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'We may not stay in our country but it will stay our country'

April 17, 2007
Mohit, like Ekta and Aman, makes it clear that he does not want to be identified by his real name for this feature. After being a very vocal member of Youth for Equality -- an organisation set up to oppose reservation which got its name in a Delhi coffee shop -- he does not want to be in the limelight because it upsets his parents.

"They think they sent me here to study and I am becoming a politician. The fact is that I want to do something in life and that doesn't mean becoming a politician. No normal student these days wants to be a politician. It is being the very person you detest."

In retrospect, he is happy that he took a stand. "We had to get involved because no one else was at that time. People never expected a protest like this could happen in a medical college. Medical students really don't have the time for this, they already have enough to study."

What began as a symbolic gesture of protest became a large-scale movement that even took the students by surprise in terms of its impact and response.

"Actually what pushed us was that other higher institutes did not come out in protest like us. Others said it does not affect us. It was so in AIIMS too, there were many who were going to America but who still participated. Who said we may not stay in our country but it will stay our country," says Mohit. "Later we can at least say we tried -- even if it is not going to change anything."
Image: Doctors during a hunger strike at the AIIMS campus. The anti reservation movement, which began with a few students, went on to shake the government with its intensity.
Photograph: Prakash Singh/AFP/Getty Images
Also see: A lot of rage, a little Rang De

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