Rise Up against the Institutional Murder of Rohith Vemula!
Resist Serial Political Targeting and Victimisation of Progressive Student Activists Across Campuses Under the Diktats of the Saffron Regime!
Down with the Victimisation and Ostracisation of 5 Dalit Research Scholars by the UoH Administration Under BJP-ABVP’s Political Diktats!
Yesterday, as a united student protest was going on against the victimisation of 5 Dalit research scholars by the University of Hyderabad’s administration, the news of the tragic suicide one of Rohith Vemula reached us. Even as we collectively mourn the shocking and tragic loss, let us not fail to nail those responsible. Rohith along with four other students had been indicted by the UOH Administration without any evidence. Even the administrative enquiry report mentions this clearly. And yet they were evicted from their hostels, barred from entering public spaces in the university, and participating in student union elections.
This action didn’t happen in a vacuum. A series of letters and communication between the UOH Administration, local BJP leaders as well MHRD reveals that the decision for this vindictive action was taken at the behest of the ABVP-BJP combine. No less that BJP MP and Union Minister Bandaru Dattatreya has been writing letters to the MHRD for the past few months demanding action against ‘anti national’ ‘extremist’ and ‘casteist’ members of the Ambedkar Student Association in HCU. The victimisation of the Dalit students at the University, and the subsequent death of Rohith Vemula is a consequence of this targeted witch-hunt.
The HCU administration, ABVP-BJP and MHRD be held responsible for this horrifically condemnable role in this entire sequence of events. AISA has given a call for observing 19th January as National Protest Day. We call upon all students to unite and ensure that those responsible for Rohith’s death be punished.
Saffron Emergency in Campuses
Our educational system is currently facing an unprecedented crisis. With communal fascist forces in power, the entire state machinery and bureaucracy is being used to further a divisive communal agenda, to defend exclusion and growing lack of access to educational institutions, hostels and scholarships. In campus after campus, all democratic spaces of discussion, dissent and social inclusion are being scuttled, and the dangerous process of saffron infiltration and indoctrination continues unabated.
In the recent past, at IIT-Madras, the administration (acting on the letter of the MHRD) banned the Ambedkar Periyar Study Circle (APSC), which the administration was forced to withdraw after country-wide protests. At FTII, the historic resistance of the students to saffron appointments has been met with every kind of brutal response–intimidation, victimisation, lathi charges and arrests. At EFLU, an emergency-like situation exists. Students are suspended for participating in peaceful protests, there is a total ban on public meetings, seminars and all democratic activities, and even facebook posts critical of the Modi government’s policies have led to suspensions and rustications! At IIT-BHU, Prof. Sandeep Pandey has been removed from his faculty position for daring to hold ideological views contrary to the ruling powers. The rustication of 5 Dalit students culminating in loss of a life in UoH is the latest in an ever-growing list of dangerous saffronized intimidation in campuses across the country, at the behest of the BJP.
As students, we are of course more than familiar with exactly who indulges in violence and hooliganism on campuses across the country! In DU, ABVP ransacked the DU History department and assaulted the Head of the Department (2008) for the History department’s ‘crime’ of inclusion of A.K. Ramanujan’s seminal essay the ‘300 Ramayanas’! They have regularly threatened, intimidated and beaten up students and left activists for their ideological views and struggles for students’ rights, latest being the assaults on AISA activists during a protest against the imposition of the retrograde CBCS in DU and vandalism to stop the screening of the film Muzaffarnagar Baqi Hai.
Who can forget the abuse and violence that students camping at UGC were subjected to by the ABVP members on the intervening night of 22-23 October? ABVP’s elected Union representatives from JNU and DU were attacking students demanding the right to education!
In Allahabad University, again, ABVP’s Union representatives engaged in physical violence to stop a programme related to #OccupyUGC. None of us have forgotten how ABVP activists were involved in the vandalism and lynching leading to the death of Professor Sabharwal in Ujjain some years ago.
Steady Sanghi infiltration in universities and use of state power have ensured that the very same university administrations which immediately suspend or rusticate progressive activists based on spurious complaints made by ABVP, NEVER take any action on ABVP’s violence and hooliganism!
In the latest incidence of state crackdown on dissenting voices, the Delhi Police brutally lathicharged and threw water cannon on the students protesting against victimisation of dalit students in HCU resulting in the death of Rohith on 18th December in Delhi. DU AISA secretary comrade Sudhanshu was beaten on the head and is severely injured.
In the backdrop of this dangerous trend of muzzling of democracy across campuses, saffronisation and commercialisation of educational institutions, we are also witnessing a remarkable resistance. Across the country, each and every act of saffron intimidation and harassment is being countered – from JNU and IIT-Madras to FTII, EFLU, Allahabad, and UoH. AISA and RYA once again appeal everyone to join national protest day against the institutional murder of Rohith Vemula on 19th December 2016.
