JNU politics

JNU Asks Centres to Install CCTV Cameras After Walls Defaced With Anti-Brahmin Slogans

While the ABVP held Leftist student groups responsible for the incident, the JNU Students’ Union hinted that “right-wing forces” were to blame.

New Delhi: A day after some walls on the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus were defaced with anti-Brahmin slogans, the university has asked all its centres to install CCTV cameras and instructed students and staff members to remain vigilant to prevent such incidents in future.

According to the news agency PTI, the walls of the building in the School of International Studies-II were spray-painted with slogans asking members of Brahmin and Baniya communities to leave the campus and the country.

Some of the slogans on the walls read “Brahmins leave the campus”, “There will be blood”, “Brahmin Bharat chhodo” and “Brahmo-Baniyas (sic), we are coming for you! We will avenge”.

The incident took place on Thursday, December 1.

Scroll reported that some of the slogans on the doors of the rooms assigned to faculty members asked them to go back to “shakha”, a reference to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

Controversial slogans threatening violence against Brahmins found on the walls of JNU. These pics are going viral but it’s still unclear who wrote it and why. This should be thoroughly investigated and the perpetrators must be punished.https://t.co/CtAJunHjkQ pic.twitter.com/m7EOLjdtVC

— Alishan Jafri (@alishan_jafri) December 1, 2022

While the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad – which is affiliated with the RSS – held Leftist student groups responsible for the incident, the JNU Students’ Union (JNUSU) hinted that “right-wing forces” were to blame.

“Such statements are clearly meant to disturb the normalcy of the campus by vitiating the campus environment. This is not the first time that such vandalism has occurred within the university. Several instances have happened during previous years,” the JNUSU said in a statement.

The JNUSU alleged that right-wing forces have “tried historically to caricature claims to social justice in such a deplorable manner”.

JNU vice-chancellor, Santishree D. Pandit, had on Friday, December 2, called an emergency meeting on this matter.

She had instructed the dean of the School of International Studies and the grievances committee to inquire into the incident and submit a report at the earliest.

Teacher and student bodies have also urged the JNU administration to conduct a free and fair inquiry to ensure peace on the campus.

The university also issued a six-point advisory, including that all schools and centres will have only a single entry and exit point.

It also asked the authorities to ensure adequate lighting in corridors.

(With inputs from PTI)

The VC of JNU is Turning a Premier Institution Into ‘WhatsApp University’

After first pretending that exams are taking place as per schedule, the VC wants them held through alternative modes in the next 3-4 days. What he wants will making JNU the laughingstock of academia the world over.

This article is a modified version of an open letter to President Ram Kovind by D.K. Lobiyal, President, JNU Teachers Association (JNUTA) and Surajit Mazumdar, Secretary, JNUTA.

We had written to the president of India nine days ago regarding the crisis in Jawaharlal Nehru University and the urgent need to end its root cause – namely, the reign of mis-governance by its vice-chancellor, M. Jagadesh Kumar. Since then, the crisis has become graver as we are now almost at the end of the scheduled period of the monsoon semester and the schedule of academic activities prescribed are far from being completed.

True to form, the VC has continued to reject every effort at finding a solution to the prolonged impasse and to the restoration of the conditions in which these activities can be undertaken by teachers and students. He has even spurned the opportunity offered by a second initiative of the Ministry of Human Resources Development to facilitate a resolution. The clear evidence of this lies in the complete mismatch between the subsequent actions of the JNU administration and what was put out by the MHRD in a December 12, 2019 press release as a “Record of the discussion held in MHRD on resolving the JNU Issue on 10th and 11th December 2019”.

One of the misdirected efforts of the JNU VC has been a concerted attempt to somehow complete the university’s end-semester examinations as per the academic calendar by reducing this process to a mere formality. This is also in sharp contradiction with the approach reflected in the MHRD’s report – that of first redressing the concerns of students and then consider an extension of the semester by a couple of weeks to allow academic activities to be completed.

Why JNU Protests

While JNU believes that the fundamental objective of knowledge is to break hierarchies that society imposes, the ruling regime believes not only in protecting these hierarchies but also creating new ones.

Until 2014, students and teachers of JNU were found occupying place in prime time shows of news channels as experts on various socio-economic and political issues. But post-2014, JNU has occupied prime time spots, almost every alternate week, for very different reasons.

The current JNU protests are against changes in the hostel manual and the steep increase in hostel charges that will force nearly 50% of its students to leave their education and stop scores of others from underprivileged backgrounds who dream of taking admission in this university. Both students and teachers of the university – through their representative bodies, JNUSU and JNUTA respectively – have unequivocally said that these changes are unacceptable, but the JNU administration has chosen to ignore them completely and is hell-bent on imposing these changes.

The students and teachers are arguing that it is the university’s responsibility to provide residential and mess facilities to those pursuing higher education at reasonable costs and hostels cannot be run on a self-financing principle as the new hostel manual proposes. A large number of students from marginalised backgrounds, particularly female students, have so far been able to both enter and successfully study in JNU only because the fee structure has remained very low. The students and teachers of the university see it as a part of a larger assault on inclusive public higher education, and a concerted agenda to destroy JNU.

A few months earlier students and teachers had protested because the JNU vice chancellor had selectively issued charge-sheets against 48 teachers, including a retired faculty, invoking CCS conduct rules for raising their voices against the destructive policies of the JNU administration.

The teachers got a stay since there were absolutely no grounds for the university to claim the applicability of CCS conduct rules for teachers. The Delhi high court pointed out that applying CCS rules to control faculty members was untenable since it would go against their basic role as teachers responsible for research and encouraging debate.

Also read: The JNU Fee Hike Affects Students with Disabilities More Than We Realise

While we in JNU have a very clear understanding, the public at large is always perplexed about the nature of constant protests in JNU. In what follows, I make an attempt to explain the core concerns of students and faculty at the university.

JNU students lathi-charged by the police during their march to Rashtrapati Bhavan, in New Delhi, Monday, Dec. 9, 2019. Photo: PTI/Kamal Singh

One of the foremost objectives of the JNU Act is to disseminate and advance knowledge, wisdom and understanding via the teaching and research of social needs. If this is so, why is JNU the target of the current regime? While we at JNU believe that the fundamental objective of knowledge is to break all kinds of hierarchies that society imposes on us and question existing wisdom in order to push the boundaries of knowledge; those in the ruling regime believe not only in protecting these hierarchies but also creating new ones. Over the years, JNU has been able to successfully break three types of hierarchies – that of identity (gender, caste, and religion); of disciplines; and the hierarchy between teachers and students.

Taking seriously upon itself the responsibility of fulfilling the objective stated in the JNU Act, the JNU community takes pride in claiming that this is not a university for children of the rich but for those deserving boys and girls, however marginalised and poor they may be.

Until this VC took over, JNU, without shying away from critiquing its own efforts, whenever necessary, became a microcosm representing the diversity of India through its unique model of deprivation points allotted for regional, economic and gender backwardness, over and above the constitutionally mandated reservation policy for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes. The university implemented this objective even in its faculty composition. This was the first hierarchy that it demolished.

Subsequently, with the help of its diverse background of students and teachers, the second hierarchy that JNU dismantled was among disciplines. As a result, knowledge creation here instead of remaining within the boundaries of specific disciplines, transcended to create a unity of knowledge.

Also read: JNU’s Four Subversions: A Primer For the Anxious Right-Wing Citizen

And none of this could have been achieved, if the JNU community had not broken the third hierarchy, i.e. between teachers and student within the classrooms. It became a university that practised inter-disciplinarity in the true sense. The pedagogy that the JNU community evolved was not based on the idea that teachers alone were custodians or owners of knowledge. Rather both teachers and students in JNU always remained seekers of knowledge. This resulted in form of interactive teaching and research with a collaborative connection between students and teachers.

It is for the first time in the history of JNU that we have seen a vice chancellor who is completely controlled and governed by the ideologies of a parivar that fundamentally believes in maintaining all the above-mentioned hierarchies. This is being pushed through by the current vice chancellor through repeated violations of the statutory provisions and obligations to alter the basic character of the university.

Ever since professor M. Jagadesh Kumar took over, he has undermined the integrity of the faculty selection process, He has restricted students from joining the university for higher studies and research, violated the Central Educational Institution Act 2006 and the constitutionally mandated policy of affirmative action, harassed and intimidated teachers who disagree or oppose these moves; assaulted all democratically elected bodies; destroyed JNU’s anti-sexual harassment policy which was achieved after a long struggle of the JNU community and created an atmosphere of fear among students and teachers.

JNU students during their march from the university campus to Rashtrapati Bhavan, in New Delhi, Monday, Dec. 9, 2019. Photo: PTI/Kamal Singh

The JNU community has opposed every single move of the vice chancellor. Ever since Narendra Modi’s election in May 2014, there have been few occasions to feel hopeful about anything in general but particularly about politics in the country. Yet even in these difficult times, it is JNU that has spoken and voiced concerns about various issues.

This endeavour of the JNU community disturbs the current regime the most. It is the responsibility of governments in a democracy to create an environment where teaching and learning can be free and without inhibition and fear. What is happening today is exactly the opposite.

Also read: Why the University and Its Questions Worry the State

The government is forcing public universities to submit to the mercy of the market so that it can never create and nurture an egalitarian ethos. Whatever it may cost, the JNU community is united and determined in its resolve to fight against such an onslaught, save an inclusive public higher education system and protect the idea of India that is enshrined in the constitution.

Avinash Kumar teaches at the Centre for Informal Sector and Labour Studies, SSS, JNU and is the former secretary of JNUTA.

The Hindutva Project to ‘Purify’ Campuses Is Underway

The ‘asuras’ who organise beef festivals on various campuses and the much-maligned JNU ‘tukde-tukde’ gang celebrating Mahisasur Jayanti need to be taught a lesson, according to some.

Now that the Hindutva state is upon us in all but name, the powers that be are complacent and believe that they can put up their feet up and relax. After all, they have the required numbers in Parliament to enforce any legal measure in a ‘democratic’ manner.

However, much to their chagrin, scores of students descended onto the streets of the capital. JNU students hold Delhi to ransom – screamed a news bulletin. Another channel enquired of a JNU student as to why they were all activists to which the student responded that he only focused on his studies but now felt that unless he raised his voice, he would have to leave the campus as the fee hike would become unaffordable. The scorn and derision against the term ‘activist’ was clearly evident.

Ever since India embraced economic liberalisation, the process of rolling back measures for public welfare has been in full swing. The first to bear the brunt was education policy. As it is, state spending on education was meagre in comparison to defence and other services but the progression of privatisation accelerated the pace. In the process, only techno-managerial education was valued and both the humanities and social sciences were considered worthless and only the ‘undeserving’ students opt for such courses.

Gradually, the emergence of private universities queered the pitch for the marginalised Dalits, minorities and women to access such resources as they were priced beyond the reach of the common person. The only option for these sections was and remains publicly funded universities. For the caste-ridden Indian society, access to education was the only way to ensure upward social mobility and a chance to lead a meaningful life.

Aristotle measured the richness of human life by the freedom to engage in meaningful activity. He believed that the lack of liberty to act in self-chosen ways impoverished life. Similarly, Amartya Sen argued that being excluded from social relations limits our life opportunities, thus producing not only capability deprivation, but also diverse capability failures.

Also read: JNU’s Four Subversions: A Primer For the Anxious Right-Wing Citizen

One important aspect of such exclusion is that it seems to unite the perpetrators at the same time that it isolates the victims. While the “excluders” produce exclusion by collectively expropriating public spaces and refusing to share social opportunities, the excluded experience exclusion as individuals and personal failures – as the inability to participate freely and fully in the social life of the community. For many first-generation Dalit Bahujan students, university campuses thus present a window of opportunity to demolish the monocultures of the mind, as such spaces provide them with voice, agency and self-awareness to fight for justice.

The mutating figure of a student

For ages, the ‘ideal’ student was imagined as male, sober, obedient, sitting docilely at the guru’s feet. The contemporary model student is a high-tech guy lugging a laptop, (a few females have joined the fraternity) well dressed in modern attire, exemplifying a futuristic country. He inhabits the perfect universe akin to Bollywood’s version of an idyllic Indian family under the benevolent paterfamilias. There were people who questioned such skewed utopias, a few ‘jholawalas’ who were coerced into silence by a state keen on pursuing a neo-liberal development agenda.

However, a silent revolution was simmering underneath the calm of the surface. The first generation of the Dalit Bahujans who gatecrashed into the gurukuls, gradually, with the benefit of affirmative action, began to critically engage with the structures of oppression.

After the Mandal Commission was implemented, the profile of public educational institutions reflected the changing social dynamics. Classrooms echoed with more diversity and their engagements with pedagogical praxis have threatened savarna privileges. Campuses have become more restive and the state has to frequently resort to force to maintain the status quo.

Also read: Why the University and Its Questions Worry the State

The well-knit and smoothly functioning archetype of the ‘parivar’ has been rudely jolted. Rohith Vemula penning a note about his astronomical dreams and philosophising about equality, girl students in BHU protesting against arbitrary hostel rules, Delhi University girls demonstrating to literally break the pinjra or cage, JNU, TISS, FTII in ferment – all these are reflections of Kaliyuga. The ‘asuras’ who organise beef festivals on various campuses, the much-maligned JNU ‘tukde-tukde’ gang celebrating Mahisasur Jayanti – all need to be taught a lesson.

JNU students clash with police during a protest march towards Parliament in New Delhi, November 11, 2019. Photo: PTI/Ravi Choudhary

Purifying the campuses

In the Brahmanical ethos, space polluted by the mlecchas needs to be ceremoniously purified. This needs to be accomplished with minimum violence and with maximum effect. Any gesture of protest is viewed within the prism of nationalism which justifies brutal suppression. When student groups in HCU organised a protest against the verdict in Yakub Memon’s case, it was dubbed as anti-national and whatever happened to Rohith Vemula and his friends was well deserved.

Similarly, even though the investigation has not unearthed anything anti-national against Kanhaiya and Khalid, they have been eternally vilified in the court of public opinion. This strategy has polarised the general public and gradually persuaded them into acquiescing to the actions of the state. The crackdown on students by the police and paramilitary, the imposition of section 144 around JNU is acceptable and legitimate in the public eye.

The vice chancellor of Vishwabharti demanded paramilitary security for the university. Delhi Police treated the lawyers’ protest with kid gloves and turned the full face of its coercive power against students. The protests against the fee hike are seen as ludicrous and a pliant media portrays the students as freeloaders, who are wasting public funds for ‘anti-national’ activities. Such students do not wish to create a ‘world-class university’ and instead spend time in ‘activism’.

Ironically, an internal campus matter regarding fee hikes was ‘allowed’ to snowball into a controversy undermining ‘the nation’ and a rattled state shuts down metro stations in the name of security. It is ironic that the state and its minions in the administration of JNU are unaware of the social and economic profiles of the students.

The handpicked vice chancellors of JNU, HCU, FTII etc are willfully promoting the agenda of their political masters. The university is a microcosm of the larger society and measures like deprivation points have enabled students from poorer backgrounds regardless of caste, class and gender to access education in the nation’s capital and enrich the campus.

Watch | JNU Fee Hike Row: Why Shouldn’t Education Be Subsidised For All?

For many of us, it was the first brush with the ideologies of feminism, anti-caste radical politics, debates and the gradual acceptance of myriad voices. Such intermingling helped sensitise generations of students to wider questions of inequality, justice, discrimination which are now an anathema for the ruling elite.

The deprivation points were the first to go, then the slandering of students who are politically active and now the fee hike. All this to create a utopian meritocracy. Such measures will effectively finish off reservations.

The template is well laid out to gain legitimacy and widespread public acceptance. Sundry godmen join the debate. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar pointed out that government schools are breeding grounds for Naxals. Baba Ramdev in an interview with Republic TV condemned intellectual terrorism and singled out followers of Periyar and Ambedkar as working against the nation’s interests.

Such public discourses disseminated by the ‘godi media’ has succeeded in demonising students, ideologies and institutions. This fits well into the marketising of the New Education Policy with its promise of Skill India and Make in India. Gradually, the idea of social justice will disappear with the erosion of public universities.

Instead, institutions like Jio University which have attained the status of eminence despite only existing on paper will manufacture docile ‘deshbhakts’ who will uphold the agenda of cultural nationalism. None of this is a secret. That is why the Ambedkarite slogan of ‘educate, organise and agitate’ is resonating across campuses as students fight back.

N. Sukumar teaches Political Science in Delhi University.

JNU’s Four Subversions: A Primer For the Anxious Right-Wing Citizen

JNU’s liberal thought, social commitment, environment of equality and sustained excellence discomfits its critics. Here’s why.

Dear right-winger, neo-liberal, anxiety-ridden denizen of India, this is for you.

This is basically a primer on the four major subversions that JNU has wrought on this Bharat Mata of yours.

It is also meant to answer two of your perennial queries: why is JNU forever in the news, and why is there trouble in JNU all the time?

Your enlightened comparison to the peace and quiet of the IITs and the IIMs is well taken. After all, maintaining the status quo is, in your view, a profoundly nationalist act.

These are also conundrums to which there are no easy or convincing answers. Also, given that your ideology is somewhat inchoate but incandescent with a burning hatred, I bet you are pretty sure that JNU’s ideology is ‘leftist’, or ‘commie’ or, as the Union home minister revealed to the CRPF, that of an ‘urban Naxal’s’.

At your most charitable, you are willing to climb down to ‘liberal,’ but as only a pejorative: a person who wears Fab India kurtas and thinks like the ‘Khan Market caucus’.

You pillory this university in your wine parties, kitty parties, card parties and political parties. But at the end of the day, a fact remains: JNU does tend to get under your skin and makes you violently itchy, just like the poison ivy which you may have accidentally brushed against.

Also read: The World’s Largest Democracy: Beyond Question

The irritating itch that JNU gives you is that fear of subversion it creates in your petty, secure lives. JNU is subversive of all the little non-liberal, right-wing, conservative and reactionary codes which constitute your mental DNA. You would like to wish it away, but your wishes are not your horses, not at least where JNU is concerned.

The first subversion is liberal thought.

Bloody hell, imagine a university where students are encouraged to think for themselves! The load of lectures is kept at a level where they can go to the library and read more. Less lecture loads don’t mean less work. The counterbalance are the tutorials which an average M.A. student in the School of Social Sciences has to write once every 10 to 12 days.

Posters at a JNU canteen. Photo: Jai Pandya/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

These are presented to their peer group in the presence of the teacher for that course. Arguments must be defended, ideas have to become argumentative before a submission can move to its next stage, grading. A teacher just can’t grade and be done with it.

She must justify the grade she has given to each student in the presence of those who have credited her course. So, there you have it, there is a permanently interactive subversion of minds which goes on in JNU.

These students take their subversive minds into the public arena and grind any hostile interlocutor down to the ground. You should see online videos of some of them ripping apart ‘journalists’ from some chronically anti-JNU media channels.

Such maturity needs to be carefully nurtured. Why do you think JNU students want better library facilities and longer library hours? And why do you think this administration wants to cut down on both?

The second subversion is that of social commitment.

In India’s damagingly skewed social environment, JNU has dared to dream. It has dreamt of an equal opportunity admissions policy to the greatest extent possible. It has dreamt to empower the downtrodden, the marginalised and the oppressed by enabling them to enter its portals and study with peers who have come from privileged backgrounds, but without any barriers of access to space, food, library and social interaction.

A poster at a JNU canteen. Photo: Jai Pandya/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

JNU’s dream is for you a very dangerous nightmare, a nightmare of equality in a society riven with myriad oppressions of caste, community, religion and gender.

Prior to 2017, admissions were made keeping in mind the constitutionally mandated reservations for the marginalised and deprived social groups and to facilitate them more, they were given extra deprivation points keeping other parameters of deprivation, like region, gender and community in mind.

Deprivation points based on gender worked like a charm. JNU became one place where women students tended to outnumber males in classrooms, libraries, seminars and in its many dhabas. Since this was working well – though there were still miles to go – it had to be dismantled by the administrative regime that was installed in 2016.

And just look at what immediate devastation it caused. Admissions of students from families earning Rs 6,000 rupees per month (oh yes, such people still exist, shocking as it may be for your genteel sensibilities) dropped from 25.7% of the total in 2016-17 to 9.8% in 2017-18.

Students from rural backgrounds shrank from 48.4% in 2016-17 to 28.2% in 2017-18.

The third subversion is the sensitive and humane environment that JNU strives to provide to its students and other residents.

JNU’s humanism lies first in its spatial openness, then in its social openness and accessibility. All public spaces have unrestricted access, or used to till, dear right-winger, your conservatism kicked in.

The most iconic representations of this openness are the dhabas, the chai shops and that venerable spot for the star gazers – the Parthasarathi rocks.

Dhabas provide food and beverages to people who wish to supplement the often-drab food in the hostel messes. But these dhabas are also subversive. They provide convivial spaces for ideas to be exchanged and debated, for arguments to be made and for political agendas to be put to the test.

Students chat at JNU’s Ganga Dhaba. Photo: Jai Pandya/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Now, this will surely churn your neo-liberal stomach. Students have come to study, why must they do politics, you will ask indignantly.

JNU’s subversive answer to your anxiety would be ‘study and struggle’. Shocking, no?

More shocking to your morality are the emotional offshoots of this openness: people finding love, sex and general companionship in keeping with their sexual orientations. Parthasarathi rocks is an enabling place for love as well as star gazing or watching the planes flying past.

Whatever your orientation, JNU enables it. No, you say, this can’t be allowed. It offends your high morals, I know.

Did you know, a person belonging to the ruling political dispensation you so wholeheartedly cheer spent many a night prowling around JNU counting used condoms and empty beer bottles, most of them in his mind? But there is moral to his efforts: even used condoms in JNU are deemed subversive.

The fourth subversion, my dear right-winger, that JNU has brought about, is the idea of a public university as a source of excellence.

You applaud privatisation and in all probability have a child or two studying in a private institution because it caters to ‘merit,’ whereas in your exalted view of the world, public universities are sullied with reservations.

You are also deeply disturbed that your hard-earned tax rupees are being wasted on people who are spending years on doing what appears to you as some incomprehensible research, plus demanding that they need more subsidies and facilities.

Please know that a public university is a constitutionally mandated responsibility of the state and citizens must enjoy that right. If your tax rupees are working in that direction, you should grin and bear it no matter how painful it may be for you.

One of the buildings at JNU. Photo: Jai Pandya/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

I would like to draw your Ray Ban-ned attention to the fact that about 40% of JNU students come from families whose monthly income is less than Rs 12,000 and these students often send funds from their already meagre merit-cum-means scholarships and non-NET fellowships to supplement their family incomes.

Also, do you know, JNU students actually pay more to live in their hostels than students of other central universities? And with the recent hikes in charges, they will be paying much more. If anyone needs subsidies, they do.

By the way, have you given up your LPG subsidy? Do you think of the subsidy you enjoy when you fill your car’s fuel tank with diesel or feel happy at your low electricity bills in Delhi these days?

So, what does this all add up to? People like you who desire quick-fix solutions and immediate gratifications see education as a utilitarian object. In JNU, we see it as a public good, and public good is something which works for the good of the public.

JNU also believes that unless education enhances the fund of knowledge (no, not information which you source from Google probably every minute of your day) it serves no purpose, and that’s why research is encouraged in this university. Research is a slow process, like good wine it takes time to mature (ah! you got that, the wine bit, yet not the research bit).

Consider this: if one finishes an MA at the age of 21 years, and gets into an M.Phil/PhD course at 22, one will exit at 29 or 30 with one’s years spent in researching on issues like caste, tribe, environment, gender and much more.

Also watch | JNU Fee Hike Row: Why Shouldn’t Education Be Subsidised For All?

Do you realise a researcher in JNU is investing the most happening years of her life in creating a fund of socially relevant knowledge, and for what? Rs 5,000 rupees a month, upgraded to Rs 8,000 at the end of three years.

Finally, do pause for a moment to compare a similar researcher, say, in the USA. While the average age of a person acquiring a PhD in the social sciences in a USA university is 33 years, Google tells me that ‘the cost of PhDs in the USA can vary between $28,000 to $40,000 per year, and students find that they can get funding for much, or all, of their studies’.

Your ideal is the IIT and the IIM of course. Did you know that these institutions enrol 3% of total students in this country but use 50% of government funding on higher education?

What do many of their students do after enjoying this massive subsidy? Pack their bags and go to the USA to write programs for software companies or play bulls and bears at the NYSE, of course.

Now compare this with Rs 5,000 that a researcher in JNU gets and feel some shame. But then you have none, for you are a neo-liberal, JNU-bashing, right-wing majoritarian.

I am waiting for the day when one IIT-ian or an IIM-ian gets a Nobel prize in the sciences or in economics. Your very subversive, ‘anti-national’ JNU can boast of one recipient already.

Rajat Datta is professor at the Centre for Historical Studies, JNU.

JNU Teachers and Students, We Need Some Introspection

Enter a campus where students and teachers have been reduced into ‘enemies’ to be perpetually disciplined, and observe the rot.

How many roads must a man walk down

Before you call him a man?

– Bob Dylan

Is it that we – the teachers and students of Jawaharlal Nehru University – are destined to be humiliated by the university administration, or its mysterious ‘competent authority’? Is it the end of meaningful teaching and learning? Is it the time to be merely nostalgic about the ‘old’ JNU – its vibrant culture of debate and dialogue, its academic milieu that could tap the potential of an economist like Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee, and its brilliant vice-chancellors who enriched the university with their vision and insights?

In an age that breeds anti-intellectualism, devalues education, and suspects the gift of freedom, what the JNU administration is doing, I believe, is not difficult to understand.

Kill the spirit of argumentation; destroy the public sphere as a domain of free speech, dialogue and communication, and invent or interpret the ‘rules’ to suppress critical and dissenting voices. Not surprisingly then, the JNU administration – with its characteristic poverty of pedagogic imagination – refuses to see teachers and students as active/reflexive creators and participants contributing to the making of a university.

Also read: JNU Administration Asks Students’ Union to Vacate Office, JNUSU Refuses

Instead, it loves to erect a huge wall of separation; and its petty officials (I am not very sure whether I should regard them as teachers) governed by the ‘competent authority’ have lost the intelligence or the sensitivity needed to communicate with young learners, researchers and experienced professors. It loves to issue ‘circulars’; it has expertise itself in the technique of issuing ‘showcause notices’; it knows the economics of ‘fines’; and its hired lawyers earn a great deal of money as almost everything at JNU, be it an issue relating to sexual violence, or the clearance of pension/provident fund papers of a dissenting professor, is now a court case.

In this never-ending process of inflicting pain and suffering, the administration has asked the students’ union to vacate the office room by invoking a strange rule: ‘the JNUSU for the academic year 2019-20 is yet to be notified’; it is eager to ‘discipline’ the students with its plan to initiate a series of measures relating to hostel timing, and even a dress code. Moreover, through its ‘cleanliness’ drive, it has already removed the colourful – and often revealing and socially meaningful posters – from the walls of the university.

And then, almost every academic council meeting, as the insiders often whisper, degenerates into some sort of monologic/one-dimensional/absurd drama (is it the effect of the much-hyped Mann Ki Baat?). This time, even the sole representative of the JNUTA was not allowed to participate in the academic council.

Yes, with chargesheets, showcause notices and threatening circulars, I have no hesitation in saying, the students/teachers have been reduced into ‘enemies’ to be perpetually monitored, observed and disciplined.

With security guards all around (I keep my identity proof always ready because I do not want to be humiliated every time I pass through the JNU gate, or enter the library), the psychology of fear that has almost destroyed the backbone of the teaching community, and the rise of new bosses (petty administrators intoxicated with the pleasures of the temporal power), the university is decaying.

Enter the campus, smell the rot.

Who would educate the administrators?

Believe me, I have begun to fear whether in the coming years some of us would be able to teach the way we love to. Take, for instance, the question of autonomy. With the introduction of the MCQ pattern of the entrance test, we have lost the spirit of a creatively nuanced critical pedagogy to formulate thoughtful/interpretative/analytical questions for selecting students and researchers in a centre of higher learning.

Second, as the administration has decided to give the entire responsibility to the National Testing Agency – an external agency – to conduct the entrance test, our marginalisation is almost complete.

And now, the administration – once again blessed by the ‘competent authority’ – has decided to formulate the same questions relating to research methodology for all social science subjects. When you dissent, it is ridiculed at the academic council.

Who would tell these administrators that the debate on methodology is complex and nuanced, and every discipline – be it sociology or cultural anthropology, economics or demography, and political science or history – has its unique/enriched tradition of methods and epistemologies?

Also read: JNU: The Story of the Fall of a Great University

While as a cultural anthropologist you may be inclined to, say, hermeneutic ethnography, some other colleague, because of the specific nature of his/her work, might be inclined to heavily quantitative/statistical analysis. Hence, it is absurd to speak of the commonality of methods.

But then, if the administration chooses to be ignorant and adamant, what can you do?

After all, we cannot forget that these administrators believe that the installation of a model military tank would generate a feeling of patriotism among students (are Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore seeing it from the clouds, and shedding tears?); or the celebrity baba Sadhguru’s ‘inner engineering’ can give them peace.

With this sort of illusory intelligence, it is not impossible that one day the ‘competent authority’ might instruct us about what to teach, and how to teach.

Is it also the time for self-introspection?

Even though this dystopia is not far away, I am not very sure whether we would be able to resist – not merely symbolically, but substantially – the anti-academic practices that the JNU administration is encouraging. There are primarily four reasons why I express this doubt.

First, the administration has made us terribly tired, demoralised and exhausted. After all, how many court cases can you fight? Or, for that matter, how many times do you go to the chaotic academic evaluation section to enquire why the reports of your PhD students have not come even after 18 months?

Second, as teachers, we have allowed ourselves to be divided and fragmented. Even if the JNUTA decides to take a strong measure, as teachers, most of us do not come forward. In a way, it is like delegitimising the possibility of a collective struggle. Hence, the administration has got the message: a set of dissenters (and their numerical strength would decline speedily) would raise their voice; but then, most of the teachers would eventually accept everything – formulating the MCQ with robotic efficiency, signing in the attendance register like disciplined soldiers, submitting highly objectionable APAR forms with absolute promptness, and so on and so forth.

Also read: JNU Aspirants, I Feel Sorry For You

Third, with the all-pervading fear or the desire for some temporal benefits (say, getting leave for attending a seminar abroad, or not missing the opportunity to become the next chairperson, or even the coordinator for conducting the refresher/orientation course for the faculty development program), we have become strategic and clever. Yes, we remain silent, and pretend not to see anything.

And fourth – and this is the most important reason – we have lost the moral conviction to engage in a sustained non-cooperation movement against the JNU administration.

For instance, as teachers, if we are not genuinely convinced that we are not cogs in a factory, and our vocation needs creative and critical thinking, and the aesthetics of time, how can we fight if tomorrow the biometric is introduced, or the CCTV camera is installed in the lecture hall?

Or for that matter, if the students do not genuinely trust their ability to nurture the culture of active/voluntary participation in the class, how can they gain the moral strength to resist mandatory attendance? And finally, we cannot fight unless we are ready to bear some personal suffering – a showcause notice, a suspension order, or a false allegation. If, with our middle class notion of ‘comfortable and safe’ living, we escape from academic/pedagogic/ cultural protest against the notorious policies of the JNU administration, we would not be able to make much difference. Being humiliated, we would exist (physically alive, intellectually dead) as passive spectators of this sadistic play.

How is it possible for the ‘competent authority’ and his team of lieutenants – even though backed by the ruling regime – to destroy this place so quickly? Possibly, he succeeded because somehow we made it possible by accepting our defeat quite early.

As teachers and students, do we need some self-introspection?

Avijit Pathak is Professor of Sociology at JNU.

JNU Administration Asks Students’ Union to Vacate Office, JNUSU Refuses

“The newly-elected union is yet to be notified,” the dean of students wrote in the eviction notice.

New Delhi: In a surprise move, the Jawaharlal Nehru University administration has asked the institution’s newly elected student’s union to vacate its office – a direction which the JNUSU has refused to comply with, citing that it has been legally elected.

Dean of Students Umesh Kadam, had sent a notice to the union on Tuesday, reported PTI.

In the letter, the university cited the fact that JNUSU was not notified last year due to alleged non-compliance with the Lyngdoh Committee Report and that the matter is sub-judice.

“The newly-elected union is yet to be notified,” he said in the notice.

Also read: Counting for JNU Students’ Union Polls Stalled After ABVP ‘Snatches Ballot Boxes’

“To prevent misuse of property, it is decided by the Competent Authority of the University that the said room shall be locked immediately and the same may be handed over to the JNUSU after notification of the same,” the notice, which directs them to vacate the office by 5 pm on Wednesday, reads.

Union position holders have refused to vacate premises. “Around 5 pm, the guards had come but we had gathered in large numbers and they could not do anything. We will not give away this office,” said vice-president Saket Moon.

The students’ union has said “the JNUSU belongs to 8,500 students and the administration is not in any authority to close down our spaces”.

“The JNU Administration has yet again decided to return to its usual tricks and descended to the lowest levels any administration has in perhaps the history of JNU or any other University for that matter,” JNUSU was further quoted by NDTV as having said in response.

“The office in Teflas is not a personal property of the DoS and is our symbol of the community’s right to representation. We appeal to the student community to join hands and resist this diktat of the JNU administration to close down our spaces,” they said.

Kadam has not reacted yet.

A United Front of Left parties was elected to the JNUSU in September. Student Federation of India’s Aishe Ghosh was elected president.

Notably, when the Delhi high court had permitted the JNU election committee to declare the results of the students union polls, Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva had also allowed the varsity administration to notify the poll results “in accordance with Lyngdoh committee recommendations.”

(With PTI inputs)

Towards a New Civil Society

Indian civil society must stop buying the divisive agenda peddled by right-wing propaganda outlets and join hands to fight the hate.

One must give credit where credit is due and examine the movement of ‘civil society’ that gave the phrase its current infamy before one gets into its inescapable quagmire.

The Cambridge dictionary defines the term ‘alt-right’ as “an ideological grouping associated with extreme conservative or reactionary viewpoints characterised by a rejection of mainstream politics and by the use of online media to disseminate deliberately controversial content.”

Indians, however, will be able to identify ‘alt-right.’ This variety of right-wing populism isn’t particularly new to India – a country that has had the misfortune of dealing with both extremes of the ideological spectrum.

This tug-of-war has continued through elections and on college campuses. It has played out with equal, if not greater, vigour in the sphere of language and semantics.

Since the run-up to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, language turned into a battleground between the ideological right and its opposition. This opposition was defined by the rightest as “left-liberals.”

The construction itself was rather juicy: uppity, English speaking, Khan Market-going, Marxist, educated Indians, who hijacked institutions and didn’t care for the ‘real’ India, its customs, or its people. It was so juicy in fact, that individuals who fell into any of these categories, turned around and started spinning satire about a socio-economic class from which they themselves weren’t too different.

By constructing the image of an opponent that was so ripe for tearing down, the right went beyond the traditional attacks on the NGO walas and the jhola-chaaps and turned the battle into one against this imagined monolithic opposition.

Also read The ‘Glorious’ History of Hindutva and its Hypocrisies

Newspapers and TV channels gobbled it up and were filled with repeated coverage peddling derivatives.

The ‘Lutyens elite’ and the ‘Khan Market Gang’ became interchangeable for the ‘Urban Naxal’ and the ‘liberal peaceniks.’ A unified class of opposition was constructed, that didn’t really exist in the first place. Anyone who has ever associated with any sort of civil society platform realises the range of actors that coalesce around these movements.

Dogmatic Marxists hate the dogmatic Ambedkarites.

The Ambedkarites hate the savarna secular humanists.

All of them combined hate the liberals, and the liberals hate themselves.

All the rabid disagreement aside, you’ll find at least one person from each of these hues, at a protest about lynching, Kashmir, unemployment, or civil liberties. It’s likely that they all represent a mixed hue, emerging from the variegated streaks of a colourful ideological stream.

What is worrying, however, is not the language itself. After all, Indians have had to go through much worse for much less over the years. What is worrying is our own tendency to buy this cheap perfidy and let it cripple all the measures to build solidarity in a manner that only the most pernicious of poisons could.

A constant barrage of right-wing propaganda tearing through the airwaves has normalised a language that allies use to turn on each other.

While the threat of majoritarian authoritarianism looms large, Marxists refuses to hold hands with ‘Khan Market liberals.’ Ambedkarites refuses to hold hands with ‘JNU(eu) dhari jhola chaaps.’ Each time the possibility of a strategic alliance, if not a political one, is broached, someone’s identity plays spoilsport.

The leftist is an upper caste and the Ambedkarite doesn’t buy feminism. Liberal is probably both rich and upper caste and the feminist is tired of all the men running the movements.

The only thing that unites each of these ideological categories is that they are all ridiculously headstrong and losers.

The liberals lose because they’ve rarely succeeded politically anyway. The left loses as they stick to their dogmatic philosophy. Ambedkarites loose as the Sangh consumes their movement along with their cadres. Secular humanists and feminists lose because each of these losses has seen a significantly worse alternative take its place.

Also read In Defence of the Language of Political Correctness

Faced with constant loss and an inept political opposition, the responsibility has once again fallen to an aging civil society plagued by infighting, to hold steady the guardrails of democracy lest it falls into the illiberal abyss that we all dread. With the spate of Bills passed in the last session of the assembly, the threat has moved significantly from institutions of governance and higher education to the constitution itself.

Fundamental protections from the state are being trampled on in spirit, if not in letter.

The opposition, to say the least, is virtually non-existent.

In the US, the youth of the opposition cast aside temporary differences to come together under one banner of the anti-fascist movement. It is a movement of anarchists, feminists, communists, progressives and minorities of colour, religion, gender and sexual orientation.

Together they demand action on climate justice, socio-economic inequality, and immigration. It is these individuals who physically resist white nationalist rallies and force ideological reform within the American opposition.

Indian civil society must stop buying the divisive agenda peddled by right-wing propaganda outlets and own the labels thrown at them. If civil opposition in India is being cast as a monolith, then the jhola chaap might as well stand with the Khan Market liberal and the Khan Market liberal might share a drink with the Ambedkarite.

As cliché as it sounds, civil society in India must reimagine itself for an increasingly polarised 21st Century, and it must do so by first overcoming divisions within itself.

At a time when democratic institutions are besieged and the press is stifled, a failure to rebuild and reimagine a united civil society would be to condemn the Indian experiment to the vagaries of majoritarian fundamentalism.

Those in power always feed on the defensiveness within civil society, which only serves the purpose of marginalising it further.

Vineet John Samuel is a public policy researcher with work experience in Myanmar and India, who writes primarily on topics of foreign policy, sustainability and development in Asian Newspapers and online news portals.

Featured image credit: Pariplab Chakraborty

PhD Scholar Accuses JNU Administration of ‘Institutional Torture’

Dileep Kumar Yadav says the university is subjecting him to frequent hostel transfers, fines and even casteist slurs to punish him for his activism.

New Delhi: A PhD scholar from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) has accused the administration of “unleashing acts of institutional torture” on him for the “last couple of weeks.” Dileep Kumar Yadav, from the Centre for Inner-Asian Studies, housed under JNU’s School of International Studies, alleges that the administration is harassing him through constant hostel transfers and fines adding up to Rs 50,000 because he participated in a hunger strike to protest the University Grants Commission (UGC) gazette.

Yadav says that the university has issued four hostel transfer in the last two years, imposed heavy fines, cut access to the mess and even de-activated his internet access.

He submitted an open letter to the vice-chancellor, M. Jagadesh Kumar, on June 14, 2018, detailing the harassment and asking the administration to cease their attempts to “spoil” Yadav’s academic career. He had also sent a letter to the vice-chancellor earlier in June to request him to hold the transfer till his degree is done.

Yadav says he has been compliant with all the demands of the administration so far and has transferred hostels thrice. His PhD dissertation is due in July, and he needs the room only for a few more days, and so has decided to stay on in the hostel and focus on finishing his degree.

“The only ‘mistake’ I did was that I raised my voice against the draconian UGC Gazette 2016, which had a destructive effect on the academic life of many students, and is still being contested by the students through legal petitions, mass protests and other means,” wrote Yadav in his letter.

However, a member of JNU’s administration refused to officially comment on Yadav’s case, saying the matter is in the hands of the chief proctor, who was unavailable for comment.

Dhananjay Singh, associate dean of students told LiveWire, “This has been his [Yadav’s] third offence and there has been a proper enquiry by the chief proctor for the action taken. I cannot talk more about this.”

Yadav fears he will be evicted forcibly if he leaves his room, so he has been staying put during working hours on fear of being locked out, or worse having to break a lock to get in (it’s a criminal offence).

Student support

Apeksha Priyadarshini, an MPhil student in cinema studies and member of the Bhagat Singh Ambedkar Student’s Organisation said the student organisation supports Yadav.

Yadav was not the only one to protest the UGC gazette, but he says he is the only student who has been ordered to transfer hostels.

“It seems you have taken a decision to stop me from submitting my thesis, which is a product of my years of hard work, by subjecting me to institutional torture. I hail from a socially and educationally backward background and continued my studies till now through great hardships. For the last two weeks, every other day security guards are being sent to my room to intimidate me through physical violence,” wrote Yadav in his letter.

Priyadarshini backed Yadav’s claim and said that 10-15 guards have turned up twice in recent days to get Yadav to vacate his room in Kaveri hostel. A “small group of student activists or politically-minded students” have blocked this happening, for now, she added.

Based on the number of times he’s been moved and the administration’s lack of response to his appeals for staying on, Yadav believes he’s being punished for his past actions.

He also thinks it is not a coincidence that the administration is trying to evict him at this particular time. He said, “They are harassing me during our vacation time when most students are away and so it is easier for the administration to harass me without much opposition”.

Usually, JNU students can extend their hostel tenures for a few months by paying a daily stipend of Rs 20-30, and Yadav is willing to pay, he said, “I am prepared to pay as well to stay on and complete and submit by PhD.” However, the wardens seem unwilling. “The wardens have clearly stated that they will not be able to do anything for him since ‘orders are coming from above'” said Priyadarshini.

She also added, “The vice-chancellor is involved in this as the hostel wardens are saying they have orders from above, which usually means the dean of students but even they are not able to provide answers.”

With only two to three weeks left in his degree, Yadav is now considering getting a legal stay order to remain in his hostel room. However, the Delhi courts are also shut for the summer, so Yadav is considering appealing to the vacation court.

He also plans to approach the JNU Equal Opportunity cell and the OBC cell for inter-university support.

On June 13, several JNU students sent a letter to the warden on Yadav’s behalf, adding their voices to his appeal, but the warden then sent an official letter to the vice chancellor asking for Yadav to be removed from the hostel.

In his letter, Yadav also stated that the harassment was not just limited to forcible hostel transfers and fines but also extended to casteist slurs. Yadav said the upper caste wardens have been telling him that “people like me from a lower-caste background (OBC) are not eligible to be in elite institutions like JNU,” says Yadav.

How Do I Define My Nationalism?

Gandhi’s vision of nationalism is being replaced with Hitler’s vision of Nazism, and as a secular spectator, this is disheartening at best.

Recently I watched a video of a 2016 lecture by Professor Prabhat Patnaik from Jawaharlal Nehru University. Patnaik, known for his leftist political opinions as well as his scholarly work in economics, addressed nationalism in this lecture, held at a time when the nation was up in arms over Kanhaiya Kumar and JNU’s student politics. Patnaik made the point that national development has shifted to a capitalist approach. This is something worth thinking about in our current scenario.

Concluding the lecture, Patnaik said:

Consider first an obvious point, here is a government that has sought to browbeat the students at the Pune Film Institute, the Hyderabad Central University, JNU and the Department of Fine Arts of the MS University of Baroda (MSU). These are among the finest institutions in India and their destruction only makes the country parasitical on institutions located in metropolitan countries. In short, in the name of ‘nationalism,’ we are, paradoxically, making our nation parasitical on advanced nations. But this inevitably follows the promotion of an aggrandising nationalism in a Third World country that prioritises repression over tolerance.

The pride I felt at hearing my university mentioned in his speech had slowly melted away by the end of Patnaik’s sentence. I was disheartened, but acknowledged the truth in what was being said. It’s no secret that the BJP has changed the culture of MSU since it’s been in power in Gujarat.

For instance, all of MSU’s 15 functioning messes and over 20 canteens now only serve vegetarian options. Finding eggs in a canteen is a rarity. And this is just a small example.

However, Patnaik was actually referring to new developments in a decade-old case concerning the university. In 2007, a final-year postgraduate student, Srilamanthula Chandramohan sparked an ‘obscenity row‘ with some of his paintings. We feel the ramifications of this event even today.

The paintings in question included nude portraits of Jesus and Durga, which irked the church as well as the BJP. It spread from a university-level issue to a wider concern, forcing the administration to intervene.

Students protesting and covering the Faculty of Fine Arts in black tarpaulin sheets, Vadodara, 25 June 2007. Image courtesy: Students of the Faculty of Fine Arts. Source: Akansha Rastogi and B.V. Suresh

Students and professors alike came out in support of Chandramohan, but the university’s administration, backed by the BJP, did not. In fact, the faculty dean who refused to act against the protesters was sacked. The university panel which had convened to judge the validity of the complaints against Chandramohan’s paintings, decided against him (and so, against artistic license). Chandramohan, despite being the topper of his batch, was denied his degree.

Having waited for his degree and a response from MSU for over a decade, the artist seemed to break. In Feburary 2018, he entered the vice chancellor’s office and set it on fire, leading to his arrest. As a result of our prejudiced system, a once vibrant artist was now facing serious criminal charges. This is a prime example of moral policing at our universities. We’re never asked to seek inspiration from Ajanta-Ellora, but instead told to criminalise independent points of view.

As Patnaik said in 2016, we live in very difficult times, where a supposedly collective perception of nationalism has been branded the ‘correct’ one and is being sold everywhere in the country. Today’s nationalism prioritises majoritarianism instead of the freedom of its people. Gandhi’s vision of nationalism is being replaced with Hitler’s vision of Nazism, and as a secular spectator, this is disheartening at best. We are the ones indirectly participating in the mass disruption of our constitutional principles.

Hard times, Oliver Twist!

Ujjawal Krishnam is an undergraduate research scholar in the department of physics, at the Maharaja Sayajirao University Of Baroda.