in May 1930. The circular advised students and their guardians to submit written undertakings that the student would “refrain from participation of any kind in political activities, e.g. by way of hartals, school strikes, attendance at political meetings, picketing and the like, and that they will respect and abide by the disciplinary rules and orders of the school authority and the Education Department.” The students were asked to avoid participating in hartals, school strikes, political events and picketing. The circular also stated that non-compliance would lead to fines as well as cancellation of scholarships. In case of severe crimes, the students would be expelled from the institute. But in fact, the Cunningham Circular eventually became the catalyst to the eruption of the Civil Disobedience Movement in Assam. Against the circulars, students participated in picketing outside their schools and colleges. A.C. Bhuyan in his book Nationalist Upsurge in Assam also highlighted that the women of Guwahati also picketed outside Cotton College for more than a week. Due to the anti-circular sentiments, students started deserting institutions under British control between July and August 1930. To support the school deserters, the nationalist leaders inaugurated parallel schools like the Kamrup Academy, in various parts of Assam. The rage against the circular was such that even families who were ordinarily supporters of the Raj like the Raisahebs and Raibahadurs vehemently opposed the circular.The protesting studentThe Indian freedom struggle was filled with examples of students who protested against the British Raj. Post independence too, students have continued to be the backbone of any successful social movement. The cases of student self-immolation during the 1965 anti-Hindi movement in Tamil Nadu that ended after an assurance from Lal Bahadur Shastri, the resistance of Gujarat university students during the Navnirman Andolan of 1974 that led to the resignation of the then chief minister Chimanbhai Patel, the JP Movement that later led to the movement against Emergency between 1974-1977 and produced leaders like Nitish Kumar, Lalu Yadav, Mulayam Singh Yadav, and Arun Jaitley were all mostly led by students. In the Northeast, the Assam movement began in 1979 under the leadership of All Assam Students Union. However, now, institutions and government have been struck by collective amnesia towards their own history and leadership. Many of them have come up through the ranks of student politics, including Dharmendra Pradhan, The demonisation of the ‘protesting student’ and its separation of the ‘studying student’ is an attempt to make the campuses sterile, devoid of intellectual stimulus and the imagination to reimagine the future. Rishiraj Sen is an independent researcher. He was a Margaret Basu Scholar at LSE and was an RA at IIM Ahmedabad previously.