Reject Rohith Vemula Style Political Victimisation of JNU Students by High Level Enquiry Committee!

Stop Targeting Student Activists From Deprived Backgrounds!

Stop Fresh Offensives Targeting JNU’s Inclusive Admission Policy!

The JNU Administration, based on a farcical ‘High-Level Enquiry Committee (HLEC) report,’ has vindictively handed out rustications, eviction from hostel and steep fines to several student leaders of the campus. This is a political witch-hunt, dictated by the Modi Government.

The Administration has in a cowardly and underhand manner, waited for the eve of end-semester exams in JNU, to declare the punishments. With this subterfuge of timing they think they can scuttle the student movement against the unjust punishments. But JNU is waiting to prove them wrong and defeat their ploy.

The JNU Administration also communicated the punishments to the media even before it communicated with the concerned students.

To try and appear ‘neutral’, a token fine has been imposed on the ABVP leader and JNUSU Joint Secretary Saurabh Sharma also. The very fact that they have had to do this, is proof of the power of the student movement that has exposed the JNU Administration’s and Modi Government’s bias.

With vicious vindictiveness, Comrade Anirban has been rusticated till 14th July and declared out of bounds from the university for 5 years; Comrade Umar has been rusticated; Comrade Ashutosh has been evicted from his hostel and declared out of bounds from all hostels for 2 semesters. Steep fines have been imposed on many other student activists including Comrades Rama Naga, Shweta, Chintu, Anant, Gargi, Aishwarya and Kanhaiya, and if they fail to deposit the fines by 13 May, they will loose their hostels and will not be allowed to register in the coming semester – i.e. they will be stop being students of JNU!

JNU Administration and its masters in the MHRD are making it clear that students who struggle – for a democratic campus, country and world – will not be allowed to study. 

Punishing Activists For Their Political Opinions

The so-called ‘High Level Enquiry Report’ has been unable to show a shred of basis of any punishable act by any of the student activists. In fact, the notices issued to the student activists are laughable in their content. It is clear that the student activists punished are ‘guilty’ only of their political ideas that the Modi Government finds ‘unacceptable’.

For instance, Umar and Anirban have been rusticated for (among other things) having signed the poster “Against Brahminical collective conscience and judicial killing of Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhatt”… “thus arousing communal and caste feeling.” So signing a poster or leaflet against Brahminism is now being equated with casteism?! This is exactly in the same manner as Bandaru Dattatreya demanded the rustication of Rohith and his comrades, accusing them of being ‘casteist’! Why is it ‘communal’ to protest the execution of Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhatt? Death penalty is commonly called ‘judicial killing’ in legal parlance, just as ‘custodial killing’ or ‘fake encounters’ which happen without the judicial process are called ‘extra-judicial killing’. Why are Rohith or JNU students being branded as ‘communal’ for protesting against communal bias or capital punishment?

Another laughable ground on which Anirban, Umar and Mujeeb Gattoo have been punished is for “being part of the group in which many outsiders were present, whereas the total number of participants mentioned in the booking form were seven only”! It is utterly obvious that the names on the booking form are names of organisers – no students in JNU give ‘number of participants’ on a booking form, since any number of students or people in general from JNU and outside are always known to participate!

Ashutosh, Chintu, Rama, Shweta, Anant, Umar, Anirban, Mujeeb Gattoo, and others have been variously accused of ‘sloganeering,’ ‘addressing students’, ‘participating in the procession from Sabarmati ground to Ganga dhaba where objectionable slogans were raised’. The HLEC report or these office orders do not make it clear exactly who raised which slogans, and which slogans are being considered ‘objectionable’ and why! The office orders, however, make it clear that the JNU Administration (and their master Manusmriti Irani) consider slogans against Brahminism and casteism to be ‘objectionable’. They also consider any protest organised against casteism, against death penalty, against communalism and the RSS, to be ‘objectionable’. These punishments, therefore, are not just a punishment to some student leaders – they are an attempt to muzzle political expression on JNU. 

The Committee Was Headed by None Less Than the Official Fund Raiser of  Casteist YFE

The enquiry committee was headed by none other than Youth For Equality fund-raiser Rakesh Bhatnagar – his name is on the YFE website and who used his JNU’s official address to raise funds for YFE. No wonder he found the anti-Brahminical student activists guilty of ‘casteism’! After all, the YFE brands reservations as ‘casteist’ and its anti-constitutional rants against reservations as ‘equality.’ Also the large political and organisational overlap of YFE and ABVP in the campus is all too well known.

A Farcical ‘Enquiry’ Report

As has been emphasised by students many times before, the Enquiry process violated the principles of natural justice, declaring students guilty and even punishing them even before the enquiry had begun.

•  As a newspaper had observed, “Though the internal committee report relies heavily on video evidence to identify students present at the venue, when it comes to identifying which student raised what slogans, the report cites ‘depositions’ of security guards present at the spot along with ‘unidentified eye-witnesses’.” Why has the ‘High Level’ Enquiry Committee been unable to do the obvious: state exactly which student raised which slogans based on video evidence? Why rely on the (fabricated) evidence of security guards and ‘unidentified eye witnesses’ (i.e ABVP cadres)?! Hasn’t the Delhi govt DM enquiry already noted the changing versions of the depositions by the security guards?
•  Why has Aishwarya Adhikari been punished even though she was not even named in the enquiry report?

Punishing the Ekalavyas and Rohiths of JNU

What the Modi Government and its agents who run JNU find unbearable is that students from working class, Dalit, backward backgrounds, from marginalised and oppressed communities, and women come to JNU and thrive academically and politically in JNU. They are brilliant scholars, they find the time, along with serious PhDs, to care for workers on campus, for the poor and marginalised of the country, for the people of Kashmir, for the country’s democracy. They fight to make JNU hospitable to the marginalised and deprived. They stand for women’s freedom and equality – and free women inevitably raise the spectre of condoms in the prurient minds of Sanghis and BJP leaders!

It is shameful that the Modi Government (which is hell bent on destroying quality, autonomy and equity in institutions of higher education) is trying to destroy the academic lives and muzzle the political voices of such remarkable students.

Three of the punished students are women. Of these, Chintu, the former JNUSU GS, is from a Mahadalit family of rural Bihar, one that has faced and fought feudal violence.

The JNUSU President Kanhaiya is from a working class family dependent on a single-earner, his mother. The JNUSU General Secretary Rama Naga is the first graduate from his village in Koraput. A Dalit from a very impoverished background, his father sells bangles and his mother is a daily labourer.

Former JNUSU VP Anant is from a Dalit family in Eastern UP; Shweta, the sitting JNUSU Convenor of School of Languages, and former JNUSU President Ashutosh, are both from deprived OBC background. Aishwarya is a sitting GSCASH student representative.

What needs to be stressed is that EVEN THOSE STUDENTS WHO ARE NOT RUSTICATED, FACE AN END TO THEIR EDUCATION IF THEY DO NOT PAY FINES. The JNU Administration is effectively telling student activists who have overcome enormous socio-economic hurdles to study – ‘Either give up activism and shut up, or we’ll end your journey in education.’ This is a brutal move – the same that Rohith faced – a modern-day mutilation of today’s Ekalavyas.    

Note: The JNU Administration which has thus victimised students from deprived and marginalised backgrounds, has yet to take action against the Chairperson of the Centre for Law and Governance Prof. Amita Singh, for her interview in which she accused ‘Dalit and Muslim’ JNU teachers of being ‘anti-national.’

Fresh Offensives on JNU’s Progressive and Inclusive Admission Policy

Even as the JNU Administration is punishing progressive student activists from deprived backgrounds, it is hacking away at JNU’s hard-won progressive and inclusive admission policy. There is a fresh attempt to grossly reduce deprivation points in JNU entrance. There is a unilateral and illegal move to deny 10% relaxation to OBCs in JNU entrance test. There is a very high (75-85%) weightage for English in JNU’s BA Entrance test, and a continued high weightage for viva voce. All these policies are being introduced without any discussion in JNU’s decision-making bodies – even the AC meeting was postponed to avoid debate and discussion on such changes! Such measures will close JNU’s doors for those from deprived and marginalised backgrounds.

JNU students are in the midst of their end-semester exams. But they will show that they know how to struggle to study and study to change society (lado padhai karne ko, padho samaaj badalne ko’). JNU students will not accept the victimisation of a single student for their political opinions – because such a victimisation will mean the death of JNU. JNU will fight a Do-Or-Die battle for each and every victimised student – and will teach the JNU Administration and the Modi MHRD that JNU’s fighting spirit cannot be broken by jail or sedition charges, cannot be scorched by vicious witch-hunt or by the searing summer heat. We shall fight, we shall win!