Imran Chaudhary had never imagined that he would stand on the side of a road on a cold winter morning in the nation’s capital and remove his shirt.
But that is what Imran did on Monday morning, a day after the Delhi Police attacked students at Jamia Millia Islamia University to stop them protesting the Citizenship Amendment Act, which offers a path to citizenship to all religious minorities from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, but not Muslims
For Imran, who is the first person in his village in Haryana to graduate college and then go on to pursue a PhD, the violence he was subjected to is in equal measure an assault on his mind and also his body. He explained that when you hurt someone, humiliate them, and wield power over them like that, physical wounds can heal, but the hurts done to the psychology is immeasurable.
The ten minutes that he was forced to march from the library to a metro station outside the campus, holding his hands above his head while lathi-wielding policemen warned the students against lowering them, will never leave him.
The soft-spoken and solemn-looking student, said, “I was humiliated. I can never tell my mother how bad it made me feel. She is so proud of my work, but she will say, ‘You pick up your clothes, you pick up your bag, and you come home. I don’t want this PhD.’”
“I feel that who I am today is because of this University. I’m the first person in my village to graduate, the first person to get a master’s degree, and the first person to pursue a PhD. The place that makes me stronger is under attack,” he said. | 
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