Last two days had seen several #AssamWithJNU #JusticeForRohith protests and rallies demanding justice for Rohith Vemula and against the assault on JNU, police crackdown and arrest of JNUSU President Kanhaiya Kumar under the charges of sedition, media trial of Umar Khalid, and the undeclared emergency in the country.
Continue reading #AssamwithJNU – Thousands take to the Streets in Assam: Bonojit Hussain
We, graduate students and faculty at the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice and the broader University of British Columbia community stand in absolute and resounding support of the students, faculty, staff and allies at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). We condemn the political and legal clout being exercised by the Indian government in Kanhaiya Kumar’s arrest and subsequent reaction to protests. Not only is Kanhaiya’s arrest erroneous and suspect to begin with, the consequent unraveling of systematic hatred towards these “anti-national” scholars creates an environment where anyone perceived to be against ‘Hindu’-hence-Indian culture is at risk of personal harm meted out by the State.
It is deeply disturbing to note public debate around this on mainstream Indian media and TV news channels. The contention is that universities should not be spaces of political engagement, but of quiet scholarly repose. As students and researchers committed to the principles of transnational social justice, it is distressing to note this attempt to depoliticize the university space by dismissing students as undeserving of their spot for being actively engaged in the future of their country.
To term universities and institutions that foster alternative spaces of being and thinking ‘anti-national’ is commandeering an invective that is untrue and wholly vicious. Moreover, the violence meted out to Kanhaiya as well as journalists at Patiala Court is horrifying, especially noting Delhi police’s inaction and complicity in this, despite tight presence. It is precisely this sort of unprovoked violence by the State apparatus that is undemocratic. It is baffling to note the Delhi police’s apparent inability to track down the people who attacked Kanhaiya, while at the same time it launches a now country-wide witch hunt for another JNU student leader Umar Khalid (who allegedly organized the protest in question), based on completely false Islamophobic allegations.
We believe that universities are sites of active engagement, and using an old colonial remnant that is the sedition charge betrays intent to suppress the voice of a democracy. To hold debates and discussions is not anti-national, even more so when there is overwhelming testimony that Kanhaiya Kumar was not involved in the particular sloganeering for which he was arrested. An active and thriving student body presence is what makes JNU one of Asia’s premiere institutions. It is deeply disappointing to note the efforts by the current government to clamp down on this. It is with rising alarm that we register the chain of events that connect other established institutions like the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) and the University of Hyderabad (UoH).
We, the undersigned students, faculty, staff, and other members of the University of Illinois community are in solidarity with students, faculty and staff at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), India, against the ongoing anti-democratic actions by the Indian state. We demand an immediate end to the police action against students on campus, and withdrawal of all charges against Kanhaiya Kumar, President of the JNU Students’ Union. We unequivocally condemn the witch hunting of students, using archaic laws of sedition, who organized the cultural event questioning capital punishment and the deliberate vandalism and violence unleashed by those affiliated with Hindu Nationalist groups. We are also dismayed at the violence used by lawyers aligned with the government in their acts of vigilantism which are aimed at using the garb of patriotism to impose their ideology through violence.
We strongly believe that the charge of sedition against Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid and the other 6 students are based on spurious evidence. This arrest is an excuse for the state to root out dissenting voices on JNU campus, a move towards converting educational institutions like JNU into an arm of the authoritarian state. Attempts of a similar nature have been witnessed recently at other Indian educational institutions such as Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) and Hyderabad University. The growing threat to academic freedom and the practice of fundamental thinking and critique, posed by the current political climate is transnational, and extends beyond India to other parts of the world–it is a threat we face here in the United States, too.
Dear Student from CDS who pasted the posters criticising our collective effort to stand with JNU
Continue reading Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa! : To A Student from CDS
ALL INDIA LAWYERS UNION RAJASTHAN STATE COMMITTEE
Dated:18.2.2016
SOLIDARITY MESSAGE TO JNU
All India Lawyers Union (AILU), Rajasthan State Unit, strongly condemn the recent incident where individuals in uniform of Advocates misbehaved and assaulted Mr. Kanhaiya Kumar, the president of JNU Students Union, JNU faculties, Media persons on 15.2.2016 when Mr. Kanhaiya Kumar was produced in court before the magistrate is very serious issue and it became vigorous when the incident was repeated after two days, on 17.2.2016 despite of the actions given byHon’ble Supreme Court.
Further the AILU is of the view that the Jawahar Lal Nehru University is one of the institutions in the world where healthy atmosphere is developed over a time to discuss over the national and international issues. The students as well as the faculty members thereof is of the caliber to suggest a visionary and logical culmination, which not only important for individual but also for the nation and humanity as whole. Furthermore, University is a place where new ideas are developed, questions are asked and policies are praised or criticized. If any unwarranted incident is happened in the campus of the university, certainly an action has to be initiated against the responsible individual and for such action the university administration is having sufficient measures to act upon and no police action inside the campus was required at all. If the university authorities failed to take action or has shown its inability to restrict such activity, only then the police force may be used.
As such the police action in the university campus was absolutely unwarranted, unjustified and abuse of power by the state machinery.
Arrest of Mr. Kanhaiya Kumar and other students and treating them like hardcore criminals/terrorists, in the name of sedation without any substantial evidence, is not expected in a civilized society. The crime of sedation was inserted in IPC by the British rule in order to supress anyone who used to speak against the colonial rule. This term ‘sedation’ is obsolete and has no place in a democratic system like ours, especially in the educational institutions, having international reputation. Framing students in the name of sedation is clearly an attack on the fundamental rights, that is, of speech and expression.
Intentional avoidance of the Hon’ble Supreme Court instructions is apparently an act of contempt of court for which stern action has to be taken. AILU strongly suggests to take following actions against the responsible :
(i) Criminal case has to be registered against the advocates or the persons in the advocates’ uniform indulged in assaulting within the court premises;
(ii) Separate proceeding of criminal contempt is to be started against the persons involved in assaulting despite instructions of Supreme Court;
(iii) The police personals deployed at the court campus, in front of whom the act of assault was occurred has to be suspended henceforth and inquiry has to be initiated against them;
(iv) Mr. Om Prakash Sharma, the sitting MLA, who was apparently involved in the assaulting and to instigate others to involve in assaulting, his membership of Legislative Assembly is to be seized, proceeding of criminal contempt is to be initiated against him;
(v) The courts are the place where people come with the deep faith to get justice but such type of incidents not only deprive the people to avail justice but also diminish the belief in rule of law, and therefore, stern action has to be initiated against each and every responsible person whomsoever he is;
(vi) Code of conduct for advocates has to be reviewed and it may be inserted that any advocate, who involves in such incidents occured on 15.2.2016 and 17.02.2016, shall be restricted to appear in court as well as seize their auth of advocacy;
(vii) The magistrate, before whom the repeated disruption of court proceeding was occurred but no action against the responsible advocates/persons was taken, no FIR was lodged, stern action is required to be initiated against him.
The AILU condemn both the incidents, i.e. abuse of power by the police administration in the JNU campus and omission to prevent the assault on the students faculties and media persons in the court room /campus of Patiala House court. Our organization also demands for immediate release of Kanhaiya Kumar, president of JNUSU, so that normalcy can be restored.
(Dr. Vikram Singh Nain)
General Sectretary
General Secretary: Dr. Vikram Singh Nain Advocate Mobile No: +91 9414069959 Office: 0141-2810959 E-mail: nain_vs@yahoo.co.in
President: Sanjay Tyagi Advocate Mobile No.+91 9414048493 +91 9314013492
8, Nagaur Nagar, Nr. Kisaan Dharam Kanta Gopalpura Bye-pass Road, Jaipur-302019
We, activists and academics in the Pennsylvania region, strongly condemn the attack on academic freedom at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. The arrest of Kanhaiya Kumar, the President of the JNU Student’s Union, on charges of sedition has brought to light the intervention of the Union Government in the internal matters of the university. The repeated interference by police personnel at the behest of Vice Chancellors on university campuses is a draconian move. The charges against students were brought after an event organized by a section of students on campus premises to discuss the judicial execution of Afzal Guru. The JNU Students’ Union was subsequently held responsible for the “anti-national” slogans that were chanted by a group of students. We condemn these trumped-up and unconstitutional charges and stand in solidarity with the efforts to repeal capital punishment in India.
The events unfolding at JNU reveal disturbing similarities with instances of government repression on other campuses. We remember, with distress, the actions of the University of Hyderabad (UoH) administration in cahoots with the Central Government, actions that led to the death of a promising Ambedkarite student-activist, Rohith Vemula. The protests that arose indicted the discriminatory atmosphere prevailing in our universities as tantamount to the denial of the fundamental right to education to socially marginalized groups. Further, the murder of social thinkers like Govind Pansare and M.M. Kalburgi by hyper-nationalist elements under the tacit encouragement of the policies of the Central Government has shocked all advocates of free speech in India.
The charges of sedition against students participating in democratic discussion of public events is highly objectionable. The stifling of voices through intimidation and muscle power does not bode well for educational institutions.
Debate and dissent are integral parts of a strong democracy. Universities are critical public spaces that support these democratic practices to realize the values of social justice enshrined in the ideals of the constitution. International campuses like JNU, FTII and UoH bring together diverse group of students in the spirit of self-reflexive and deep intellectual engagement to ask fundamental questions of their social realities. An attack on these institutions is an attack on this precious pedagogical space. Student movements in India in alliance with other social movements in the country have historically been a resilient and sensitive force. The BJP government’s efforts to undermine them is nothing but an assault on Indian democracy. The government has failed to protect the rights of student bodies, and the highhandedness of the police highlights the insecurities of the present government.
In the United States during a presidential election year, we watch increasingly bigoted views against blacks, Muslims, and immigrants gaining ground. These events cannot be seen in isolation and we stand at the intersection of socio-political movements in the US and South Asia.
We stand in solidarity with students and faculty of JNU and demand the immediate release of the detained students. We appeal to all advocates for academic freedom in India and abroad to stand united against this state atrocity.
This is a statement issued by the undersigned, scholars of Departments of Humanities and Social Sciences of IITs across the country.
We, the undersigned, scholars of Departments of Humanities and Social Sciences of IITs across the country, condemn the police action in JNU and the arrest of the JNUSU President Kanhaiya Kumar on the charge of sedition. We also denounce the repeated acts of violence unleashed by some lawyers and others at the Patiala House Court against faculty, students and the media, as well as police inaction regarding the same.
In addition, we appeal for media and public trials to cease and for civil society to instead focus on debating issues in an amicable and reasonable manner, without slandering JNU or questioning the academic integrity or patriotic fervour of JNU and its supporters. We criticise the general atmosphere of fear and intimidation that is being created to target the entire university. Given the fast polarizing political atmosphere in the country, we appeal to the media organisations to display greater responsibility and conduct television debates in such a manner that no prejudicial public opinion is created while there is an ongoing enquiry into the entire episode by the authorities concerned. Resorting to jingoism and sensationalism may cause avoidable hazards. Continue reading Solidarity Statement for JNU by IIT Scholars
Continue reading A message of Solidarity and a Statutory Warning: Pankaj Mishra
At the JNU rally in Delhi yesterday, I caught up with JNU alumni and historians, Rana Behal and Mukul Mangalik and asked them about their experiences as students at JNU in the 1970s (Behal) and 1980s (Mangalik) and what brought them to Mandi House on a damp, but pleasant, thursday afternoon.
“Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are...”-
Bertholt Brecht
This afternoon saw an amazing, uplifting show of peaceful, joyful strength by students, young people, teachers, friends in Delhi, in support of JNU, in memory of Rohith Vemula, in solidarity with Kanhaiya, Umar and all the students in JNU who are being so stellar in their principled opposition to this evil, venal Modi regime. Reports of massive protests are coming in from Kolkata, Russia to and elsewhere. Something is changing in the air.
It was a perfect spring afternoon, overcast like our times, but breezy like our morale. There must have been at least 15,000 people on the march today. We met old and long lost friends and made new ones.
The gathering was totally peaceful. Young women and men, student profits from JNU in the eighties, grey haired, felt young again as their student held aloft flowers, flags, signs and homemade banners. Everyone looked their best, as if they had come to a massive street party.
It was so infectious, the mood this afternoon, such a contrast to the vile bad temper of the men who attacked Kanhaiya and his supporters two days in a row at the Patiala House Courts two days in a row that the difference between two entirely different visions of politics was palpable on your skin. The contrast sent a clear message to all our senses.
The RSS-ABVP-BJP brand of politics is diseased. It’s on its last legs and that is why it is so desperate. It cannot perform, it has no ideas, it is morally and culturally bankrupt.
Universities are in crisis and all that the bad TV actress who makes a joke of her ministry (HRS) every day can think of today while thousands March against her and her boss is about sticking giant flagpoles into the ground and stitching gigantic silk shrouds for her government and her party.
Modi, Rajnath and Manusmriti Irani should quake in fear. Their time is up.
Very proud of JNU students and the people of Delhi today.
#StandwithJNU #StandwithKanhaiya
#StandwithUmar
#Standwithallstudents
#NowitchHuntofStudents
As the people of Delhi march, sing, run and dance to freedom’s call, as they cock a snook at the shackles of nationalism, casteism and authoritarian stupidity, a gift of love from afar. Look at them standing in the free air! Look at them standing around a piece of earth unbound from the myopia of nationalism!
The memorial the 1964 Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley, like the thing it celebrates, is both invisible and embattled. The monument appears to be a circle of concrete six feet in diameter, in the middle of the famed Sproul Plaza where thousands of students gathered to demand the right to free speech and academic freedom on one of America’s most prominent and celebrated public university campuses. But that monument is so much more than what can be seen. The concrete circle, bearing the inscription “This soil and the air space extending above it shall not be a part of any nation and shall not be subject to any entity’s jurisdiction,” encompasses a 6-inch wide indentation into the ground that reaches into the soil below and 60,000 feet upwards into the sky, to the limits of American airspace. That is, in fact, the monument to free speech at Berkeley: 60,000 feet and 6-inches of invisible insistence that to speak freely is not and cannot be a right granted by any sovereign, mandated by any state. The width of the depression in the ground is as large as a person’s two feet. The ground on which they stand. From which they speak. This is the lasting monument to free speech at Berkeley. From a space as wide as our stance, reaching in an unseeable column of air to the limits of the stratosphere. A monument of air that can never, like free speech itself, be contained, torn down, or granted by another. It lies, unassuming, built as it is out of the immateriality of inalienable rights, in the middle of a campus that grapples daily with the legacy of that now 50 year old fight for the right to claim the space of the university as one of protest, of politics, of resistance.
But Berkeley, we mustn’t forget, exists on occupied territory. Its celebrated monument digs into soil that was taken, without recompense or acknowledgement, from the Ohlone people who were stripped of their lands, their language, their culture, and their lives in what America today celebrates as its great westward expansion. Thus, the monument to free speech at the University of California, Berkeley, roots itself into a soil it claims belongs to no nation and also reifies centuries of the genocide of indigenous people and of settler colonialism. This too is the legacy of the Free Speech Movement. Of the student-led activism that created Ethnic Studies programs across California and the rest of the United States. To stand in the 6-inch wide memorial is to stand in land that is occupied and to nonetheless believe that no occupation, no nation, no state, mandates our ability and our right to speak, to protest, to imagine otherwise the world in which we live.
From Berkeley to JNU. With love and solidarity.
Poulomi Saha
University of California, Berkeley
Guest Post by Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society
Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS) expresses its solidarity with the striking students and teachers of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. We have watched with a sense of horror and dismay, the violent criminalizing of student democracy and dissent, not just at Jawaharlal Nehru University but across Indian campuses in the recent past. Having long and intimate knowledge of violent repression and legalized impunity that Indian state is capable of, especially against those it considers ‘anti-national’ we are not surprised by these events, but have a special empathy with all who suffer its horrors. We demand the release of all student dissenters and political prisoners in the custody of the Indian state, and an end to acts of policing and surveillance on campuses, and targeting of students on the basis of political beliefs and speech.
The Kashmiri students in different colleges and universities in India, who have always faced discrimination and intimidation time to time, are now feeling the extreme regressive and oppressive means used by right wing groups and the government. After being hounded, Kashmiri students have begun leaving Delhi. There are several places where the landlords, in whose properties Kashmiri students were renting flats, have asked the students to vacate. These experiences of Kashmiri students are part of the larger reality faced by Kashmiri youth in Jammu and Kashmir and in India. The voices of dissent in Jammu and Kashmir have been dealt with administrative detentions under Public Safety Act, illegal detentions, torture, surveillance and killings by armed forces including the most recent one of Asif and Shaista at Pulwama on 14th of February.
We also view with alarm, the reports about the cynical use of Kashmiri students studying in Delhi as hostages in the politically illegitimate process of government formation in Srinagar.
We are dismayed that the public narrative about the recent events has often descended into disputes over Indian ‘patriotism’ and the shrill condemnation of a few ‘fringe’ ‘radical’ ‘traitors’ for ‘irresponsible’ slogans. These sentiments are neither mere slogans nor represent the ‘fringe’ in Kashmir, the very place they were made in reference to. As Kashmiris, we believe that the right to self-determination is inseparable from the right to political association, dissent and free expression, and these rights cannot be selectively asserted or upheld. In the competitive public proclamations of nationalistic credentials, what has been lost is that courageous act of defiant solidarity with the Kashmiri people’s struggle for justice and self-determination, that lies at the heart of these debates. Despite the disavowals and the state repression, the solidarity with the political rights of the Kashmiris is growing and spreading, as events in Jadavpur University demonstrate. We acknowledge the emerging spaces in Indian civil society to converse on the question of Kashmir, beyond nationalist framings. We hold out hope for future alliances with students, groups and individuals willing to engage in honest conversations, in which they alone do not determine the boundaries of what can or cannot be said, thought or felt.
Spokesperson
JKCCS
After the arrest of JNUSU President Kanhaiya Kumar on 12 February and the entry of the police into JNU Campus, the situation has worsened for our students over the last few days. Sections of the mainstream and social media have carried unsubstantiated rumours targeting students, and organised groups have been making threats against them and indulging in hate speech in order to intimidate. The viciousness of this section of the media and amounts to a public trial and the frightening abuses being hurled at them make us feel deeply concerned for their personal safety and possibilities of their obtaining justice.
We strongly condemn these acts that create an environment of extreme prejudice and potential violence. We demand that the campus be allowed to return to normalcy at the soonest, so that students can return to their regular academic life in an atmosphere of trust and safety. The slander campaign against the University based on unsubstantiated claims not only tarnishes JNU’s image as one of best regarded institutions of higher education in the country, it also destroys JNU’s peaceful academic life. We are deeply concerned about the students’ future, which is being affected by this malicious campaign against JNU.
We the teachers of JNU wish that the Indian people should see through this orchestrated design to transform JNU into a space which will be unable to encourage or sustain critical thinking, so vital to the functioning of our democracy and our nation. It will also endanger the futures of thousands of students who are uncertain about the consequences that such a sustained campaign will have on their futures. We call upon the broadest possible sections of the Indian people to preserve the character of this much cherished national institution.
C.P. Chandrasekhar
G. Arunima
Ayesha Kidwai
Udaya Kumar
Pratiksha Baxi
Chirashree Dasgupta
Saradindu Bhaduri
Rajat Datta
Vinay Kumar Ambedkar
Ranjani Mazumdar
Jayati Ghosh
Navaneetha Mokkil
Rohith Azad
Ameet Parameswaran
Joy Pachuau
Yashadatta Alone
Rajarshi Dasgupta
Mohan Rao
Vikas Bajpai
Sujatha V
Parul Mukherjee
Ramila Bisht
Surinder Jodhka
Happymon Jacob
Supriya Varma
Mallarika Sinha Roy
Parnal Chirmuley
Nivedita Menon
Hemant Adlakha
Lata Singh
Urmimala Sarkar
Rajib Dasgupta
Rama Baru
Prachin Ghodajkar
Vikas Rawal
Partho Datta
Papia Sengupta
Ira Bhaskar
Sandesha Rayipa-Garbiyal
Veena Hariharan
Pradipta Bandyopadhyay
Biswajit Dhar
Neera Kongari
Geetha Nambissan
Brahma Prakash
Brinda Bose
Maitrayee Chaudhuri
Rashmi Barua
Guest Post by Democratic Students’ Alliance, Pakistan
17th February, 2016
Dear Student friends of JNU, Delhi
The issue of academic freedom is one that is tied to the essence of education itself: to think, to question, to speak and probe, to understand, to challenge and to learn.
The strangulation of political and academic freedoms is a dark hallmark of despotic and authoritarian societies and governments which aim to silence and subjugate. State intrusion in intellectual spaces is an assault on democratic rights and liberties; academic freedom must not be subordinated to state agendas. We believe that political freedoms are central to a democratic state and that their suspension leads to nothing but danger.
Guest Post by Pallavi Paul
Dear Umar,
My name is Pallavi Paul and like you I am a PhD student at JNU.
I write this letter to apologize to you. What thoughts must be crossing your mind and that of your family, friends and comrades- as bloodthirsty, jingoist goons are on a shameless head hunt for you and your friends. I apologize to you for the poverty of imagination of a state that brands you as anti-national, while continues to trample on the rights and bodies of those living within its borders from Pulwama to New Delhi to Hyderabad. I apologize to you that you find yourself in a society where to echo the feelings of thousands of Kashmiris, to think of yourself as first devoted to the idea of justice before any arbitrary construct of the nation, to be moved by suffering, to critique capital punishment – is considered an act of terrorism. In a beautiful post on Facebook your sister lovingly called you a “communist paagal”. I apologize to you that this current oppressive climate is too cramped for your magical madness. The imagination of a beautiful world which has place not only for sangh certified, brahminically privileged, self- affirming ‘Indian-ness’, but for everyone who has found themselves left outside of this fold- the landless, the stateless, those without the protections of caste, class, religion, gender or nation.
What a wonderful name you chose for the event on the 9th of February – Country Without A Post Office. After, one of Agha Shahid Ali’s most haunting works, which references a time in the 1990s when no letters were delivered to Kashmir. There was no way for people to talk to or hear one another. You chose to think about the punishment accorded to Afsal Guru, along with this history. Your efforts to create a conversation, a debate on what it means to take a human life, is today being branded as evidence of your anti-nationalism. I apologize to you for the amnesia and the fragile ego of this country, which is unable to revisit its history without a shred of doubt or criticality. Where the only way to serve the cause of the country is by mouthing its praises and letting it rot in its own status quo and not by bringing to it newer questions, possibilities and challenges.
Many television channels like Times Now, News X, Zee have been ruthless and vicious in trying to establish links between you and terrorist organizations like the Jaish- e- Mohammad. I am sorry that you are living in a country where your name makes it so easy for this connection to be made. While comrade Kanhaiya is still in Police Custody fighting the preposterous charge of sedition, even as I write this to you- he has at the very minimum the assurance that he will not be linked to an Islamist Terrorist Organization. You, dear Umar do not even have that. Even that you are a self proclaimed atheist is not guarantee against prejudiced links being made between the religion you were born into and your political beliefs. That you made a choice outside of religion and the various forms of violence that its fundamentalist interpretations throw up, has been drowned in the noise being whipped up by vigilante, self proclaimed ‘nationalists’.
Like every storm this too will pass. The arrogance of this regime will be its undoing. Today there is a report in the Hindu, where the Central Government has denied receiving any report linking you to terrorist outfits. It is being widely shared on social media with the hashtag #weareumarkhalid. We know that your social media account has been hacked , but be assured that many voices are also rising in your support. I do not know when or whether you will be able to read this letter, but I hope that whenever we meet we will be able to celebrate freedom, justice and the spirit of critique. The seasons will change and the breeze will blow more merrily.
Take care of yourself dear comrade, the struggle is on.
Lal Salaam!
Pallavi Paul is a filmmaker and a PhD candidate at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University.
Jai Bhim, Joy Guru, Lal Salaam
Two of the greatest, crazies, most beautiful minds produced by the Indian subcontinent in the Twentieth Century would have been arrested by the police and attacked by the RSS, as ‘Anti-Nationals’, perhaps rightly so, had they been alive today.After all, they never stopped being young.
One of them was tall, you know him – the big guy, with glasses, always dressed to the nines, (no itchy khadi or scratchy khaki would do for him) .
The other had long hair and a beard, and even became a contemporary artist in his old age.
The cops, or thugs-in-law of the RSS might even have said “saala JNU ka lagta hai” (looks like this ***** is from JNU).
So, here they are – Bhimrao Ambedkar (Baba Saheb), and Rabindranath Tagore.
Once again, Jai Bhim, Joy Guru. And pass the ammunition.
Continue reading Break Down the Barriers: Reading Robin T, Bhimrao and the Nation State in JNU
We, the undersigned, strongly condemn the arbitrary, unconstitutional, and anti-democratic actions of the BJP/RSS/ABVP/Delhi Police continuum at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus. We demand an immediate end to all police action on campus, a withdrawal of all frivolous charges against the President of JNU Students’ Union, Kanhaiya Kumar, and other students, as well as an end to the campaign of harassment and intimidation against students at the university. Continue reading Statement of Solidarity with Student Protests in India : Students of the University of Chicago
We at Kafila have been receiving amazing statements of solidarity with JNU and its elected students’ President Kanhaiya Kumar over the past three days. We are posting them below, along with affiliations: South Asia University (teachers and students); Grinnell College, USA, Ambedkar University Delhi Faculty Association, Democratic Teachers Network, Hyderabad, and over a hundred students from Department of English, Delhi University.
STUDENTS OF SOUTH ASIA UNIVERSITY
We, the students of South Asian University, New Delhi (comprising of students from eight SAARC nations – Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka) strongly oppose the idea that one’s nationalism be defined in terms of hatred towards another nation (for example, Indian nationalism be defined as hatred towards Pakistan, or vice versa). We cherish the common cultural and social heritage of the South Asian region, and shall not let any kind of jingoist nationalism being endorsed by any religious group, political party or state hinder our shared solidarity. However, in recent times, such groups and establishments have unleashed an attack on democratic and critical voices in our universities across the South Asian region, masked under religious conformity, state intervention or sometimes in the form of an act of terrorism.
Thus, we stand in complete solidarity with the student and faculty community of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in their collective struggle against the ongoing police intervention by slapping the baseless charges of sedition on many students, including the arrest of JNUSU President – Kanhaiya Kumar, and against the massive propaganda terming the JNU as ‘a den of anti-nationals’. We would like to reiterate that our collective nationalism stands responsible only to the interests of our people and our land, and not to the divisive forces which have had and are still trying to create boundaries between us.
STATEMENT OF SOLIDARITY WITH STUDENT PROTESTS IN INDIA, FROM STUDENTS, FACULTY, AND STAFF OF GRINNELL COLLEGE
Continue reading Statements of Solidarity For JNU From Various Quarters
This is a guest post by ADITYA SARKAR
JNU has entered an indefinite state of siege. Police have been swarming all over campus, raiding hostels, picking up students and interrogating them. The ABVP, predictably, have been directing them to the lairs of ‘anti-national elements’. When immense demonstrations of public solidarity with the accused students were organized, ABVP activists have attacked these, in one case mounting a violent physical assault on a visiting speaker. The JNU administration has gone to the extent of cutting off the power supply to the microphones used at a protest meeting. At Patiala House on Monday the 15th of February, the BJP’s MLAs and what appear to be a group of lawyers have assaulted JNU students, faculty and supporters in full view of the police, with what can only be regarded as smug impunity. More than one observer has remarked that this is the Emergency all over again.
It is clear that the arrayed forces of the central government are pitted against a campus which has long been an object of hatred for the Right. There’s no telling how matters will develop in the days and weeks to come. So it might be necessary to step back a bit and consider the sequence of events that led to the current situation.
In the past month, JNU students organized a protest meeting which raised the issue of Kashmiri rights, and drew attention – just as Rohith Vemula’s protest in Hyderabad had done – to the execution of Afzal Guru in 2013. Since the mainstream news outlets systematically censor any attempt to reopen that extremely murky case, it’s worth reminding ourselves of precisely why the execution was so controversial. The terrorist attack on Parliament in December 2001 produced a police investigation on which serious doubt was cast from the beginning. Afzal Guru’s laptop and mobile phone, key pieces of evidence, had not been sealed prior to investigation. One of the other accused in the case, a Delhi University lecturer (who was later emphatically acquitted) was viciously framed by Zee News, which used the police charge-sheet to make a documentary ‘establishing’ his guilt. The court proceedings were even more revealing. The Supreme Court admitted that there was no hard evidence to conclusively establish Afzal Guru’s involvement in criminal conspiracy. But these admissions were merely qualifications to what was perhaps the most extraordinary decision in the history of the judiciary in independent India. Afzal Guru was eventually hanged in 2013 on the basis that only this would appease ‘the collective conscience of the nation society’.
Continue reading On framing JNU for an imaginary crime: Aditya Sarkar
Guest Post by Pallavi Paul
As I comb through the deluge of responses and opinions that have been circulating on television, social media, newspapers and conversations over the arrest of JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar, there is one particular fear that sticks out repeatedly. The fear of JNU being a ‘transformative’ space. Where young and innocent minds are changed. The question that follows then is- changed into what? Even as we see ABVP students vociferously defending police action on all media platforms, the Sanskrit department continuing with classes in spite of the call for strike in support of Kanhaiya and faculty members like Hari Ram Mishra (CSS) issuing media statements against the student agitation currently underway- the simple formula that JNU transforms its students into ‘anti-national’ elements (going by the current interpretation of the term) begins to appear erroneous. In addition to having a culture of critical thinking, debate, questioning and radical left politics – JNU has also had an equally dynamic history of Hindutva and Brahaminical politics. For every protest on Afsal Guru there is a Guru Dakhshina Karyakram, for every Sitaram Yechury addressing students there is an Ashok Singhal (who visited the campus in 2002 even amidst intense protests). This fear then, if seen clearly begins to appear more and more abstract. It bases itself on a ‘sense’ of the campus- rather than its actual political fiber. Infact if one hears carefully it is the larger fear of things changing, things changing irreversibly.
Continue reading Some thoughts on love in times of hate – from a JNU student : Pallavi Paul
KAFILA - COLLECTIVE EXPLORATIONS SINCE 2006 