\yednesday's police action on the campus, especially inside the Jagannath Hall, manifestly went beyond a concern for law and order.

It followed a student procession heading towards the main gate of Bangla Academy to hoist a black flag in protest against the PM's scheduled inauguration of the Ekushey Book Fair the next day. The police stormed into the dormitories, beat up the inmates mercilessly, littered the personal effects of students, inflicted injuries on 200, in all, and took into custody nearly a hundred students.

The entire scenario was Infernal, to say the least. Yet it was all so very avoidable. In an editorial on January 31, we underscored the incipient dangers associated with the PM's opening of the book fair and urged her to rethink the programme as she had done in the case of her district tours.

The harder option was taken Instead, and thus followed the predictable. But then what has come as an upshot is even worse than we had thought.

Yes, they were flushed out for the PM to do it amidst huge security presence. But at what cost? On the face of it, the university will not work for days and the examinations stand shifted. But down the surface, student politics gets polarised and even more prone to violence than before. There is a grave potential for rocking the national politics at a time when it is passing through a most critical phase, as it is. Let's not add more fuel to the fire.

Brutality is neither courage nor is it farsight. We have already worked ourselves into a situation where the tactical is seemingly getting the better of our best judgement in national life.

This must stop. And all the portents for a spiralling violence should be neutralised here and now. That is the acid test for our leaders.