Guest Post by ‘We Are JNU‘
At the end of the 6th day of the Indefinite Hunger Strike by JNU Students, the ‘We Are JNU‘ Facebook Page uploaded a gallery of portraits of the 17 students on Hunger Strike, together with details of their medical conditions. We are sharing this post on Kafila in solidarity
Guest Post by Shehla Rashid
(Pictures by Biju Ibrahim)
Dear Jisha, I never knew you, nor did you know me.
You were probably a “usual” student, pursuing your studies, dreaming of a better future for yourself and your country. You were probably someone like Rohith Vemula, who dreamed of stars and skies. I learnt that you were a Law student, but I regret to tell you that the Law of this country fails us miserably.
It is because a Bhanwari Devi does not get justice that Bhagana happens. It’s because no one in Bhagana gets justice that a Delta Meghwal happens. It is because a Delta Meghwal does not get justice that a Jisha happens. And most painfully, I can predict that you may not get justice either.
This is because the Law that you studied is not the law that actually runs this country- this country runs according to a parallel law which is called Manusmriti. It is routinely quoted by judges in their judgments, but perhaps you wouldn’t have studied that in Law school. It is the law of Manusmriti that prescribes limits for women and limits for Dalits.
Guest Post by Aswathi Nair and Umar Khalid (With Photographs and Videos by K. Fayaz Ahmed, Azhar Amim, Samim Asgor Ali, Reyazul Haque and Agnitra Ghosh)
Exactly nine years back, in 2007, ten students were rusticated (again) in the month of May for their “crime” of agitating along with workers to ensure the legally mandatory minimum wages for the workers here in JNU. It was the peak of summer, the time of holidays, and the administration (like this time, like every time) thought that they could break the unity of the workers and students with crackdown timed to coincide with what was thought to be the ‘weakest’ time for mobilization on campus. The administration’s plans did not bear fruit then, they will not work now either.
We are in that strange time again. The summer of 2016 has witnessed a May Day wherein the workers in JNU not only took out their own rally, but also rallied with us students sitting on the 4th Day of their Indefinite Hunger Strike against administrative crackdown on our democratic spaces. Continue reading Workers and Students Unite on May Day in JNU: Aswathi Nair & Umar Khalid
Guest Post by Pankhuri Zaheer
“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
What does it mean to dissent in a world in which everyone claims to be a dissenter? What does it take to build a critical vantage-point, one that is not merely the easy pastime of fault-finding, when we all seem to already know what will be truly critical? Ever since the oppositional energy generated against Hindutva fascism in and through the Kiss of Love campaigns dissipated into the rival folds of the Human and the Anti-Human in Kerala, these questions have troubled me. The prospect of being sucked into one side of such a binary formation is terrifying enough to scare one away from engaging with either side; but worse is the pain that follows the realization that the unique moment of hope – the hope that the diverse groups that populate the anti-Hindutva civil society may well be able to form a bond of trust, however tentative and fragile, more than merely strategic connections – is well and truly in the past. Both sides have indulged in belligerent and damaging caricaturing of each other’s positions, as if the annihilation of the other was the very condition of the survival of the one. Continue reading ‘Radical’ Critics and KaBodyscapes
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.
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’.
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.
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.
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
Guest Post by Shehla Rashid, (Vice President, Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union)
Rise up against the proxy war on students by the Modi regime.
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
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’
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
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
[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
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
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
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
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
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
[I just got this message from a friend who teaches at UoH and has been trying to support students there. The situation sounds so serious, I asked her permission to post part of the email on Kafila]
… It has been a very crazy time for us here. However, at this point, in my personal opinion the highest priority is to remove the blockade of entry into the campus. Let me document for you what is still happening in the campus.
1. Parents of students arrested and sister of Thathagata, the arrested faculty member are also not being allowed into campus.
2. Bhim Rao who is the currently acting lawyer of the Velivada students was also not allowed into the campus yesterday. Two of us faculty went and fought with the security officer and told him to give in writing that following the orders of the registrar, he is refusing entry of the lawyer into the campus. Then, he talked to the Registrar, went and got approval and allowed the lawyer in.
3. Rohith’s mother has attempted entry into the campus alone and with the help of civil society multiple times and has been refused entry always. On March 26th morning she was coming to the univ. and fell ill due to her high BP and her right hand going numb. She needed immediate medical attention. When a faculty member attempted to bring her into the campus so she can be looked at by the doctors in the health centre, she was not allowed. Then, doctors went out of the main gate and measured her vital parameters and got her shifted to a hospital. She was under observation for 24hrs.
4. There is still police patrolling on campus.
5. We hear now that new names have been added to an existing FIR in which students are named but not yet arrested.
So, the harassment continues. Students are standing strong despite the extreme intimidation by the administration.
I am sorry to say this and I may be accused of overstating it. However, I feel we are in Chattisgarh when I see the mainstream newspapers. We are in a war without witnesses too, it seems. No reporter is even attempting entry into the campus. There is no media outrage at what is happening on campus. There are no opinion pieces on what is happening on campus from any of the intelligentia of this country in the newspapers. I remember seeing a piece every day about JNU and we were with them. But, we now feel utterly abandoned by all. Is there no way to pressure at least the print media to cover what is happening? Maybe we do not know how to be publicity savvy?! We are stretched so thin trying to protect students – whenever there is any demo by students and so on, at least two of us faculty are around to be at least a witness if not to stop any attacks.
Appreciate any help/advice from you people on this. But, our appeal is that civil society with political parties HAS TO BREAK THE BLOCKADE OF ENTRY. The Registrar’s order states: political parties, politicians, external student organisations and media ONLY. How come lawyers are not being allowed inside? How come parents and families of affected students and faculty are not being allowed inside? What is happening in this country?
Continue reading Break the Blockade: A Message from a Faculty Member at UoH
Continue reading Solidarity Statement from Concerned EFLU Alumni Against State Crackdown in UoH
Guest Post by Anirban Bhattacharya & Umar Khalid
“We dissent, therefore we are”
The times we are living in are audacious. As the brahmanical Hindutva fascist forces in collaboration with big corporates are attempting to browbeat (or even just beat) us into silence, what better time than today to be audacious, to show our audacity. And that is precisely what Rohith Vemula did, both in his life as well as in his death. He dared to dissent against the brahmanical and communal structures of discrimination and oppression. He posed a graver “national security threat” because he was not just speaking up against the oppression against the Dalits, but also tried to build solidarities with other oppressed communities – the Muslims and other minorities.
Of course, this invited the wrath of the powers that be – of Manu-Smriti Irani, of Bandaru Dattatreya, of the puppet VC Appa Rao and the puppeteer – the RSS. This earned him the epithet of “anti-national” as he was murdered institutionally by the communal-casteist apparatus of the state. The motive of the state was to “teach him a lesson” and “teach a lesson” to all those voices who dared to be audacious. But in vain. Rohith’s murder sparked a fire that spread across the country – across universities – demanding justice for Rohith. The need was felt by the RSS/BJP to “teach a lesson” yet again. In JNU the attack came in the form of the facile “national/anti-national” debate. When this was thwarted, in HCU it came in the form of the re-installation of the puppet VC Appa Rao.
This, of course, was an insult to the cause of justice for Rohith. It was an affront to the very idea of social justice. And it was a direct challenge to all democratic voices in the country. This outrage, this indignation could not have been taken lying low. The students in HCU yet again showed their audacity as they rose in rage against the re-installation of a killer VC. And this was met with a brutal lathi-charge by the Telangana Police, a fascist witch-hunt of student activists and teachers, their arrest on bogus charges, suspension of mess-water-electricity-internet and other facilities. The university has been turned into a war-zone.
Today universities and educational institutions across the country are being turned into war-zones and prison houses. It’s a shame today that heads of institutions and VCs – whether in FTII or HCU – are being escorted into their own campuses under police protection. On the one hand the institutionalized discrimination against Dalits and other oppressed castes is either forcing students to drop-out or hang themselves thereby necessitating the incessant demand for a Rohith Act. While on the other hand, through a concerted effort the state is imposing the brahmanical Hindutva fascist agenda of the RSS in course-curriculum. On the one hand, the state is pursuing a policy of massive fund cuts, fee-hikes or privatization so as to make higher education unaffordable for a large section – particularly the oppressed caste/class. On the other hand, to achieve the same, the ruling classes have been preparing to quell all possible resistance to the above through depoliticizing campus-spaces and curbing any and every voices of dissent. Such are the diktats, the exigencies of the insatiable thirst of global capital for profit in its bid to overcome the inherent crisis. While such anti-student pro-privatization policies were set in motion by the erstwhile Congress governments with all earnest, under the present regime, further velocity and teeth has been added to the same. The tightening tentacles of fascism in the country with RSS at its helm has only meant further witch-hunt, increasing militarization, casteist targeting, and shrinking of democratic space for debate and dissent in campuses.
But, much to the irritation of those in Nagpur, the more vicious has been the assault, the more spectacular has been the resistance. From being against the bogey of Love Jihad to being for Kiss of Love, from being against Ghar Wapsi to calling the bluff on Swacch Bharat, from being against Dadri killing to exposing the farce of Make in India, from Hokkolorob to Pinjatod, from FTII to IIT-Madras, from Allahabad to Calicut, from Occupy UGC to Justice for Rohith, from Stand with JNU to Stand with HCU – there is a students’ spring today that swells across the country. We the students, today, are the opposition. And it is this strength that was exhibited in the streets of Delhi when Justice for Rohith and Stand with JNU merged into a sea of resistance.
If we look back in history, at times when the ruling classes has intensified its assault upon the people across the world, it is the students who have taken up a vital share of responsibility to speak up, to dissent. And more often than not we have seen various such youth and student movements talking to each other, drawing from each other, inspiring each other and thereby strengthening each other. The Black Panther movement influenced the Dalit Panthers. The struggle in Vietnam triggered massive anti-war demonstrations across the universities in America. The students of France 68 inspired millions of students across Europe and the world. The Cultural Revolution led by students in Maoist China inspired millions including the students during the Naxalbari movement which in turn inspired thousands across the subcontinent. Similarly it is important today that the movements whether of the Dalits, the women, the minorities, the LGBTIQ community, the workers, the peasants – should all speak to each other and gain strength from each other. At a time of ascendant fascism, it is imperative that we build solidarities forged in struggles. Because, even today if we remain divided into red, blue and green and so on, even if today we remain divided in HCU and JNU – fascism will ensure that tomorrow none survives. Maintaining our ideological differences – our colours, sharpening our tools of criticism and self-criticism, we must shun the path of sectarianism and build genuine unity of the oppressed against the combined assault of the brahmanical Hindutva fascist forces and the forces of big capital.
The attack today is relentless. So has to be the resistance. The bail orders for a few individuals in a campus can be a small battle won, but the war is far from over and there can be no respite today. We are confronting fascism today; it is a difficult fight, and no one ever said it would be easy. Let us fight for the release of the students and teachers put behind bars in Hyderabad and in the process let us intensify the struggle to oust Appa Rao, to seek justice for Rohith, to challenge the brahmanical fascist forces and their tightening noose.
Rise in Rage against the reinstallation of Appa Rao, the killer of Rohith Vemula as VC in HCU.
Condemn the brutal crackdown and arrests of students and teachers by Telangana Police.
Anirban Bhattacharya & Umar Khalid are both students of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) Delhi
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