Category Archives: Education

Culture, Education, Everyday Life, Identities, Images, Language, Mirror Worlds, Movements, Politics

Diary of a JNU Student on Hunger Strike: Pankhuri Zaheer

5 Comments

Guest Post by Pankhuri Zaheer

Water - A Gift for Hunger Strikers. Photo Courtesy, Azhar Amim
Water – A Gift for Hunger Strikers. Photo Courtesy, K. Fayaz Ahmed

“I wanted to bring you something but I didn’t know what to get you so I got you a bottle of water,” says a friend who would perhaps never identify herself as a student activist but since 9th February, like many like her, has been an integral part of the stand with JNU movement.

19 of us have decided to sit on an indefinite hunger strike till the time the farcical report of the High Level Enquiry is not rolled backed in its entirety. Today, April 30th, is the third day of our hunger strike.

Continue reading Diary of a JNU Student on Hunger Strike: Pankhuri Zaheer →

Bad ideas, Debates, Education, Everyday Life, Government, Images, Language, Law, Metropolis, Mirror Worlds, Movements, Politics

Summer of Rage: JNU Students Begin Fast Unto Death against HLEC Report

5 Comments

13083178_1763261193905640_250606241251585686_n

Spring has given way to the beginning of a turbulent summer. April, is a cruel month. Temperatures have risen, and so has the level of rage in university campuses. The JNU University Authorities (and their masters – in the Ministry of Human Resources Development, the Prime Minister’s Office and the RSS Citadels in Mahal, Nagpur and Jhandewalan, Delhi) thought that they could break the resolve of the students by enacting a series of harsh measures against them just before exams begin and the university term ends in summer vacations.

Chintu Kumari, Anirban Bhattacharya and other students give the call to protest against the HLEC and call for a Hunger Strike. Photo, Courtesy, Azhar Amim
Chintu Kumari, Anirban Bhattacharya and other students give the call to protest against the HLEC and call for a Hunger Strike. Photo, Courtesy, Azhar Amim

13055719_10154616732485016_4978357478249045500_o

This is a time, they must have thought, when students will be busy with preparations, and the rising heat will discourage the kind of mass mobilizations that the campus has seen since February. Students in JNU resolved a few hours ago to prove them wrong, and decided to fight back . A massive gathering stood its ground at the Administrative Block, aptly re-christened, ‘Freedom Square’.

Rama Naga, Gen.Sec. JNUSU, (Centre) and JNU Students Calling for Indefinite Hunger Strike on April 27, 2016. Photo, Courtesy, Azhar Amim
Rama Naga, Gen.Sec. JNUSU, (Centre) and JNU Students Calling for Indefinite Hunger Strike on April 27, 2016. Photo, Courtesy, Azhar Amim

They have decided that a batch of students will sit on indefinite hunger strike – a ‘fast unto death’ – until the JNU authorities roll back the draconian measures listed in the HLEC Report.

The 20 students who will be sitting in indefinite hunger strike at JNU.

There’s no looking back now. Whatever happens from now on wards, will be seen as a consequence of the cruel, evil mindset of the current regime, which truly treats the lives of the young as dispensable ballast. Its time to prove them wrong. This is a call that goes out to all students and teachers, and sensible individuals, not just in JNU, not just in Universities and Colleges all across India and all the territories administered by the Indian republic, but to everyone reading this post anywhere in the world, to stand by the courageous students of JNU. It is our responsibility to see that the JNU Authorities see reason and back down. If anything untoward happens to any student, the university authorities, and the regime backing them, will be clearly culpable.

Here is Umar Khalid, speaking just before commencing his Hunger Strike

Here is Chintu, former Gen. Sec. JNUSU, speaking at the Mashaal Juloos, (Torchlight Procession) just before beginning the Hunger Strike.

Listen to Kanhaiya Kumar, President of the JNUSU – restating the reasons for the continuation of the movement.

Thanks to the ‘We are JNU Media Group’ and the AISA Youtube Channel, for the videos.

Bad ideas, Culture, Debates, Education, Everyday Life, Images, Language, Metropolis, Mirror Worlds, Movements, Politics, Sex

Sanghis, Sex and University Students – What is it Really All About? Ayesha Kidwai

6 Comments

Guest Post by Ayesha Kidwai

[ The prurient fantasies contained in the ‘JNU Dossier’, produced by some right wing faculty members of JNU in or around October 2015, have been ‘outed’ by an excellent report by Ajoy Ashirwad Mahaprashasta in Wire.org. This comes exactly at the time when the JNU administration has shown its fangs by delivering a low blow by way of the measures outlined in the report of the ‘High Level Enquiry Committee’ appointed by the Vice Chancellor. An impartial examination of the HLEC document and the ‘Dossier’ in will reveal some startlingly resonant patterns. Clearly, the ‘Dossier’, which had been dismissed by the former Vice-Chanceller, Prof. Sopory, has been reincarnated at the express orders of the Nagpuri masters of the present dispensation. We are sharing below an excellent response to the ‘Dossier’ by Ayesha Kidwai, one of the professors – ‘named’ in the dossier. This is taken from Ayesha Kidwai’s status update on her Facebook Page.

For another take down of the ‘Dossier’ – see also – “Sex and sedition: What the JNU dossier tells us about the right-wing imagination” – in Scroll.in by Kavita Krishnan. Meanwhile, JNU Students have commenced on a ‘fast unto death’ in protest against the university administration’s senseless measures. Kafila]

Sanghi smut is in season again! For the authors of the Dirty Dossier, JNU nights are forever scented with musk, with couples draped on every bush, suitably fortified by free alcohol, thoughts of secession, and cash payments supplied by the Awesome Foursome. At its peak, the party can practically involve the whole university, because as per Shri Gyan Dev Ahuja’s estimates, the number of students frolicking this will be 7000 (3000 condom users X 2, plus 500 injectable walas X 2). (Assuming of course that the few hundred left over have gone to fieldwork, have exams, or are abstemious and/or abstinent in nature.)

Laugh as we may (and must) at these feverish imaginings, it’s also important to understand that the very notion of a free university challenges not only misogyny, but also the social apartheid produced by caste and exclusionary religion.

Continue reading Sanghis, Sex and University Students – What is it Really All About? Ayesha Kidwai →

Debates, Education, Everyday Life, Government, Identities, Images, Language, Metropolis, Mirror Worlds, Movements, Politics

Rise Up against the Proxy War on Students by the Modi Regime: Shehla Rashid

7 Comments

Guest Post by Shehla Rashid, (Vice President, Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union)

Rise up against the proxy war on students by the Modi regime.

Cartoon by V. Arun Kumar
Cartoon by V. Arun Kumar

JNUSU rejects the report of the enquiry committee constituted by the Vice-Chancellor to look into the 9th of February incident. JNUSU also rejects its reports and any punishment handed out by it. The JNUSU and JNUTA had repeatedly asked the administration to democratise the enquiry committee, but this was not done.  Now, when the holidays are here, the VC has made public the punishments, after one and a half months of submission of the HLEC (High Level Enquiry Committee) report. Continue reading Rise Up against the Proxy War on Students by the Modi Regime: Shehla Rashid →

Bad ideas, Education, Everyday Life, Metropolis, Mirror Worlds, Movements, Politics

To the Puppets and Puppeteers – We Students Will Fight Back: Anirban

8 Comments

Guest Post by Anirban Bhattacharya 

To the puppets and their puppeteers…

Free speech cannot come with a price tag -10,000/- or 20,000/- or even a rupee!
Dissent cannot be evicted!
Ideas cannot be made out of bounds!
Reason cannot be rusticated!

Continue reading To the Puppets and Puppeteers – We Students Will Fight Back: Anirban →

Bad ideas, Education, Empire/ Imperialism, Everyday Life, Government, Identities, Images, Language, Law, Movements, Politics

JNU High Level Committee Delivers a Low Blow – Students Unjustly Rusticated, Fined, Declared ‘Out of Bounds’

20 Comments

So, the High Level Enquiry Committee at JNU, set up under the watch of Jagadish Kumar, the recently appointed Vice Chancellor, has just delivered a low blow. A summary of its decisions (taken from the Facebook Wall of JNUSU Vice President, Shehla Rashid) meted out as the consequences of the events of February 9 and after is as follows :

Umar Khalid, rusticated for one semester + 20K fine.

Anirban, rusticated till 15 July & from 25 July, out of bounds for 5 years.

Another Kashmiri student rusticated for two semesters.

Ashutosh, former JNUSU President, removed from hostel for one year + fine.

Chintu, former JNUSU Gen Sec: 20K fine

Rama, current JNUSU Gen Sec: 20K fine

Anant, former JNUSU Vice-President: 20K fine

Aishwarya, current GSCASH representative: 20K fine.

Gargi, current JNUSU councillor: 20 K fine

Shveta Raj, current SL & CS Convener: 20 K fine

Kanhaiyya, current JNUSU President: 10K fine

Other organisers fined from 10K to 20K

Two ex students declared out of bounds from campus.

This is an administration, which, in obedience to its backers in the Ministry of Human Resource Development and the Government of India, that knows only one way of dealing with the students in its charge – and that is a replica of the vindictive path that eventually drove Rohith Vemula to his institutionally mandated death in Hyderabad University.

This is an administration that invited police to intervene in what was essentially a dispute between groups of students, at the instigation of right wing thugs. Continue reading JNU High Level Committee Delivers a Low Blow – Students Unjustly Rusticated, Fined, Declared ‘Out of Bounds’ →

Education, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

Statement of solidarity for HCU from students and faculty of University of Texas at Austin

Leave a comment
Centre watch, Culture, Debates, Education, Feminism, Genders, Government, Identities, Images, Law, Left watch, Media politics, Movements, Politics, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

Responding to the Challenges of Blue and Red – Reminiscences of a JNU-HCU Alumna: Shipra Nigam

1 Comment

This is a guest post by SHIPRA NIGAM

That the past few months have been cataclysmic is an understatement. Personal tragedies and political catastrophes have exploded within our most cherished spaces, and brought a churning in them.  What was truly transformative was the experience of both the emergence of broad solidarities against right-wing fascism, and of the reminders of multiple registers and contexts within them. These underline the need for multiple conversations to understand both our common struggles, as well as the contradictions within, and to renew a resolve for introspection through them as we move towards real ‘azaadi’.

There is of course an ongoing debate on this, and here I felt that some binaries being invoked in it are not very convincing, while others brought home stark truths that pose challenges to a patriarchal, majoritarian caste hindu ordering of society, within which we are all located at different levels of hierarchy, complicity, and engagement.

I have been part of both public universities under fire right now, and the present brings home the urgency of the dual task of defending the public university as a space for pushing the boundaries of critical thought, and confronting the very hierarchies and complicities with power that shape it. This is necessary even as processes of democratisation and affirmative action take root in public institutions . So these are some reminiscences from an alumna of both these public universities who has been wrestling with articulations and complexities which lie beyond institutional labels or binaries. Continue reading Responding to the Challenges of Blue and Red – Reminiscences of a JNU-HCU Alumna: Shipra Nigam →

Culture, Debates, Education, Empire/ Imperialism, Everyday Life, Identities, Images, Language, Mirror Worlds, Movements, Politics, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

The Difference between What They Tell Us and What We Know: Shehla Rashid

17 Comments

Guest Post by Shehla Rashid. Based on a Status Update on her Facebook Page.

They tell us that the military is meant for fighting the “terrorists”; But most of the time, it is the civilians who are killed.

They tell us that “special powers” for the army are necessary for national unity; But the army only teaches us how to hate India.

They say the University is anti-national because it wants to break India; But it’s the University that teaches us to love Indians.

Then, who is anti-national? Those who teach us how to hate India, or those who teach us how to love Indians?

Yes, we see the difference between India and Indians; India is at war with Indians throughout India.

I wish the Indian state could also see the difference between Kashmir, which it claims as its own, and Kashmiris who belong to no one; They claim to love Kashmir but hate and kill Kashmiris.

Continue reading The Difference between What They Tell Us and What We Know: Shehla Rashid →

Bad ideas, Centre watch, Education, Government, Law, Left watch, Movements, Politics, Right watch, Scams, Violence/Conflict

Statement of Solidarity with Hyderabad Central University from Columbia University, New York

1 Comment

This is a statement of March 29, 2016 from students, faculty and affiliates of Columbia University. We publish it below with apologies for the delay.

We, students, faculty and affiliates of Columbia University, strongly condemn the violation and atrocities brought upon the students and faculty of the Hyderabad Central University (HCU) on March 22, 2016. Since Professor Appa Rao Podile was on leave and under investigation for the institutional murder of Rohith Vemula, his return to the campus to resume duties as the Vice Chancellor was unacceptable. The students justifiably organized a peaceful protest in the campus that day. The institutional responses to that, by the University authorities, the Andhra and Telangana police force, Rapid Action Force personnel, the media, and the members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) on campus, were outrageous, inhuman, and fascist. The University authorities, instructed by Prof Podile, shut down the Internet connection, dining hall and drinking water facilities in retaliation to the peaceful student protest. The Andhra and Telangana police force lathi-charged students and faculty, violently beat up and severely injured them, molested and threatened to rape female students, targeted Muslims and Dalits, abused them verbally, and eventually arrested 24 students and 3 faculty. The ABVP members resorted to violence and aggressive sloganeering from the very beginning of the students’ peaceful protest and also attacked and injured them. The mainstream media has been ignoring these atrocious events at a Central university campus and has decidedly turned away from its responsibility and its accountability to the public. This is ironic, at the very least, when some of the news anchors just last month were so focused on fabricating stories of “terrorist” and “anti-national” activities at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. The media ultimately failed to demonize the students then. Now, yet again, the media is unabashedly siding with the authoritarian regime of corporate and state power; this time by ignoring the brutality of the police and the HCU authorities.

We strongly condemn

–       the fascist abuse of power by the University authorities, who decided to deprive the students of basic facilities as ‘revenge’ for the peaceful demonstration

–      the violence, the targeting and the brutality of the police force

–   the irresponsibility of the media for not reporting this on prime time and for effectively siding with the tyrannical regime in power

–       the atrocities unleashed by the casteist, capitalist, Hindu fundamentalist government and its affiliates, especially ABVP.

Continue reading Statement of Solidarity with Hyderabad Central University from Columbia University, New York →

Debates, Education, Everyday Life, Movements, Politics

Open Letter from SC/ST Faculty Forum of University of Hyderabad to VC Appa Rao About Resignation from Administrative Positions: SC/ST Faculty Forum, UoH

1 Comment

Guest Post by SC/ST Faculty Forum, University of Hyderabad

[ We have recently received a request from The SC/ST Faculty Forum of the University of Hyderabad to publish a correspondence between them and the Vice Chancellor of the University of Hyderabad, Prof. Podile Appa Rao regarding the collective decision of the SC/ST Faculty Forum members to resign from administrative positions in the university. Accordingly, we are publishing below an open letter from the SC/ST Faculty Forum to the Vice Chancellor which is a response to a letter from the VC to the Convener of the SC/ST Faculty Forum, Dr. Sudhakar Babu. This letter is, in turn, a response to the original communication from the SC/ST Faculty Forum containing the collective decision to resign from administrative posts. These letters are being published in solidarity with the SC/ST Facutly Forum and in furtherance of the spirit of transparency, and public awareness, that they seek to uphold vis-a-vis all communication with the current vice chancellor.- Kafila]

Dear Prof.Appa Rao,

Thank you for your mail. We reiterate our collective decision to resign from administrative positions  for the following reasons:

The Forum represents the collective will of the community. Its decision is not reducible to individual members of the community. By asking the forum members to individually give reasons for their resignations, you are downplaying the community’s experience of continuing caste atrocity on the campus. In fact, this mail of yours may be construed as a threat against  individual members of the community and suggestive of demoralising the SC/ST members in a way that infringes upon and restrains their right to complain against you.

The Forum traces its history as a response to the rustication of ten Dalit students on the campus in 2001. Incidentally, you were one of the main perpetrators of caste atrocities on the students at that time. Today, you are not only responsible for the suicide of Rohit Vemula on January 17th but also the police brutalities and arrest of faculties including a Dalit faculty on trumped up charges following the March 22nd unforgivable and unforgettable event.  An atmosphere of caste violence prevails on the campus —of fear, intimidation, social boycott  and the SC/ST community feels extremely insecure by your presence.

We vehemently condemn the expeditious and inappropriate manner in which you have accepted the resignation of the Controller of Examinations and the mischievous way through which you are persuading the other members of the community to hold on to their resignations. This diabolic and unbecoming style of your leadership is at once appalling and extremely damaging to the interests of the SC/ST community on the campus.

Under the circumstances, we demand that you desist from holding individual Dalit faculty responsible for the collective decision of the Forum and thereby attempting to isolate and intimidate them.

Dr.Sudhakar Babu,

Convener, SC/ST Faculty Forum

THIS IS IN RESPONSE TO A LETTER FROM THE VC To Dr. Sudhakar Babu, which is reproduced below.

Dear Dr. Sudhakar Babu,T

he Vice Chancellor office received your email conveying the decision of the SC/ST Teachers Forum that its members are not willing to work in administrative posts in the University.  Since you have conveyed this message on behalf of our colleagues, I would like to request you to convey to all those who have expressed such concern to continue in their respective office.  VC office would like to continue with their services in respective positions.

If any of our faculty colleagues from SC/ST Teachers Forum are unwilling to consider my request for their continuation in administrative office, please advise individual faculty members to tender resignation giving reason(s) which will be considered by the University accordingly.   It may not be appropriate for the administration to act on the request from the convener of a forum about continuation of individual members of the forum in an administrative job.

You may recall that we have all worked together for a long time.  I would like to continue with the same relationship with everybody in the University.

With best wishes,

Prof. Appa Rao Podile FASc, FNASc, FNAAS,

Vice Chancellor

Tata Innovation Fellow (DBT)

University of Hyderabad

Hyderabad – 500 046, Telangana, India

Bad ideas, Centre watch, Culture, Debates, Education, Feminism, Government, Identities, Images, Law, Left watch, Media politics, Movements, Politics, Right watch

Fifty Shades of Grey – Without the Thrills

12 Comments

[This is a response to Shourajenda Nath Mukherjee’s open letter on Kafila by Prof Makarand Paranjape]

Mr. Shourjendra Nath Mukherjee’s “Open Letter” of April 5, 2016 makes only one substantive point, concerning the agency of students, which needs attention. The rest of it, as the Dormouse said to Alice, is “much of a muchness” – confusion, rigmarole, and thumb-twiddling over precious little, which scarcely need be dignified by serious confutation. Continue reading Fifty Shades of Grey – Without the Thrills →

Education, Government, Identities, Politics, Right watch

NIT and the Never Ending Story of Kashmir: Jagjit Singh

4 Comments

Guest post by JAGJIT SINGH

[The incidents in NIT Srinagar follow those in a number of universities and institutions of higher education and at one level, reflect a similar pattern. Yet, at another level, they – and the forces active behind them – play on a very different template of politics to achieve the same result. The story is similar and yet, radically different. The key dramatis personae are, understandably, the same. How do we make sense of what is happening in NIT Srinagar? Today’s Indian Express story by Nirupama Subramanian gives a sense of one part of the backdrop – life in NIT Srinagar before the incidents. The piece below gives us another sense of the larger history.]

NIT Srinagar non-Kashmiri students demonstrate
NIT Srinagar non-Kashmiri students demonstrate, image courtesy The Hindu

I remember when I was kid and was trying to make sense of a sport which looked very dull and boring but generated passions I had never seen in my hometown. Every time the game ends, the streets would be flooded by countless people with music and firecrackers and slogans in the background. Sometimes we could see fireworks even from our balcony, and some other times we would be locked inside our homes. Only thing we knew was ‘situation is tensed outside’. The game was Cricket and my hometown was Jammu. Jammu has always been RSS’s stronghold, and there are two Muslim-majority areas in Old City, Jammu. The whole tension surrounded these two areas only. Even that time slogan shouting was the test of your love for your country. The more violent and high-pitched your slogan is the more cheers you receive from the crowd. Continue reading NIT and the Never Ending Story of Kashmir: Jagjit Singh →

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

An Open Letter to Prof Makarand Paranjape

15 Comments

Guest post by SHOURJENDRA NATH MUKHERJEE

Please note that this response was first sent to Swarajya Mag, where Prof Paranjpe’s Open letter appeared, but was not published. It was then sent to Kafila.

Dear Prof Paranjape

I am Shourjendra, an MPhil research scholar in the Department of History, DU. I write this letter as a rejoinder to your open letter in response to Maitreyee Shukla. Your open letter was not addressed to me and therefore you can feel free to not reply to my letter.

You sir, seem to reflect a lot of the opinions expressed very strongly by a section of the urban middle classes. Granted, these views are by their very nature not ‘fascist’ but nonetheless they help perpetuate and legitimate the regime in power. You are also one of the most eminent academicians to have sought to engage in these raging debates in the public sphere, and I very strongly appreciate you for this. Your open letter is one such statement and I would like to take this up as an opportunity to critically engage with some of the issues that you have raised. (Since, your statements are mostly uncritical appreciation and endorsement of these ideas, I would regard your statements as statements made by an academician who has paused to think academically.) Continue reading An Open Letter to Prof Makarand Paranjape →

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

Apropos Fetishizing Higher Education and University Politics

6 Comments

This is a guest post by PRATIK ALI.

[This article summarizes quite well the very many criticisms that have been raised from broadly the left of the political spectrum, about the Standwithjnu campaign. We do hope it generates a lively debate that will enlarge our horizons and strengthen the struggle against fascism]

Whether it has been the scrapping or stagnancy of the Non-NET Fellowship, the increased interference of the State in student activity in universities of higher-education, or merely the (routine) introduction of symbols of the ruling party in cultural institutions (of which universities are a part), a dangerous, and even strange trend is seen emerging in the student response: asserting their isolation from other sections of society as valuable uniqueness. Continue reading Apropos Fetishizing Higher Education and University Politics →

Debates, Education, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

Who will take responsibility if the threat to “storm JNU” and kill students is carried out?

4 Comments
One Amit Jani has received considerable media attention with his threats to JNU students, promising a ‘shoot-out’ if JNUSU President Kanhaiya Kumar and Umar Khalid, do not meet the ‘deadline’ he has given for them to leave campus.
Almost immediately as this came to the attention of the JNU community, students and teachers took steps to bring this threat to the attention of Facebook, where the threat was initially posted; of Delhi Police and of JNU Administration.
These steps are listed below, so that later, nobody should be able to say We Did Not Know. The media, which covers every petty letter written to the police by ABVP with great alacrity, has not seen fit to recognize the steps being taken by an increasingly anxious JNU community over clear and specific threats to the life of our students, and indeed to everyone on JNU campus.
1. JNUSU wrote to the VC, bringing this time-bound threat to his attention. JNUSU also filed a complaint at the Vasant Kunj North Police Station to take appropriate action against those indulging in intimidation and threat to students. Students also met the SHO personally and requested him to take the issue seriously and file an FIR. A Complaint has also been sent to Commissioner of Police by JNUSU, with a copy of the complaint to LG and CM.
There has been no response from the police so far.
Bad ideas, Centre watch, Education, Government, Identities, Left watch, Movements, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

University of Minnesota Stands in Solidarity with the University of Hyderabad

2 Comments

We, the undersigned at the University of Minnesota, strongly condemn the current onslaught on protesting students and faculty at the University of Hyderabad. Following the tragic death of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula earlier this year, the UoH community has been questioning the role of the university administration in the circumstances leading to his suicide. Days before he took his life, five Dalit scholars including Vemula were expelled by the university administration. At the behest of the ruling government, they were punished for screening a film which documents the frightening spread of Hindu fundamentalism in India today. In the wake of their expulsion and then Vemula’s suicide, the UoH community spearheaded a nation-wide movement which draws attention to the horrific normalization of caste discrimination and the growing criminalization of dissent in universities in India. Instead of responding to the concerns raised by the movement, the university administration recently reinstated P Appa Rao to the office of the Vice Chancellor. As P Appa Rao has been charged for abetting Vemula’s suicide, this amounts to an utter mockery of the movement and also threatens the integrity of the on-going judicial enquiry about his death. This has rightfully angered the UoH community which registered its protest by peacefully occupying the office of the Vice Chancellor on 22 March 2016.

Continue reading University of Minnesota Stands in Solidarity with the University of Hyderabad →

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

Stand With UoH: Statement by Concerned Members of the IIT Bombay Community

2 Comments

 

 

We, the undersigned members of IIT Bombay community, strongly condemn the police repression that has been unleashed on students and faculty of University of Hyderabad who seek justice for Rohith Vemula, with the active connivance of the University administration. The testimonies of the events have been singularly disturbing. We cannot let educational institutions become play fields of state repression. Continue reading Stand With UoH: Statement by Concerned Members of the IIT Bombay Community →

Bad ideas, Debates, Education, Government

Medico Friend Circle Welcomes Report of Parliamentary Standing Committee to Clean up Medical Education Regulation

1 Comment

A statement from MEDICO FRIENDS CIRCLE

Mfc (Medico Friend Circle) wholeheartedly welcomes the 92nd Parliamentary Committee Report on the Functioning of the Medical Council of India (MCI) that was presented to the Rajya Sabha on March 8, 2016.

The Report is comprehensive, wide ranging and has come out with sound recommendations. Implementing these recommendations is in the best interests of the health of the people of India and the medical profession.

The MCI was expected to be the regulator with everything related to medical education but has ended up being the single major factor in the country responsible for the commoditization and corruption of medical education. Successive occupants of top posts at the MCI have perfected the MCI as an ATM. Every requirement of approval of a private (and public) medical college had a price and still does. We agree with the Report that unless there is a whole sale exit of vested interests that have clogged the MCI, nothing can change and it will be ‘business’ as usual. Continue reading Medico Friend Circle Welcomes Report of Parliamentary Standing Committee to Clean up Medical Education Regulation →

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

University of Hyderabad Alumni Teachers Protest the Brutal Police Acts on Campus

1 Comment

 

We are deeply pained to see the heinous attack by the state police and paramilitary force on students who are protesting the activities of Appa Rao Podile, the controversial Vice Chancellor of Hyderabad University. As the alumni of one of India’s premier educational institutions, presently teaching in various universities in India, and abroad, we strongly feel that such high handed actions and state sponsored police violence on students – both young men and women – must be condemned. This is crucial in an age of extensive authoritarian silencing. In this open communication with the higher ups in UoH, we would like to reiterate the fact that your dealing with the students has been miscalculated and has provided no reassurance at all. Blinded by a casteist mindset and a resurgent confidence in the wake of a political regime change, the university has failed miserably to instill much needed assurance in the students whose protests have been intensified since the forced suicide of Rohith Vemula.  To our utter dismay, we realise that the failed university administration has begun to work hand in glove with the police in order to silence students’ demands, which should have merited a careful hearing and meaningful resolution. However, the VC and his entourage in the university feel that such sustained efforts have no value in a democracy. The shameful activities of the Police-raj, and the subsequent choreographies of complacency at the university clearly display an abysmal misreading of subaltern issues and concerns about the every day survival of students from marginalised backgrounds. Continue reading University of Hyderabad Alumni Teachers Protest the Brutal Police Acts on Campus →

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

Let us not be little Arnolds in these times : Sudha K F

1 Comment

This is a guest post by SUDHA K F

“His right to march where he likes, meet where he likes, enter where he likes, hoot where he likes, threaten who he likes, smash as he likes. All this I think tends to anarchy. (Mathew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy, 1866)

….It certainly does. Nothing is stranger, in Arnold’s often scrupulous, often self-consciously charming and delicate prose, than the escalation, the coarseness of these Hyde Park verbs…It is a point of view. Certainly it contrives to forget the start of the disorder: the defeat of the reform legislation, the locking of the gates against the reform meeting (for which, as it happens, there were no legal grounds). As so often, it picks up the story at a convenient point: at the point of response, sometimes violent, to repression; not at the repression itself. Even so, it is a point of view and a familiar one.”

 

 

The above excerpt is from an essay by the British Marxist thinker Raymond Williams “One Hundred Years of Culture and Anarchy”, which is part of his path-breaking collection of essays Culture and Materialism. The first paragraph is a quotation that Williams makes from Mathew Arnold’s essay Culture and Anarchy written in the 1860s in response to the workers’ demonstration at Hyde Park asking for voting rights for workers. Arnold’s argument and language is all too familiar to us now, as that is the language available to us through mainstream media and in general the middle class public sphere, while talking about the brutal deployment of force and violence on the students at the University of Hyderabad. Many seem to be in the business of picking up stories at convenient points. Continue reading Let us not be little Arnolds in these times : Sudha K F →