It was late May in New Delhi. On the campus of Jawaharlal Nehru University, a group of students had built a “protest camp” under the Administrative building's entrance portico. A banner announced an “indefinite hunger strike”. JNU, as it is usually called, is one of India’s most illustrious universities and occupies a large campus set on the hilly and very green southern side of the city, although this is not sufficient to lessen early summer’s suffocating heat. The students, nineteen men and women, had been fasting for 12 days when I met with them. Some of their companions had been taken to hospital due to their extreme weakness. They would manage to continue their hunger strike for 16 days, the second longest protests in the history of this Indian university.