The Union education minister did not resign. He was forced to. He had no choice. There is no grace or redemption in his belatedly quitting his office. Because the havoc he perpetrated before he did, the damage he has inflicted on the very credibility of the education system by tampering with it to saffronise it, by brazening it out and clinging to his chair as long as he did, well until the ground slipped from under his feet, had already made his position untenable.Because 152 cases of question papers being allegedly leaked in a span of 12 years makes the NEET system look like a sieve. It would be a joke if it wasn’t so deafening and cruel; if it hadn’t by one count taken the lives of as many as 21 students.On the other hand, the students and youth, supremely resolute, stood their ground. They had no choice because they had their future to lose if they didn’t. The students, the youth, the flower of the country’s new generation, have not only forced a pompous and arrogant minister’s resignation. They have seized moral high ground, against the heaviest odds. They have shown their power to suffer the blows of a tyrannical government, but not yield.They have, with their bruised and bleeding bodies, yet with resolute hearts, overpowered the indiscriminate state violence unleashed against them. By not cracking before the crackdown. By standing unyielding, unbending, with come-what-may grit and defiance as police in uniform and out of uniform rained lathi blows on them – the lathis in many instances with nails affixed on them to lethal effect. By not cowing down before the onslaught of tear gas shells lobbed at them, stinging their eyes and drawing painful tears. By not flinching when guns fired pellets on their bodies, in their faces, endangering their eyes and in at least one instance threatening total loss of sight.We who have not turned a blind eye to this incredible perverse attack gasped with the realisation that a red line had been crossed. We now feared for our children’s lives. We had seen videos, photos of these pellets lodged in tender young human flesh like a rash. The utter cowardice of the state stunned us. Cowardice, because no one owns up to firing these pellets. Not the police, not the Rapid Action Force, not the CRPF deployed to crush the protests.This is Gandhian resistance at its best, at its latest. The images on YouTube channels, and some TV channels which were shamed into showing them, were reminiscent of the archival newsreel footage imprinted in our minds and hearts, which show line after line of Gandhian passive resisters offering themselves to the deadly batons of British soldiers. Ordinary folk with extraordinary courage.Our youth, our students, shame us – us the chatterati, us the opportunistic political parties who seek to jump on to their bandwagon when we find it is on a roll, us the cheerleaders on the sidelines, us the pompous know-alls who offer them useless gratuitous advice. Their spontaneity and their resoluteness prevailed. Despite the government’s alternately wily and heavy-handed ways. Despite the careful skirting or soft-pedalling of the manifest problem by a good section of the mainstream media. Despite a dismaying sense of helplessness creeping in.The students, the youth, redeemed our democracy. For now.Sashi Kumar is a veteran journalist and the founder of the Asian College of Journalism.