A two-day convention organised by the Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers’ Association (JNUTA) on Public Higher Education saw an impressive gathering of opposition MPs at Delhi’s Constitution Club on Friday. Sending out a strong message of solidarity with the JNU academia, members of parliament cutting across political lines, slammed the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government for stripping public higher education institutions of their autonomy and intellectual vibrancy.
They argued that if the present culture of stripping universities of their autonomy and diversity continues, soon there will be nothing to distinguish a university from a factory. “If a university is depoliticised, there is no difference between it and a factory. And that is a sign of danger for the democracy,” said the JNUTA secretary Sudhir Suthar.
The presence of a range of senior opposition leaders on the JNU platform is significant in more ways than one. The MPs’ public expression of solidarity comes at a time when the JNU academia, teachers and students have been fighting the university administration’s successive fiats issued one after another – the latest being the biometric attendance of teachers. The MPs expressed staunch support for the JNU students and teachers struggle within the university and the broader fight to preserve autonomy and vibrancy of public institutions of higher education.
The legislators present at the convention on Friday included Rajeev Gowda (Congress), Sugata Bose (Trinamool Congress), Udit Raj (National Chairperson of all-India SC/ST organisations), Manoj Jha (Rashtriya Janata Dal), D. Raja (Communist Party of India) and Mohammed Salim (Communist Party of India -Marxist) and former BJP leader Yashwant Sinha. The politicians also lent vigorous support to the JNUTA’s critique of the draft proposal for the Higher Education Commission of India (HECI) and proposed policy of graded autonomy.
The draft Higher Education Commission of India (Repeal of University Grants Commission Act) Bill, 2018 aims to replace the University Grants Commission (UGC), a statutory institution. Though the government has justified UGC’s scrapping in the name of according greater autonomy to higher educational institutions, the academic community and now a prominent section of the political class as well have argued that the move will ensure the very opposite of what the government claims it is going to achieve.
“The Bill gives tremendous power to Ministry of Human Resource Department officials. Entrusting grant giving powers to ministers is a sure way of ensuring corruption and ideological towing,” said Rajeev Gowda.
Describing the HECI Bill as a comic legislation, Yashwant Sinha urged all the parliamentarians present on the occasion to mount maximum pressure on the Modi government to stall the Bill’s tabling in the Lok Sabha. Sinha also strongly came out in support of JNU’s agitating teachers and students. “Why JNU is being singled out? Because it gives a space for dissent and we are living in a time when dissent is not allowed,” he said.
The Modi government’s recent selection of Reliance Group’s Jio institute as an Institute of Eminence also came in for criticism. “Not one central university has been recognised as an institute of eminence. But an institute which does not even exist yet has been given the tag,” said Manoj Jha.
While Mohammed Salim assured that opposition MPs will “use whatever tactics available” to prevent the Bill from being introduced, Sugato Bose encouraged the teachers to look towards the scholars of colonial times who put up a brave fight to resist Lord Curzon’s efforts to undermine university autonomy. “In some ways, what is happening today is worse than what Curzon did in 1904,” he said.
For more than two years, the JNU academia have been fighting the Sangh Parivar and the BJP’s relentless attempts to transform the university from a centre of vibrant intellectual debate to a homogenous and servile regimen. What started with the arrest of then JNU students’ union president Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya in the wake of a campus event on February 9, 2016 against Afzal Guru’s hanging, snowballed into a major confrontation with the university administration aided by the Central government.
Since then, JNU teachers and students have been fighting one administrative fiat after another. From challenging mandatory 75% attendance for MPhil, PhD students to biometric attendance for teachers, JNU’s academic community has been confronted with one daunting challenge after another.