Over 300 academicians, activists, artists and writers condemn the state violence and unlawful detention of faculty and student protesters of the University of Hyderabad.

If you would like to endorse this statement please send your name and institutional affiliation (if any) to justiceforhcu@gmail.com 

We, academicians, activists,  artists and writers, condemn the ongoing brutal attacks on and unlawful detention of peacefully protesting faculty and students at the University of Hyderabad by the University administration and the police. We also condemn the restriction of access to basic necessities such as water and food on campus.

The students and faculty members of the University of Hyderabad were protesting the reinstatement of Dr. Appa Rao Podile as the Vice-Chancellor despite the ongoing judicial enquiry against him related to  the circumstances leading to the death of the dalit student Rohith Vemula on January 17th, 2016. Students and faculty members of the university community are concerned that this may provide him the opportunity to tamper with evidence and to influence witnesses. Suicides by dalit students have been recurring in the University of Hyderabad and other campuses across the country.  The issue spiraled into a nationwide students’ protest with the death of the dalit scholar Rohith Vemula. The protests have pushed into the foreground public discussion and debate on the persistence of caste-based discrimination in  educational institutions, and surveillance and suppression of dissent and intellectual debate in university spaces.

Since the morning of March 22 when Dr. Appa Rao returned to campus, the students and staff have been in a siege-like situation.  The peacefully protesting staff and students were brutally lathi-charged by the police, and 27 people were taken into custody. The 27 detainees were untraceable for 48 hours, brutally tortured, and denied legal access. In short, all legal procedures of detention have been suspended. After the incident, the university has been locked down with no access to food, water, electricity, and Internet connectivity.   Students were brutally assaulted when they opened community kitchens.  Lawyers and members of human rights organization as well the ordinary citizens of the city were denied access to students. University of Hyderabad is one of India’s biggest public universities.

We have followed, with deep concern, similar violent attacks and undemocratic crackdown on students on the campuses of Jawaharlal Nehru University, the Film and Television Institute of India, the University of Allahabad, Jadavpur University, Burdwan University, and others across the country. That the highest administrative authorities in the university have allowed the silencing of debate and dissent is unfortunate. We are disturbed by the pattern of growing nexus between student vigilante groups, youth wing of the ruling party, state and university authorities in colleges and university campuses across the country in order to mobilize the state machinery against vulnerable students. This has created a climate of fear and oppression in the country, and continually violates fundamental human and Constitutional rights of students.

We stand in support of the protesting students, staff and faculty of the University of Hyderabad and demand the following:

1. Immediate withdrawal of police from the campus.

2. Immediate release of, and withdrawal of all cases against, all arrested students and faculty.

3. Suspension of the Vice-Chancellor P. Appa Rao.

4. Judicial enquiry into the role of the HRD Ministry, the HRD Minister and Mr. Bandaru Dattatreya in inciting violence against Dalits on campus.

5. Independent enquiry into the incidents of violence on the campus including the role of the ABVP in vandalising the Vice-Chancellor’s office.

6. Action against police personnel named by students in their complaints.

7. Passage of the “Rohith Act” against caste discrimination in education.

Signatories

1. Lawrence Cohen, Director, Institute for South Asia Studies, University of California, Berkeley

2. Navtej K Purewal Deputy Director, South Asia Institute SOAS University of London

3. Akhil Gupta, Director, Center for India and South Asia (CISA), UCLA

4. Michael Davis, Professor Emeritus, Department of Creative Writing, University of California Riverside

5. Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director, The Oakland Institute

6. Barbara Harriss-White, Oxford University

7. Kavita Krishnan, Secretary AIPWA

8. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, University Professor in the Humanities, Columbia University

9. G. Arunima, Professor and Chair, Centre for Women’s Studies, School of Social Sciences, JNU

10. Sandeep Pandey, former Visiting Faculty, IIT, BHU, Varanasi

11. Michael D. Yates, Professor Emeritus, University of Pittsburgh, United States

12. Abha Sur, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

13. Akeel Bilgrami, Sidney Morgenbesser Professor of Philosophy, Columbia University

14. Haroon Akram-Lodhi, Chair, Department of International Development Studies, Trent University, Canada

15. Apoorvanand, University of Delhi

16. Marjorie Griffin Cohen, Professor of Political Science and Chair of Women’s Studies Department, Simon Fraser University, Canada

17. Gerald Epstein, Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

18. Surinder S. Jodhka, Jawaharlal Nehru University

19. Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Syracuse University

20. Sangeeta Kamat, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

21. Dr. Shailaja Paik, University of Cincinnati

22. Kevin B. Anderson, Professor of Sociology, University of California  Santa Barbara

23. Tithi Bhattacharya, Professor of History, Purdue University

24. Pranav Jani, The Ohio State University

25. Vinay Gidwani, University of Minnesota

26. Nivedita Menon, Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University

27. Alpa Shah, London School of Economics

28. Jayati Ghosh, Jawaharlal Nehru University

29. Srirupa Roy, University of Göttingen, Germany

30. Rahul Varman, IIT Kanpur

31. Ashwini Tambe, University of Maryland, College Park

32. Jens Lerche, SOAS, University of London

33. Gillian Hart, Professor, University of California, Berkeley

34. Adrian Wilson,  Social Anthropology, London School of Economics

35. Ayesha Kidwai, Professor ,Jawaharlal Nehru University

36. Meher Engineer

37. Aishwary Kumar, School of Humanities & Sciences, Stanford University

38. Ajantha Subramanian, Professor of Anthropology and South Asian Studies, Harvard University

39. Jyoti Puri, Chair and Professor of Sociology, Simmons College

40. Abdul JanMohamed, Professor, University of California, Berkeley

41. Dr. Nathaniel Roberts, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Goettingen, Germany

42. Paula Chakravartty, New York University

43. Atul Sood, Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University

44. Prof. Mohan Rao, Jawaharlal  Nehru University

45. Yasmin Saikia, Professor of History, Arizona State University

46. Nandini Chandra, Delhi University

47. Elisabeth Weber, Professor, University of California, Santa Barbara

48. C. P. Chandrasekhar, Jawaharlal Nehru University

49. Prof. Rupa Viswanath, University of Goettingen, Germany

50. Rama Baru, Jawaharlal Nehru University

51. Svati Shah, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

52. Immanuel Ness, Professor, City University of New York

53. Balmurli Natrajan, William Paterson University

54. Veena Hariharan, School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University

55. Rajat Datta, Professor, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University

56. Geraldine Forbes, Professor, State University of New York, Oswego

57. Joya Misra, Professor of Sociology and Public Policy, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

58. Richard Seymour, London School of Economics

59. Susan Visvanathan, Professor of Sociology, Jawaharlal Nehru University

60. Dr. Pérez de Mendiola, Richard Armour Professor of Modern Languages, Chair, Dept. of Latin American, Caribbean and Spanish Literatures and Cultures & Humanities, Scripps College

61. Peter Spiegler, Asst. Prof.,  Dept. of Economics, UMass, Amherst

62. Swati Birla, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

63. Atreyi Dasgupta, Baylor College of Medicine

64. Kuver Sinha, Syracuse University

65. Sirisha Naidu, Wright State University

66. Siddhartha Mitra, Programmer, Rockefeller University

67. Samantha Agarwal, PhD Candidate, Johns Hopkins University

68. Anup Gampa, PhD Candidate, University of Virginia

69. Anu Mandavilli, Friends of South Asia

70. Deepankar Basu, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

71. Nandini Dhar, Assistant Professor, Florida International University

72. Michael Levien, Assistant Professor, Johns Hopkins University

73. Devika Dutt, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

74. Smita Ramnarain, Assistant Professor of Economics, Siena College

75. Taki Manolakos, Wright State University

76. Valentina Dallona, Johns Hopkins University

77. Iveta Jusova, Carleton College, USA

78. Aditi Chandra, University of California, Merced

79. Hee-Young Shin, Wright State University

80. Anjali Arondekar, UC Santa Cruz

81. Jinee Lokaneeta, Drew University

82. Ajay Chandra, University of Warwick

83. Xiao Yu, Peking University

84. Bettina Apthekar, UC Santa Cruz

85. Anirban Karak, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

86. Natasha S K, Syracuse University

87. Mitul Barua, Syracuse University

88. Simmy Makhijani, San Francisco State University

89. Sofia Gavtadze, Solidarity Network, Georgi

90. Avishek Konar, Alumnus, The Ohio State University

91. Robert Carley, Wright State University

92. Dia Da Costa, Associate Professor, University of Alberta

93. Ann Smock, University of California, Berkeley

94. Liz Mount, Syracuse University

95. Terese V Gagnon, Syracuse University

96. Giorgi Kobakhidze, Ilia State University, Tbilisi, Georgia

97. Levin Ahmed, Jawaharlal Nehru University

98. Christos Mais, Universiteit Leiden

99. Taveeshi Singh, Syracuse University

100. Aniruddha Das, Columbia University

101. Safar Safqat, St Mary’s College of Maryland

102. Ramaa Vasudevan, Colorado State University

103. Osman Keshawarz, doctoral student, University of Massachusetts at Amherst

104. Narendra Subramaniam, McGill University

105. Ammel Sharon, University of Pennsylvania

106. Gventa Gventsadze

107. Borisi Cirekidze

108. Minakshi Menon, Max Planck Institute, Berlin

109. Dmitri Khuskivadze

110. Salo Kaladze

111. Judith Rodenbeck, UC Riverside

112. Ashok Prasad, Colorado State University

113. Priyanka Srivastava, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

114. Arani Roy, Brandeis University

115. Dag Erik Berg, University of Gottingen, Germany

116. Rahul Nair, Antioch College, USA

117. Gajendran Ayyathurai, Goettingen University, Germany

118. Balaji Narasimhan, William Paterson University, United States

119. Ember Skye Kanelee, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

120. Jungyeon Suh, Independent Researcher, United States

121. Kannan Srinivasan

122. Roli Verma, University of New Mexico

123. Piya Chatterjee, Scripps College, US

124. Lalit Batra, University of Minnesota

125. Avanti Mukherjee, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

126. Tyler Hansen, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

127. Subho Basu, McGill University, Canada

128. Laurie Nisonoff, Hampshire College, United States

129. Satya Mohapatra, MIT

130. Julia Corwin, University of Minnesota

131. Parama Roy, UC Davis

132. Noeleen McIlvenna, Wright State University

133. Daniel Thompson, Johns Hopkins University

134. Jesse Knutson, University of Hawaii, Manoa

135. Prashant Keshavmurthy, McGill University, Canada

136. Anasuya Sengupta, Berkeley, USA

137. Uditi Sen, Hampshire College

138. Zarrina Juraqulova, Denison University, USA

139. Kiran Asher, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

140. Prakash Kashwan, University of Connecticut, Storrs

141. Hamid Rezai, Pitzer College, USA

142. Anindya Dey, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

143. Lara Deeb, Scripps College, USA

144. Richa Nagar, University of Minnesota

145. Vatsal Naresh, Columbia University

146. Niharika Yadav, Princeton University

147. Bedatri Datta Choudhury, NYU

148. Sanjiv Gupta, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

149. Suvadip Sinha, University of Minnesota

150. Ipsita Mandal, Perimeter Institute, Canada

151. Poulomi Pal, Fulbright scholar

152. Asmita Rangari, Activist, New Delhi

153. Shipra Nigam, Activist, New Delhi

154. Srinivas Lankala, Independent media scholar, Hyderabad

155. Carolyn Elliott, University of Vermont

156. Aviroop Sengupta, Columbia University

157. Madhura Lohokare, Syracuse University

158. Arijit Sen, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

159. Suyapa Portillo Villeda, Pitzer College, USA

160. Oishik Sircar, University of Melbourne

161. Arjun Bagchi, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

162. Greg Anderson, Ohio State University

163. Prarit Agarwal, Seoul National University, Korea

164. Sayori Ghoshal, Columbia University

165. Uponita Mukherjee, Columbia University

166. Suyapa Portillo Villeda, Pitzer College

167. Patricia Morton, University of California, Riverside

168. Sofia Checa, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

169. Arpan Roy, John Hopkins University

170. Cynthia Correa, The University of Texas at Austin

171. Parvathy Binoy, Syracuse University, Syracuse

172. Jonathon Hurd, RN, Seattle

173. Varuni Bhatia, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

174. Erin McElroy, UCSC, Director, Anti-Eviction Mapping Project

175. Geert Dhondt, John Jay College, The City University of New York

176. Mithun Bhowmick, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

177. Alladi Sitaram, Retired Professor, Indian Statistical Institute

178. Dr Kasturi Ray, San Francisco State University

179. Alicia Giron, National University of Mexico

180. Probal Dasgupta, Indian Statistical Institute

181. Larry Halpern, Wittenberg University

182. Suchitra Mathur, Faculty, IIT Kanpur, India

183. Aditi Saraf, Johns Hopkins University

184. Ketaki Jaywant, University of Minnesota

185. Nagesh Rao, Colgate University

186. Irfan Ahmad, ACU Melbourne, Australia

187. Suvrat Raju, TIFR

188. Saikat Ghosh, IIT Kanpur

189. Samyak Ghosh, Columbia University

190. Catherine Liu, UC Irvine

191. Francis Cody, University of Toronto

192. Bhavani Raman, University of Toronto

193. Erika Suderburg, University of California Riverside

194. Saptarshi Mandal, Assistant Professor, Jindal Global Law School, Sonipat

195. Anannya Bohidar, Graduate Student, South Asia Studies, UPenn

196. Rahul Pandey, visiting faculty, IIM Lucknow

197. Tania Bhattacharyya, Columbia University

198. Aditi Sarkar, Architect, Las Cruces, New Mexico

199. Shakti Sathish Nambiar, Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne

200. Krishna Melnattur, Washington University School of Medicine

201. Rupal Oza, Hunter College, City University of New York

202. Maroona Murmu, Assistant Professor, Jadavpur University

203. Gayatri Chatterjee, Symbiosis School of Liberal Art

204. Sipra Mukherjee, Professor, West Bengal State University

205. Raja Swamy, Asst. Prof., Dept. of Anthropology, University of Tennessee

206. Anandavardhanan, Department of Mathematics, IIT Bombay

207. Priyanka Bhattacharya, The Doon School, Dehradun

208. Anuradha Roy, Jadavpur University

209. Ramesh Sreekantan, Statistics and Mathematics Unit Indian Statistical Institute, Bangalore.

210. Srinath Jagannathan, Indian Institute of Management Indore

211. Tanima Sharma, PhD student, University of Chicago

212. Meena Alexander, City University of New York

213. Sharmila Sreekumar, IIT Bombay

214. Venkatesh K Subramanian, IIT Kanpur

215. Food Sovereignty Alliance, India

216. The Ghadar Alliance, US

217. Nandita Narain, St.Stephen’s College, Delhi University

218. Deepa Kurup, University of Oxford

219. Ramesh Bairy, IIT Bombay

220. Papori Bora, Jawaharlal Nehru University

221. Ritwik Balo

222. Ranjani Mazumdar, School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University

223. PK Vijayan

224. Dr. Papia Sengupta, CPS/SSS

225. Krishna V V, CSSP/SSS

226. A.K. Ramakrishnan, Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University

227. Arunima S Mukherjee

228. George Chkhaidze

229. Elizabeth Abel

230. Dr. Kochurani Abraham, Kerala

231. Saumyajit Bhattacharya

232. Pradip Datta, Jawaharlal Nehru University

233. Rohit Azad, Center for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University

234. Deepak K Mishra, Jawaharlal Nehru University

235. Tulay Atay–Avsar, Mustafa Kemal University, Turkey

236. Dr. Vikas Bajpai, Jawaharlal Nehru University

237. Saradindu Bhaduri, Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi and ISS, The Hague

238. Dr Erica Wald, Goldsmiths, University of London

239. Navaneetha Mokkil

240. Manidipa Sen, Jawaharlal Nehru University

241. Ameet Parameswaran, Jawaharlal Nehru University

242. K. B. Usha, Jawaharlal Nehru University

243. Gopinath Ravindran

244. Avinash Kumar, CISLS, SSS, Jawaharlal Nehru University

245. Puja Rani, University of Delhi

246. Ritoo Jerath, Jawaharlal Nehru University

247. Hannah Carlan, Department of Anthropology, UCLA

248. Ganga Bhavani Manthini

249. Sucharita Sen, Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University

250. Dr. Mallarika Sinha Roy, Centre for Women’s Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University

251. Archana Prasad, Jawaharlal Nehru University

252. Dinesh Abrol, Institute for Studies in Industrial Development.

253. Vikas Rawal, Professor, Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University

254. Sanjaya Kumar Bohidar, Shri Ram College of Commerce, Delhi University

255. Simona Sawhney, IIT Delhi

256. Dr Debjani Sengupta, Indraprastha College for Women, University of Delhi

257. Anirban Gupta-Nigam, University of California, Irvine

258. Nandita Badami, University of California, Irvine

259. Sneha Gaddam, PhD Candidate, University of Leicester

260. Prabhu Mohapatra Department of History Univ of Delhi

261. Farida Khan, Univ. of Wisconsin Parkside

262. Pankaj Mehta, Dept. of Physics, Boston University

263. Tista Bagchi, University of Delhi

264. Ra Ravishankar, Bangalore

265. Sambuddha Chaudhuri, University of Pennsylvania

266. Ani Maitra, Colgate University

267. Ethel Brooks, Assoc. Prof., Dept. of Women’s and Gender Studies and Sociology, Rutgers University

268. Abha Dev Habib, Miranda House, University of Delhi

269. Surajit Mazumdar, Center for Economic Studies and Planning, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University

270. Sonajharia Minz, Professor, School of Computer & Systems Sciences, JNU

271. Vinay Kumar Ambedkar

272. Naveen Gaur, Associate Professor, Dyal Singh College, University of Delhi

273. Margot Weiss, Wesleyan University

274. Vivekananda Mukherjee, Professor, Dept. of Economics, Jadavpur University

275. Dr Shakira Hussein, National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies, Asia Institute, University of Melbourne

276. Udaya Kumar, Professor, CES, School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, JNU

277. Kriti Budhiraja, Graduate Student, University of Minnesota

278. Radhika Balakrishnan, Rutgers University

279. Seema Saha Poddar

280. Poulomi Saha, Assistant Professor of English, UC Berkeley

281. Swapnil Deshmukh, Mumbai University

282. Dr Lata Singh

283. Tyler Feaver, Wright State University

284. Pavithra Vasudevan, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

285. Santosh Rohit Yerrabolu, Buffalo, NY

286. Professor V V Krishna, Centre for Studies in Science Policy, SSS, JNU

287. Amy E. Alterman, Graduate Student, University of California Los Angeles

288. Ian Duncan, Professor of English, University of California, Berkeley

289. Bir singh, Asstt. Professor, Dept. of Economics, University of Delhi

290. Amit Singh, Postdoctoral Fellow, Northwestern University

291. Poonam Srivastava, University of Chicago, Postdoc Researcher

292. Omnia El Shakry, University of California, Davis

293. Jhuma Sen, O.P. Jindal Global University, India

294. Corey Payne and Chase Alston, Co-Presidents of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Johns Hopkins University

295. Sankaran Krishna, Professor, Dept. of Political Science, University of Hawaii at Manoa

296. Mytheli Sreenivas, Professor, Ohio State University

297. Preeti Shekar, Asian College of Journalism

298. Susan Himmelweit, Emeritus Professor of Economics, Faculty of Social Sciences, Open University, Walton Hall, UK

299. Kalyani Monteiro Jayasankar, Graduate Student, Princeton University

300. Nicolau Dols, Universitat de les Illes Balears, Spain

301. Kartik Misra, Graduate Student, Dept. of Economics, UMass, Amherst

302. Dolly Daftary, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan

303. Sugata Ray, Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science

304. Kunal Chattopadhyay, Professor of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University

305. Soma Marik, Associate Professor of History, RKSM Vivekananda Vidyabhavan

306. Pratiksha Baxi, Assoc. Prof., Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, JNU
307. 307. Aditya Nigam, CSDS, Delhi
308. Nivedita Menon, JNU