Category Archives: Debates

Debates, Education, Law, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

Statement by JNU Faculty on Bar Council of India Report on Patiala House events of February 15 and 17, 2016.

4 Comments

In a shockingly partisan statement that blatantly misrepresents events, the Bar Council of India has issued a report that justifies the well documented attacks by a mob of lawyers on JNU students, teachers and media at Patiala House Courts over two days (February 15 and 17, 2016) as ‘a reaction to the incidents, which are grave in nature and very dangerous for the country’. BCI Joint Secretary Ashok Kumar Pandey claimed that a large number of JNU teachers and students and others had arrived at the court in three to four buses and raised slogans and used ‘provocative words’. This led to the untoward incident in which ‘both the sides took part,’ said the report, adding that ‘any true citizen or a lawyer of India’ was supposed to react strongly to the ‘anti-India’ slogans.

We, the undersigned faculty members of Jawaharlal Nehru University, wish to set the record straight. Nine of us reached Patiala House Court No 4 between 1 and 1.15 pm on 15th February 2016 to attend the hearing on Kanhaiya Kumar’s bail plea. The sole objective of our presence there was that when Kanhaiya Kumar was produced he would see the faces of his teachers in the courtroom. At that time, a few students and other teachers of JNU, and some members of CPI, the parent organization of Kanhaiya’s student group, were already waiting silently outside, similarly wanting him to see friendly and familiar faces when he was produced. There were about 15 to 20 of them, hardly enough to fill 4 cars, let alone one bus.

Continue reading Statement by JNU Faculty on Bar Council of India Report on Patiala House events of February 15 and 17, 2016. →

Debates, Ecology/Environment, Politics, Right watch

Offer truth and hope, not drama: Faculty of University of Hyderabad to Smriti Irani

Leave a comment

Dear Ms Irani,

Thanks to your stunning performance, we, many faculty members from the University of Hyderabad, are compelled to do what we should have done in the last one month or so, but could not bring ourselves to – write, write about Rohith, write about our other students, write about the state of academics, write about ourselves and write about society at large.

Our first acknowledgement to this therefore goes to you for revealing yourself and for bringing us back from grief, from reflection, from teaching and from various other mundane things we do as part of our job.

As we watched you in disbelief on our TV screens on 24th February 2016, you, in a voice choked with emotion, again and again referred to the “child” whose death has been used as a political weapon. We were left bewildered.

At what precise point, Madam Minister, did this sinister, anti-national, casteist, Dalit student of the University of Hyderabad transform into a child for you? Definitely not in those five rejoinders from MHRD (the ministry of human resource development) between 03-09-2015 and 19-11- 2015 with the subject line “anti-national activities in Hyderabad Central University Campus”? Definitely not when you chose to overlook and endorse what can only be read as extraordinarily aggressive and unfounded allegations by a minister in your own government, Mr Bandaru Dattatreya?

Read the rest of the letter in The Telegraph

Debates, Education, Mirror Worlds, Politics, Right watch

Petition to stop the global crackdown on academic freedom – Turkey, India, Egypt

1 Comment
The undersigned are university teachers and students concerned over recent events that point to a serious reversal of gains in democracy and academic freedom achieved over the last decades in many countries.

Three cases have been most prominent in that regard since the beginning of 2016: the crackdown by Turkish authorities on the more than 1200 signatories in Turkey of the petition by “Academics for Peace” criticizing the anti-Kurdish war drive launched by the Turkish government; the crackdown by Indian authorities on students involved in a non-violent campus protest against the death penalty at Jawaharlal Nehru University and Hyderabad University; and in Egypt an attempt to shoot and kill a professor by groups affiliated to the ruling party; and the savage torture and assassination in Cairo of Italian research student Giulio Regeni.

When they are not tacitly approving it, governments of countries where academic freedoms are better respected and which include most global powers have turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to calls on them to protest against this repression. The worst attitude has been displayed in Italy where the government kept stressing the importance of its economic ties with Egypt while a gutter press accused Giulio Regeni’s supervisors of letting him gather dangerous information, thus resorting to an old worn-out paranoid argument of all dictatorships and tacitly making the student himself responsible for his own atrocious death.

Academic freedoms are a key indicator of the overall status of political freedom and democracy. The acceleration of privatisation across the public higher education system is undermining these freedoms on a global scale. The events described above point to a much deeper and sweeping onslaught on democratic freedoms, which must be halted immediately lest it leads to increasingly tragic events and a most nefarious consolidation and extension of the authoritarian turn in global politics.

We call on the global community of teachers and students to join us in protesting against this most dangerous trend by signing, translating and circulating this statement, and organizing protest meetings in all universities.

To sign, please go to this link. 

Bad ideas, Debates, Education, Identities, Images, Language, Movements, Politics, Right watch

स्मृति ईरानी को एक जे-एन-यू के छात्र की चिट्ठि: अनन्त प्रकाश नारायण

3 Comments

Guest Post by Anant Prakash Narayan

सेवा में,

श्रीमती स्मृति ईरानी जी

“राष्ट्रभक्त” मानव संसाधन विकास मंत्री,

भारत सरकार

संसद में दिए गए आपके भाषण को सुना. इससे पहले की मै अपनी बात रखूँ , यह स्पष्ट कर दूं की यह पत्र किसी “बच्चे” का किसी “ममतामयी” मंत्री के नाम नहीं है बल्कि यह पत्र एक खास विचारधारा की राजनीति करने वाले व्यक्ति का पत्र दूसरे राजनैतिक व्यक्ति को है. सबसे पहले मै यह स्पष्ट कर दूं कि मै किसी भी व्यक्ति की योग्यता का आकलन उसकी शैक्षणिक योग्यता के आधार पर नहीं करता हूँ बल्कि साफ़ साफ़ कहूं तो मै “योग्यता”(मेरिट) के पूरे कांसेप्ट को खारिज करता हूँ.

मानव संसाधन मंत्रालय का पद भार लेने के साथ ही यह अपेक्षा की जाती है कि आप इस देश के केंद्रीय विश्वविद्यालयों में उनकी ऑटोनोमी का सम्मान करते हुए उसके लिए उत्तरदायी होंगी. रोहित वेमुला के मामले में आपने क्या किया यह सबके सामने है कि किस तरह से वहाँ के प्रशासन पर आपने दबाव डाला जिसका नतीजा रोहित के institutional मर्डर के रूप में हमारे सामने आया. लेकिन मै इन सारी चीजो पर अभी बात नही करना चाहता. आप बार बार अपनी औरत होने की पहचान (आइडेंटिटी) को assert करतीं हैं और इसको करना भी चाहिए क्यूंकि नारी जाति उन ढेर सारे हाशिये पर किए गए लोगों में एक है जिनको सदियों से शोषित किया गया है. मै आपसे यह पूछना चाहता हूँ कि एक दलित स्त्री जो कि हर तकलीफ उठाते हुए अकेले अपने दम पर जब अपने बेटे बेटियों को इस समाज में एक सम्मानपूर्ण जगह देने के लिए संघर्ष कर रही थी तब एक नारी होने के कारण आप की क्या जिम्मेदारी बनती थी ? क्या आपको उस महिला के जज्बे को सलाम करते हुए उसकी बहादुरी के आगे सर झुकाते हुए उसके साथ नहीं खड़ा होना चाहिए था? हाँ, मै रोहित की माँ के बारे में बात कर रहा हूँ. जो महिला इस ब्रहामणवादी व पितृसत्तात्मक समाज से लड़ी जा रही थी, अपने बच्चों को अपने पहचान से जोड़ रही थी, उस महिला को आप व आपकी सरकार उसके पति की पहचान से क्यूँ जोड़ रहे थे? आपको भी अच्छा लगता होगा की आपकी अपनी एक स्वतंत्र पहचान है. लेकिन यह अधिकार आप उस महिला से क्यूँ छीन  रहीं थीं? क्या आप भी पितृसत्तात्मक व ब्रहामणवादी समाज के पक्ष में खड़ी होती हैं? अपना पूरा नाम बताते हुए अपनी जाति के बारे में आपने सवाल पूछा और आपका भाषण खत्म होने के पहले ही लोगों ने आपकी जाति निकाल दी. मै आपकी जाति के बारे में कोई दिलचस्पी नहीं रखता हूँ और मै यह बिलकुल नहीं मानता हूँ की अगर आप उच्च जाति के होते हैं तो आप जातिवादी ही होंगे लेकिन आपके विभाग/मंत्रालय के तरफ से जो चिट्ठियाँ लिखी गई उसमे रोहित और उसके साथियों को जातिवादी /caste-ist बताया. मैडम क्या आप caste-ism और  caste assertion का अन्तर समझती हैं? मै समझता हूँ की आप ये अन्तर भली – भाँति समझती हैं क्यूंकि आर एस एस जो आपकी सरकार और मंत्रालय को चलाता है, वह वर्ण व्यवस्था के नाम पर जाति व्यस्वस्था को भारतीय समाज की आत्मा समझता है और आर-एस-एस के एजेंडे को लागू करवाने की राजनैतिक दृढ़ता हमने समय समय पर आप में देखी हैं.

Continue reading स्मृति ईरानी को एक जे-एन-यू के छात्र की चिट्ठि: अनन्त प्रकाश नारायण →

Centre watch, Debates, Education, Empire/ Imperialism, Government, Identities, Images, Law, Left watch, Metropolis, Movements, Politics, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

Chalo Dilli! Report on 23 Feb Protest March for Rohith Vemula: Saagar Tewari

5 Comments

This is a guest post by SAAGAR TEWARI

Rohith Protest 3

rohith-vemula-protest 4
IMAGES COURTESY: INDIAN EXPRESS

The call for a protest rally by the Joint Action Committee for Social Justice, constituted in the aftermath of Hyderabad Central University research student Rohith Vemula’s suicide galvanised large number of students and activists on 23rd February. On a bright sunny day, thousands descended on the streets of central Delhi marching from Ambedkar Bhawan to Jantar Mantar. The attendance was perhaps lower and the organization less cohesive than the JNU protest rally of 18th February. However, it trumped its predecessor in terms of attracting a far-wider political cross-section of the voices openly choosing to dissent against the current ruling establishment. The protestors proudly displayed anti-Brahmanism banners, flags, badges (featuring excerpts of Rohith’s suicide note) and even a radical inversion of Modi-style masks (featuring Rohith Vemula’s smiling face) thereby signaling that the same youth-brigade which was instrumental in BJP’s rise to political power in 2014 has started turning against it.

Continue reading Chalo Dilli! Report on 23 Feb Protest March for Rohith Vemula: Saagar Tewari →

Culture, Debates, Ecology/Environment, Education, Right watch

Searching for Raja Debi – A Santhal poet tells the tale of Mahishasura

18 Comments

mahishasur-759

Mahishasur being worshipped in Purulia, Bengal 

In Parliament the other day, Minister for Education Smriti Irani emotionally prefaced her reluctant reading of an alleged JNU poster with “May my God forgive me for even reading this out”. I am mildly envious that she has a personalized god to take care of her doubtless more weighty requirements than an ordinary citizen (an anti-national at that) can claim.

Be that as it may, what she read out purported to be from a poster about an event in JNU organized by “SC, ST and minority students”, an event that celebrated Mahishasura:

“Durga Puja is the most controversial racial festival, where a fair-skinned beautiful goddess Durga is depicted brutally killing a dark-skinned native called Mahishasur. Mahishasur, a brave self-respecting leader, tricked into marriage by Aryans. They hired a sex worker called Durga, who enticed Mahishasur into marriage and killed him after nine nights of honeymooning during sleep,”

Now, she does not show us that poster. Does it really use the term “sex worker”? I have seen posters for Mahishasura Diwas on JNU campus and never noticed this phrase. However, if it has indeed been used, we could have a discussion around the gender politics of that term and of that poster. Moreover, reading (in translation) the tale of Mahishasura from Santhal poet Bajar Hembrom will also give us a sense of how and why that phrase could have been used, if it was.

Actually, the only place I have seen the words “sex worker” in conjunction with “Goddess Durga” was in an ABVP poster that accused All India Backward Students Forum (AIBSF) of describing Goddess Durga as “a sex worker, seducer and prostitute” in their account of Mahishasura Diwas. Just as I have heard the slogan Pakistan Zindabad only in the mouths of Hindutvaadis who accuse us of chanting it.

Continue reading Searching for Raja Debi – A Santhal poet tells the tale of Mahishasura →

Bad ideas, Centre watch, Debates, Education, Genders, Identities, Language, Media politics, Politics, Violence/Conflict

Confront the Rupa Subramanyas Within : A Note to a Nair-born Friend

4 Comments

Dear Kaviraj,

Just saw your post condemning The Telegraph’s representation of Smriti Irani as ‘Aunty’. I understand your indignation, though I am curious to know why few people like us stand up and protest when the people who supporte her, the sanghis, throw vile abuse at dissenters and feminists, label them prostitutes, and threaten them regularly with rape and disfigurement. My daughter was recently threatened in Delhi and warned not to behave like a ‘JNU randi’; senior women teachers from JNU were showered with similar abuse, shoved, groped, and hit at the Patiala House, and many of them have received direct and indirect threats. JNU women have been portrayed in the most despicable terms recently, before which Telegraphs’s characterisation of Irani as ‘Aunty’ is tame indeed even if unacceptable.

Continue reading Confront the Rupa Subramanyas Within : A Note to a Nair-born Friend →

Debates, Politics, Right watch

National development, order and disorder – The tactical algorithm of the BJP today: R Srivatsan

Leave a comment

Guest Post by R. SRIVATSAN

“Khamosh! Kutte!”  [Silence! Dog!]

(Unconfirmed rumors about the phone answer given by the most powerful man to Ehsan Jafri, when the latter called up the Gujarat administration for protection from the mobs during the Baroda riots in 2002.  Jafri was slaughtered and hacked limb from limb soon after the protection he sought was withdrawn, or rather never provided.)

algorithm:  noun, a process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations, especially by a computer.

While effort after effort was made to establish the culpability of Narendra Modi for the Gujarat riots, they all failed to produce any evidence that was acceptable in a court of law.   News records speculate that the administration, on direct orders, turned a blind eye to the rampage of the mobs.[1]

Much was made of his innocence, and after more than a decade of political exile, Modi has risen as the star of the BJP’s ruling formation since the last election.

India’s national development now is touted as set to occur at a blistering pace crossing 7% in the coming years.  This is the redoubtable Gujarat model where industrial development is paralleled by stagnant or retrogressive movement of all indicators of social development and well being.

Key to understanding the significance of this is the unpacking of the term ‘national development’ in the Modi mantra (the name being convenient shorthand for the BJP and the rising class which supports it).

What does ‘national development’ signify for the BJP and its supporters?  How should this ‘belief’ in the nation be read?

To understand this, it is important to look at the spate of responses of the right wing to recent events. Continue reading National development, order and disorder – The tactical algorithm of the BJP today: R Srivatsan →

Debates, Education, Mirror Worlds, Right watch

Reflections on India, JNU and Pakistan: Anjum Altaf

2 Comments

In a chilling analysis, ANJUM ALTAF sees a terrifying pattern unfold in India, one that Pakistanis are all too familiar with.

Below are excerpts, the entire article can be read at TheSouthAsianIdea Weblog.

Despite its very different political trajectory, India is repeating the patterns observed in Pakistan albeit with a considerable lag in time. We have already seen the injection of religion in politics and now, apropos of JNU, we are seeing manifestations of hyper-nationalism and the use of student proxies of political parties to crush dissent and intimidate opposing voices in universities and courts.

The interesting question for an outsider is why this is happening in India today. The answer points to another one of the contingent events of history. It seems that with the election of Narendra Modi a number of factors have come together in India – the rule of a party with a foundational commitment to a conservative ideology that it believes needs to be universally imposed, a visceral dislike for dissent that it deems anti-national, and the undiluted power to attempt to enforce its preferences. These elements might have existed individually or in pairs before but have never come together as they have now with the outright mandate obtained by the BJP in 2014 that relieves it of the need to placate coalition partners. Continue reading Reflections on India, JNU and Pakistan: Anjum Altaf →

Bad ideas, Debates, Education, Frontiers, Politics, Right watch

Why Caste is the Crux and Hindutva’s Fall Imminent: Prathama Banerjee

4 Comments

Guest post by PRATHAMA BANERJEE

The return of BJP to power in 2014 was the return centre-stage of the caste question. Not that caste had gone away. Far from it.But our public life had been unmistakably altered by caste radicalism in the last few decades. 1990s onwards, powerful and triumphant dalit voices – intellectual, literary and political – transformed the nature of our democracy such that questions of caste injustice and caste assertion could no longer be circumvented, passed over, as it was done in earlier decades, by both reactionaries and progressives. Nor could the dalit and the low-caste subject be any longer portrayed as mere outcast or victim. She had come into her own as an autonomous and assertive political subject, sometimes even the ruler. Christophe Jaffrelot called this India’s silent revolution, and rightly so. What we see today with the rise (and imminent fall) of Hindutva nationalism is an attempt at a counter-revolution, nothing less.

The Counter-revolution – Targeting Dalits

The signs are easy to read. Right after Modi’s win began the so-called gharvapasi campaign of the Hindutvavadis, seeking to reconvert to Hinduism those who had earlier seceded in favour of Islam and Christianity. While the issue was pitched as an issue of religion, it was clear that at the heart of the matter was caste. Continue reading Why Caste is the Crux and Hindutva’s Fall Imminent: Prathama Banerjee →

Debates, Genders, Law

The Blackhole called Bastar: Aritra Bhattacharya

1 Comment

This is a guest post by Aritra Bhattacharya

Unidentified persons attacked tribal leader Soni Sori on February 21, hours after she bid farewell to Shalini Gera and Isha Khandelwal, lawyers at the Jagdalpur Legal Aid Group and journalist Malini Subramaniam, when they hurriedly packed their belongings and left Jagdalpur. Over the last few months, they had withstood all forms of harassment and hostility from police officials and pro-police ‘civil society’ organisations in war-torn Bastar. They had been heckled, threatened with dire consequences and targeted via a sustained vilification campaign calling for their ouster from the region on grounds that they were stalling Bastar’s ‘development’.

Beginning 8 February, the pressure intensified. Police first landed at Malini’s house and then JagLag’s residence; they intimidated their landlord and domestic help, kept them in jail for hours together over several days and threatened to implicate them in false cases. Within ten days, Malini and JagLag lawyers had to leave Jagdalpur due to relentless pressure and harassment from the police.

Continue reading The Blackhole called Bastar: Aritra Bhattacharya →

Bad ideas, Centre watch, Debates, Education, Government, Identities, Images, Law, Media politics, Politics, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

A Close Look at Certain Words Allegedly Shouted Recently in JNU and Their Impact on Our National Intelligence: Soumyabrata Choudhury

2 Comments

This is a guest post by Soumyabrata Choudhury

Polonius: “What is it you read, my lord?”

Hamlet in New Delhi, 2016: “India, Pakistan, security, sovereignty, nation, anti-national…words, words, words”

According to Sigmund Freud, when we dream, and when we suffer psychotic delusions, we treat words as pictures and things. A word’s meaning, in these conditions, becomes the shape of the word and its appearance is the same as feeling its physical impact, its blow. We cannot grasp anymore that a word refers to an object or idea outside in the world or that it can be used as a metaphor or an indirect analogy and image. We cannot even receive the rhetorical communication of words intended to persuade, exhort, transgress or insult. In each of these communications intended by an addresser we already feel physically, viscerally and as a consequence, mentally under the assault of the words of the addresser as if they are blows.

So in response we don’t persuade, exhort, transgress or insult back but instead, we curse (the upper limit of lucid  discourse in this state), punch, grab the addresser  by the throat, pull a knife or gun if we have any of these articles in our possession – or we cringe, weep, hold our heads in our hands and rock to and fro. Now it is very unlikely that in a real psychotic condition, we are able to invoke a particular law or clause of law in our favor, complain to the police and come up with a fluent image of language as justification for our actions. “We had no choice but to do what we did because the other(s) insulted our Mother India”. In a real psychotic condition, it is more likely we will be the ones to be taken away. Continue reading A Close Look at Certain Words Allegedly Shouted Recently in JNU and Their Impact on Our National Intelligence: Soumyabrata Choudhury →

Culture, Debates, Education, Language, Right watch, Sex

माँ भारती के वीर सपूतों की रेप फंतासियाँ

9 Comments

पेश हैं सोशल मीडिया से दो, फ़क़त दो, बानगियाँ उस नए संस्कारी राष्ट्रवादी नायक की जो  खुद को ‘माँ भारती’ का दीवाना सपूत बताता है. उसकी दीवानगी का आलम यह है कि वह अपनी माँ की खून की प्यास बुझाने के लिए किसी भी औरत से बलात्कार करने पर उतर आने को तैयार है. यह कौन माँ है इस पर तो हम थोड़ी देर में आयेंगे, पहले ज़रा इन सपूतों की करतूतों पर नज़र डाल लें.

Continue reading माँ भारती के वीर सपूतों की रेप फंतासियाँ →

Debates, Right watch

Vilification from the apolitical: The Dreyfus Affair and the case against JNU: Joyojeet Pal

2 Comments

This is a guest post by Joyojeet Pal

In 1894, a case of espionage broke out in France. Alfred Dreyfus, a young officer was arrested in connection with a letter suggesting a transfer of sensitive documents to the German attaché in Paris. Dreyfus was arrested for the crime, his family was intimidated and he was swiftly convicted despite weak evidence. After being publicly shamed as a traitor in a court-martial, he was sent to ‘Devil’s Island’ in French Guinea, a notorious penal colony. Within a couple of years of his conviction, a movement emerged to re-examine the facts of the case. Dreyfus would be eventually re-tried and re-convicted despite overwhelming evidence in his favour.

Dreyfus was Alsatian, Jewish, and a graduate of the elite École Polytechnique, one of the most competitive institutes in the country. Alsace had been lost by France following the Franco-Prussian war, the French were bitter about this, and Alsatians were often seen as a suspicious regional minority. The case that came to be known as the “Dreyfus Affair” in time became a landmark in modern French history because of the multilayered schisms in French society that it threw open.

Continue reading Vilification from the apolitical: The Dreyfus Affair and the case against JNU: Joyojeet Pal →

Culture, Debates, Education, Identities, Images, Right watch, Scams

Come on man, be clear, what comes first—Nation, or Democracy? Bodhisattva Kar translated by Ahona Panda

2 Comments

Guest Post by Bodhisattva Kar and Ahona Panda

(Written by Bodhisattva Kar in Bengali, First published in on 18 February 2016 by the Ei Samay newspaper.Translated into English by Ahona Panda)

“To you I confess today—what you all call a patriot, I am not of that kind.” After this confession of sparkling clarity, should we not catch hold of that man as an anti-national? So what if he is dead? If the dead can be rewarded with the Bharat Ratna, why can’t we frame the dead with a few charges of sedition? For God’s sake, all you good people, how did you make a song written by this man the national anthem? The man who—without any obfuscation—speaks through the mouth of the protagonist of Char Adhyaya—“They who do not take cognizance of that which is greater than patriotism, their patriotism is like crossing on a crocodile’s back.” Where did he get the audacity to dream of something greater than patriotism? And, he did not even study at JNU. “By killing the very soul of the country, the country’s life can be resuscitated: this terrible untruth is being announced in beastly roars by nationalists around the world and it makes my heart revolt with intolerable intensity.” How can you not burn the books produced by such a treacherous son of Mother India, who said such terribly instigatory things? Why do you worship him instead? Can anyone put their hand on their hearts and say that he wasn’t a Pakistani spy, just because of the niggling detail that Pakistan did not exist at the time he was writing? Did we not shoot Dabholkar or Pansare for agonizing quite a bit less than he did? Continue reading Come on man, be clear, what comes first—Nation, or Democracy? Bodhisattva Kar translated by Ahona Panda →

Bad ideas, Capitalism, Centre watch, Debates, Everyday Life, Government, Identities, Images, Media politics, Religion, Right watch

In the Name of the ‘Nation’: Vidya K. Subramanian and C. J. Kuncheria

10 Comments

This is a guest post by VIDYA K S and C J KUNCHERIA

“Don’t you dare speak over me when I am speaking of Lance Naik Hanumanthapa! We’re proud of him and we’re ashamed of you!,” screamed Arnab Goswami at Umar Khalid, the JNU student at the centre of unfolding events at the university. Hundreds of thousands of self-proclaimed nationalists cheered at that instant, and many more did as the clip went viral over social media. The death of the soldier, one of the 869 who have been killed in the last four years by the punishing weather on Siachen, had been conveniently used to invoke a cathartic nationalism. Continue reading In the Name of the ‘Nation’: Vidya K. Subramanian and C. J. Kuncheria →

Bad ideas, Centre watch, Culture, Debates, Education, Government, Identities, Images, Law, Left watch, Media politics

Statement of Solidarity with JNU: University of Exeter (UK)

Leave a comment

We, the undersigned, stand in solidarity with the students, faculty and staff of Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India in their ongoing struggle against the anti-democratic incursions of the Indian state. We appeal to the elected Prime Minister Narendra Modi to uphold the Indian constitution, cease the repression of democratic protest across university campuses in India, and withdraw the spurious charges of ‘sedition’ against JNU Students’ Union President Kanhaiya Kumar. Continue reading Statement of Solidarity with JNU: University of Exeter (UK) →

Bad ideas, Centre watch, Debates, Education, Government, Identities, Law, Left watch, Media politics, Politics, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

Statement of Solidarity with the JNU Community, from the Students and Faculty at Princeton University

Leave a comment

 

We, the undersigned, condemn the undemocratic and unconstitutional actions of the BJP-ABVP-Delhi Police on the JNU campus. Continue reading Statement of Solidarity with the JNU Community, from the Students and Faculty at Princeton University →

Bad ideas, Centre watch, Debates, Education, Government, Identities, Images, Law, Left watch, Media politics, Movements, Politics, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

Statement in Support of Students and Faculty at JNU From Faculty and Affiliates of the American Uniersity of Beirut, Lebanon

Leave a comment

February 23, 2016

We, the undersigned faculty, students, staff, and affiliates of the American University of Beirut are highly concerned over the recent repression of free speech and undue police and legal interventions at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. Continue reading Statement in Support of Students and Faculty at JNU From Faculty and Affiliates of the American Uniersity of Beirut, Lebanon →

Bad ideas, Centre watch, Debates, Education, Government, Images, Law, Left watch, Media politics, Violence/Conflict

Statement on Behalf of Facultyand Students of O.P Jindal Global University in Solidarity With JNU

Leave a comment

 

We, the undersigned Faculty and Students from the O.P Jindal Global University (JGU) in our individual capacity, condemn the police crackdown in Jawaharlal Nehru University- Delhi(JNU) and the apathy towards JNU demonstrated by State actors through their coercive actions. Continue reading Statement on Behalf of Facultyand Students of O.P Jindal Global University in Solidarity With JNU →

Bad ideas, Centre watch, Culture, Debates, Education, Government, Law, Left watch, Media politics

Solidarity Statement from The International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of Erasmus University Rotterdam in The Hague

Leave a comment

We, the undersigned students, staff and faculty members at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of Erasmus University Rotterdam in The Hague, support the right of students and teachers everywhere to a learning environment that is critical, engaging and respectful. In light of recent events and the slander campaign against the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), we are disheartened and embarrassed that this is not the vision of the current Government of India, that they would rather create spaces of fear and control, by labelling all those that criticise their policies as anti-national and unpatriotic. Continue reading Solidarity Statement from The International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of Erasmus University Rotterdam in The Hague →