In early July, as the students’ protests in Jantar Mantar were taking shape, the Trinamool Congress MP, Mahua Moitra, was one of the first politicians to show up in person and offer solidarity. Three weeks later, when the Union education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan, resigned, Moitra thanked the younger generation “for saving Indian democracy” by bringing “this fascist, arrogant government to its knees”.

This, as she pointed out, was something the Opposition parties had not been able to do in the past 12 years.

Mahua Moitra’s praise was well merited. The resignation of the education minister, the home minister’s prolonged absence from Parliament, the sacking of several senior BJP office-bearers, and – not least – the clumsy, late-night videos of the prime minister, all testified to a regime whose customary air of hubristic arrogance had (at least temporarily) given way to weakness and confusion

It is too early to say whether the momentum that the student “cockroaches” have thus far generated can be sustained, leading to a fuller renewal of the constitutional promises of liberty, equality and fraternity. Historians are not astrologers, so, instead of projecting forward, I shall here look backwards, exploring other times in the past when Indian students have sought to leave their impress on politics and public life.

The first such occasion was 120 years ago, during the swadeshi movement in Bengal. As Sumit Sarkar observed in his book on that particular upsurge, “Students of every district came to study in Calcutta, and no doubt it was through them above all that the movement initially spread into the mofussil.” While the more prominent leaders came from the established professional and landed classes, writes Sarkar, “the volunteers themselves of course came largely from the student community, many of them of extremely tender years”.

In subsequent years, students energetically participated in the movements against British colonial rule led by Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian National Congress. Male students........

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