As part of a conflict that has been escalating for days, tens of thousands of university students flooded the streets of Kolkata, India, on Saturday to protest what they called police brutality on their campus.
Images of the gathering and messages of support flooded Twitter and Facebook under the hashtag #Hokkolorob, which means "Let's make noise" or "Let there be shouts" in Bengali.
The unrest stems from an incident last month, in which a student at Jadavpur University in Kolkata was allegedly sexually assaulted on campus, according to multiple reports. Unsatisfied with officials' response, students began to protest, demanding an independent investigation into the attack. Those demonstrations boiled over in in the wee hours of the morning on Sept. 18 outside vice-chancellor Abhijit Chakraborti's office.
Feeling proud being a part of the mega movement with #hokkolorob pic.twitter.com/0fGmlA85gR— Arup Bhattacharya (@TwiterzArup) September 20, 2014
Chakraborti, who later told the Times of India that he feared for his life, had been effectively barricaded in his office for hours by students in an activist tactic called a "gherao" in Hindi.
Chakraborti called police, and chaos erupted. Students reported being beaten by both police and plain-clothes officers. There were reports that female students had been sexually assaulted by the men who arrived to disperse the protests. Thirty-five students were ultimately arrested.
The 11-minute video, below, depicts the pandemonium that occurred:
In a news report the following morning from local broadcasting network NDTV, students say they were “physically assaulted” by not just police but people in “civil dress," and repeat the claim that women were attacked and molested. A local newspaper reported that 40 students were hospitalized.
“We just wanted to speak to [the vice-chancellor]," one student said. "He’s our teacher, we wanted to speak to him.”
We don't just want #change in our system we want change in people's mentality. #hokkolorob #calcutta #kolakta #india pic.twitter.com/vAlHGtQoju— Tatha Mondal (@TathagataMondal) September 20, 2014
Kolkata's commissioner of police, Surajit Kar Purkayastha, told the HIndustan Times that the police had shown "restraint" on the night in question, and denied that police had brought batons on campus, using the Hindi word for the weapon.
"The police received written distress messages from the vice-chancellor, and therefore, had to go there. But the accusation of lathi charge is mere falsehood. The police did not carry lathis to the campus," he said, though he did confirm the students' claim that some officers were in plain clothes.
(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));
Post by Pooja Sandhyatara Mitra.
In the days that followed, students have continued to agitate, arrange sit-ins and boycott classes. They demanded that Chakraborti resign, charges be dropped against students and impartial investigations take place.
The demonstrations culminated in the huge rally on Saturday, which persisted despite 94% humidity that ultimately devolved into torrential rain. Reports on Twitter and in local media outlets put the number of demonstrators at anywhere between 40,000 and 70,000, though that number has yet to be confirmed. NDTV reported that Kolkata had "not seen a spontaneous, apparently non-political rally of this size and energy in some time."
Drenched in rain, slogans in mouth, songs in spirit. That sums up #HokKolorob and the power of students in Bengal— #HokKolorob (@samratroyc) September 20, 2014
#Brand West Bengal*Today,Kolkata witnesses Biggest ever Students March against Fascist Mamata's Govt brutality in JU. pic.twitter.com/3aU46DiN9a— SUNDAR DUTTA (@SUNDARmyth) September 20, 2014
Multiple reports suggested that a small group of students met with the governor of the state of West Bengal, KN Tripathi, who is also the chancellor of the university, to discuss their demands. The result of that meeting remains unclear.
The conversation on social media continued well into Saturday night, with triumphant messages exchanged under the #Hokkolorob hashtag, and students calling for protests in Delhi, Pondicherry and Siliguri.