So is it okay to imagine a JNU moment for our own universities and expect a local Kanhaiya Kumar to stand up and challenge the established forces and promise revolution. Is it okay to imagine a civil society in Pakistan that stands together and turns that moment into a movement?

Others might turn around and ask if it’s alright to be so euphoric about the developments across the border when we have a shining history of student politics and a brave struggle against dictatorships.

Perhaps it is a moment of reckoning -- to look at the trajectory of student politics in both countries and what the current times hold in store.

From a glorious history that put us in Pakistan ahead of all other countries in the region, here we are in a situation where student unions stand banned for decades now and the student body is depoliticised as per expectations. Yet, to bring the country to this state has been a very deliberate and systematic ‘political’ project.

As Kamran Asdar Ali hints at in his thoughtful piece, once the unions were banned in the 1980s, students were allowed to organise along ethnic and religious and sectarian lines, leading to violence on campuses. Interestingly, one group affiliated with an Islamic political party that supported the military dictator of the time was permitted to do business in universities. The violence made it easier for the security apparatuses to enter the campuses, ostensibly to make them safe.

They have not left the universities ever since. And education which as earlier said is a very political project has remained in the hands of the powers that be. They decide what to teach and how to teach and also who will teach. The cost of this has been heavy for the country and it’s there for all to see.

We don’t look up to JNU. We only look at it to look back at what we did to ourselves. Kamran Asdar Ali takes it a step further and warns JNU to be extra cautious, not by India’s own example but also by how we truncated student politics here in Pakistan.