November 14, 2005: Manmohan Singh faces a protest by students at JNU. The then Prime Minister quotes Voltaire: “I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it.” Later, when the administration asks the students to apologise, Singh requests the vice-chancellor: “Please be lenient, Sir.”

June 30, 2023: Posters asking questions on education policies and employment come up at Delhi University a day before Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to attend centenary celebrations. On Friday, as Modi rides a Metro train to the varsity, student leaders Abhigyan and Anjali Sharma say they found themselves in virtual house arrest with police declaring they were in a “circle of suspicion”.

New Delhi: When Abhigyan, a DU student who uses only one name, stepped out of his apartment block in Delhi on Friday morning, he found some policemen at the gate.

He asked them what they wanted, to which an officer showed him a photo of him and asked if he knew someone named Abhigyan.

“I said I am he. They said I could either come with them, or they would come to my place,” Abhigyan told The Telegraph.

An hour later, the Prime Minister boarded a Metro train from Lok Kalyan Marg. Modi entered an empty coach, a rare sight on the busy yellow line during peak hours. Videos were soon in circulation showing Modi asking students if they had made friends from other states and learnt new languages. A boy from Ranchi said he had a South African classmate. A girl said she had learnt some Malayalam from a roommate. A third said she taught Hindi to a classmate.

Modi alighted at Vishwavidyalaya station to attend the centenary celebrations of DU, where Abhigyan studies political science.

The police remained with Abhigyan, the Delhi unit president of the CPIML-Liberation’s All India Students Association (Aisa), and Anjali, the DU secretary of the outfit, in their flat near the campus until well after the Prime Minister had left, the students said.

Abhigyan and Anjali said they were made to remain indoors as they were in a “circle of suspicion”. Nothing was given in writing. The police had not responded to an email from this newspaper asking about the allegations.

In his speech at the centenary event, Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan proclaimed that when the Emergency was imposed and the fundamental rights of citizens were snatched, “the first voice against this came from DU. DU fought the second struggle for Independence”.

In keeping with DU’s tradition of dissent, Abhigyan and Anjali had stuck posters on the campus on Thursday with questions for the Prime Minister:

■ Why are the fees in our colleges rising every year?

■ Why are we forced to study courses we did not choose?

■ Why has the government cut funding for education?

■ Why has the unemployment rate risen to 8.1 per cent?

■ Why are our teachers who have taught us for years being thrown out of the university?

“Are these questions so dangerous that students need to be detained in their homes for the Prime Minister’s safety?” Abhigyan asked on Friday after the police had left.

Aisa had not called for any protest on Friday.

In 2005, months after Singh had begun talks on the nuclear deal with the US, Aisa and other far-Left groups had shown black flags to him when he visited JNU. Some students were also protesting against issues such as Singh’s speech in Oxford for calling the British Raj beneficial, the raising of the Sardar Sarovar dam and the Armed Forces Special Powers Act.

Delivering his speech later, Singh had said: “Every member of a university community, if he or she wishes to aspire to be worthy of the university, must accept the truth of Voltaire’s classic statement. Voltaire proclaimed, ‘I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it.’ That idea must be the cornerstone of a liberal institution.”

Aisa leader Sandeep Singh, who led the protest then and went on to become JNU students’ union president, is now a member of the Congress. He and other protesters had been asked to apologise by then vice-chancellor B.B. Bhattacharya. They refused and were let off with a warning.

Bhattacharya, now deceased, had told this newspaper in 2016: “Manmohan Singh came and told me ‘please be lenient, Sir’. I said ‘I have to at least warn them’.”