As we drove back on Sunday night in the part of New Delhi described as 'Lutyenstown' – where India's elite politicians, bureaucrats, judges, its nomenklatura, live in bungalows with high walls and vast, immaculate lawns – we saw a few police cars, with their beacon lights flashing, driving by silently at an unhurried pace. They did not seem to be in any rush to reach the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus, where people in masks, carrying iron rods and wooden staffs were roaming around hostels, beating students and lecturers. The university's main gates were closed, the lights around the campus had been turned off, and the police outside were doing nothing to stop the violence. Instead, as the website Scroll.in reported, they were first seen letting people in through one gate, and later not questioning or detaining any of the men with hockey sticks, rods, and cricket bats, when they began streaming out of the campus.
Delhi's police has been selectively zealous in taking their law and order responsibly seriously in recent times. A few days earlier, a friend of mine – who is a lecturer at a university in another Indian city but visiting Delhi – was returning to her accommodation in the capital after participating in a peaceful protest, when she was stopped. The police thought she was a student and questioned her, asking her where she lived and what she did. She was unarmed, but the police did not take chances; their diligence was curiously absent when armed men emerged out of JNU.