IN a quiet corner of the vast New Campus of the University of Punjab (PU), and partially hidden by a row of eucalyptus trees, lies the sprawling, carton-like hostel Hall Number 16. The rumble of an occasional rickshaw and the clank of a rusty bicycle are the only sounds in the vicinity of the high red-brick walls of the building.

It is hard to imagine that this building, located in a tranquil area of Lahore, was not too long ago the site of a violent stand-off between the university administration and the Islami Jamiat-i-Tulaba (IJT), the student arm of the Jamaat-i-Islami.

The university administration tried to get the hostel, then occupied by IJT activists, vacated in order to accommodate women students who over the past few years have come to increasingly dominate the student population at PU. When the administration moved to clear Hall Number 16, the IJT began to agitate, and blocked the city’s major thoroughfares setting alight at least one bus.

The administration called in the police to restore order. In an early morning raid on the hostel, the police cleared the building and arrested several IJT activists. They claimed to have recovered empty liquor bottles and a bullet from the room belonging to the IJT university nazim. An FIR has been lodged against the nazim under the country’s anti-terrorism laws.

But life seems to have moved on at the Hall. Women students, many of them newly admitted to the university, have been moved into the vacated premises. According to university students, most of the male students who had occupied Hall Number 16 have been allotted rooms in other hostels for men. However, students say, that IJT members who study at the law college have not managed to secure allotments. They refuse to comment on whether they think that this was a punitive measure.

But for now, all seems quiet. The new occupants’ colourful garments, hung out to dry, flutter in the afternoon breeze. Two guards sit outside the hostel door taking in the mild winter sun. They look at passers-by with interest, split between suspicion and hope. A brief conversation could after all break the monotony of their duty.

The IJT did hold a small protest in front of the Punjab Assembly on Dec 12, but it doesn’t appear to have a definite game plan to regain lost territory and is subdued at the moment. “I will shortly meet the Jamiat’s top leadership, and we will hammer out a plan of action,” says Rab Nawaz, the IJT nazim at the university.

Students say the administration is installing CCTV cameras at Hall Number One, a hostel which is a known IJT stronghold. They suggest it is an effort to push the IJT out of the university. Rab Nawaz says the administration had made a deliberate decision not to allot rooms in Hall Number 16 from the beginning of this year with the aim of having it vacated.

Some students say the administration has been bringing in a growing number of students from Balochistan in an effort to build a parallel student force to weaken the IJT’s hold. The IJT, on the other hand, insists it is open to having Baloch and Pakhtun members, and that they have agreed to cooperate with the group.

But most students are not too concerned. “We never knew what was happening,” says one student. “There was a protest, but it was not all that the media made it out to be. The media tends to exaggerate.”

Others think both the administration and the IJT are equally to blame. “The IJT’s way of protesting was wrong … manhandling teachers, blocking roads or setting buses alight is no way to protest,” says a sociology student. “The administration needs to build more hostels to accommodate the ever-increasing student population, instead of trying to house it in the existing, few hostels.”

For now, the university sports grounds near Hall Number 16 continue to resonate with the sound of a red cricket ball striking against the students’ bats. Only the roar of the rare plane flying across a wintry stretch of the blue sky can drown out the steady thud of the ball.