Shehla Rashid (AISA), Vice President JNUSU, speaks at a student protest, during the ‘Occupy UGC’ Movement

---

The recent government constituted panel‘s (headed by former cabinet secretary T.S.R. Subramaniam) report on student politics is unconstitutional, highly regressive and politically motivated, and signals the upcoming onslaught of total commercialisation of education and imposition of Hindutva ideology in universities. The TSR Subramaniam Panel’s report is the logical follow up to the Birla Ambani report (which was submitted in 2000), following which student unions across the country were banned. The Birla Ambani report had lamented that student unions are not allowing commercialisation of education: we accept the charge and take pride in it! We believe that education should be a right of everyone, not a privilege of a handful of people.

After the report, tremendous restrictions were put on student union elections in the form of Lyngdoh Committee recommendations (2006), but students resolved not to give up, but to intensify the fight against imposition of austerity on education. Student groups over the past several years have resisted the commercialization and saffronisation of education and that is why the present government is fighting a proxy war against students. Students across the country are being targeted for democratically raising their voices. Interestingly, the only students organization which does not face any action is the perpetually violent ABVP, the student wing of the regressive RSS, whose members are well known for their rogue and abusive behaviour!

We warn the government not to engage in any measures to restrict political activity by students, as these will be in violation of Article 19 of the Constitution of India.

Student activism has made academic practices better and richer. JNU, HCU and FTII, for example, are some of the finest institutions of learning in the country. That is not “despite” student politics, but “because of” the progressive student politics of these campuses. Modiji has the luxury to tell us to leave studies and do politics. What does he have to say to those who will never be able to enter these educational institutions, due to the policies of UPA & NDA governments? It is for those that we fight, and will continue to.

The TSR Subramaniam panel asks for restrictions to be placed on student groups organized along identitarian lines.  In the garb of banning student groups based ‘on caste and religion’, the government (if it acts on these recommendations) will end up terrorising student groups of minority and Dalit, communities and not upper-caste Hindu supremacist organisations such as ABVP which openly engage in anti-women, anti-Dalit and anti-minority propaganda. It is shocking that the government is mulling interference at such deep level in campuses. It appears that the people on the panel do not have knowledge of the Indian Constitution which empowers all citizen groups to form unions and associations. Students are no different, and have the right to form associations and unions. The fact that students do not like Modi and Modi doesn’t like students can’t be used to curb our voices.

It is ridiculous to ask students to leave studies to do politics. (Meaning, as the minister Venkaiah Naidu said recently, ‘If students want to do politics, they should stop studying, quit universities, and then join politics’: Kafila).

When the BJP comes to seek votes of students, does it ask us to leave studies? Then why does it get threatened when we intervene in politics? What comes next? Will they ask farmers to leave agriculture and then come to politics? Why don’t they ask the Yogis, Sadhus and Sadhvis in their party to leave religion and then come to politics? Why don’t they ask lawyers in their party to leave advocacy and then come to politics? Most of all, why don’t they ask Gajendra Chauhan to leave BJP and then run the FTII? It is ironic that a government which has flooded educational institutions with mediocre saffron puppets has the audacity to lecture students on political neutrality! The govt should stop making a joke of itself and stop interfering in campuses. The ruling party representatives are there in the campuses and are active in student politics, and should be enough to carry the ruling party ideology. The increasing isolation of ABVP on campuses is causing the govt so much anxiety that they are desperate to politically intervene in one way or the other, to save the sinking ship of the ABVP.

This report goes on to imagine ghosts and makes ridiculous statements to the effect that, students stay in hostels for several years for political motives! On the contrary, it’s when students don’t get hostels and can’t pay the shockingly high rents outside campuses, that they join the fight against budget cuts in education. Why shouldn’t a student get a hostel for the entire duration of the study? What is ABVP’s response on this shameful denial of hostel facilities? Weren’t they screaming in student Union elections that they will ask their govt to build more hostels? Why is their government targeting students who are lucky enough to get hostels?

In addition to all this semi-literate chatter, the committee suddenly says that Yoga must be encouraged in campuses. While we have no problem with Yoga, why is the government politicising Yoga? The only time in the history of mankind when Yoga got negative publicity is when Narendra Modi tried to forcibly impose it on people and politicise it. What does Yoga have to do with a report on student politics? Why make it sound as if students need a rehab? There are many tribal practices which are very good for health. Why doesn’t the govt include those too in this trashy report?

This report is a deliberate provocation to instigate the next phase of unrest on campuses. This will be followed by further fee hike and commercialisation of education, reduction of scholarships, aggressive Hindutva activities and, by declaring students as violent, it already lays out the justification for the use of institutional violence on them in case they protest, just like in the case of Rohith Vemula, and now JNU, BHU, AMU, MANUU, Guwahati University, etc.

The Modi government must stop attacking the opposition and start working now. It has been two years of total failure of the government. They can’t silence people who protest against the government’s failures. We are also elected representatives, and in addition to fighting state repression, we are also working for students. If Modi needs some lessons in progressive politics, he can come to JNU. JNU Students’ Union can be a model for him. We deliver and struggle for most things that we declare on our election manifesto. We don’t go around attacking the opposition, beating them up, abusing them on social media, etc. We work. We invite all BJP persons for lessons in progressive politics from student representatives.

Shehla Rashid is a student at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi (JNU) and the Vice President of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU). She is an activist with the All India Students Association (AISA).

This text is a version of what was first posted as a status update on Shehla Rashid’s Facebook Page. 
 

The post Resist Modi Regime’s Assault on Students Through Subramaniam Panel Report on Student Politics: Shehla Rashid appeared first on SabrangIndia.

[ 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.
 

Cartoon by Jyothidaas K.V.
 

In most educational institutions, caste and religious differences and distances are studiously reproduced by caste/community based hostels (e.g. I am told Calcutta University has a hostel exclusively for Muslim men and that Patna University has one for Yadavs and another for Kurmis) and an entrenched system of discriminatory administrative and pedagogical practices. What is interesting is that even where such segregation practices is not institutionally enforced, strict hostel curfews for women, moral policing, dress codes, and a generalised heteronormativity that pervades every institutional space and practice seem to suffice to reproduce the very same social order.
 

A Fragment of Page 14 of the ‘JNU Dossier’
 

What extreme threat does women students’ freedom and the free mingling of the sexes pose? Well, if sexuality and amorous choices can be freed from the borders and boundaries enforced by caste and community, the main social institution crucially involved in the reproduction of caste and exclusionary religion — the FAMILY– is in danger of being reinterpreted. If Wheatish Brahmin from Uttar Pradesh is to find love with Whitish Animist Adivasi from Arunachal Pradesh (in Sanghspeak from the ’90s you had to say Vanvasi — no one dare be more adi than the Brahmins), how can either caste or religious exclusion be reproduced? And worse, it usually doesn’t stop there, because Wheatish Brahmin could love another Wheatish Brahmin, and decide to –gasp!– procreate only Wheatishes henceforth. By not incarcerating women, by having a GSCASH, by relentlessly struggling for a gender-plural campus free of surveillance and policing, universities like JNU challenge not only patriarchy, but also its chief clients: caste and exclusionary religion.

It should therefore be no surprise to any student as to why from the Sanghistanian perspective, at least some normal young people look like they have already seceded from a nation built on the hegemonies of caste (Brahminism), religion (Hinduism) and gender (antiquated Male, size 56). And JNU students, having Kissed With Love in Jhandewalan and Married in Parliament Street P.S. for many hours, there is no reason to complain, really.
 

Ayesha Kidwai is Professor of Language, Literature and Cultural Studies at the Centre for Linguistics, Jawaharlal Nehru Universities.

Courtesy: Kafila.org

The post Sanghis, Sex and University Students: What is it Really All About?: Ayesha Kidwai appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Press Trust of India reports that a Delhi court on Saturday, March 19 granted bail to former Delhi University lecturer SAR Gilani, who had been arrested on sedition charges in connection with an event on February 10 at the Delhi Press Club . Police had opposed the bail plea saying the event was “an attack on the soul of India” and it was “contempt of court.”

Additional sessions Judge Deepak Garg announced the bail after hearing the police and Gilani’s counsel, who said there was no evidence that Gilani had raised anti-India slogans at the event. Gilani had to furnish a personal bond of Rs 50,000 and one surety of like amount. Satish Tamta, counsel for Gilani, had aruged that criticising Supreme Court judgments was not contempt of court.

Delhi Police said Gilani and others were eulogising as martyrs Maqbool Bhat who was hanged in 1984 and Afzal Guru who was hanged three years ago after being convicted in the 2001 Parliament attack case.

”If he had not liked the SC judgement, he could have thought in his mind and within the four walls of the his house. But he had assembled people for the meeting in the heart of the Capital for that purpose which was an attack on the soul of India,” police had said while opposing the bail plea. Gilani's counsel, however, pointed out that the first information report (FIR) states that people raising slogans at the venue had been told to desist by the office-bearers of the Press Club and asked to leave, which they did. 

”There is nothing on record that Gilani shouted anti-India slogans or asked others to do so. It was a meeting of intellectuals to discuss the Kashmir issue,” counsel for Gilani said. He pointed out that Gilani, who was arrested on February 16, has been in jail for last around one month and is not required for the probe any further.

Former professor of Delhi University, Gilani was  arrested on February 16, and had filed his bail applications before the Patiala House Court. On February 19, a magisterial court had dismissed his bail application after the police alleged that "hatred" was being generated against the government. Meanwhile, Gilani's judicial custody was also extended by two weeks by a Delhi court.

Police had earlier told the court that an event was held on February 10 in which banners were placed showing Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhat as martyrs.It had also said the hall in the Press Club was booked by Gilani through one Ali Javed by using his credit card and another person Mudassar was also involved. At the Press Club event, a group had allegedly shouted slogans hailing Guru, following which the police had lodged a case under sections 124 A (sedition), 120 B (criminal conspiracy) and 149 (unlawful assembly) of the IPC against Gilani and other unnamed persons. The police had claimed to have registered the FIR taking suo motu cognisance of media clips of the incident.

Following registration of the FIR, the police questioned professor Gilani and Ali Javed, a Press Club member who had booked the hall for the event, for two days. Earlier, Gilani was arrested in connection with the 2001 Parliament attack case but was acquitted for "need of evidence" by Delhi High Court in October 2003, a decision later upheld by the Supreme Court in August 2005. 

The post Gilani gets Bail in sedition case appeared first on SabrangIndia.

An open letter to the Prime Minister of India

Honourable Prime Minister of India,

I am fifteen years old, and I’m not an anti-nationalist, but I believe that having an opinion that differs from that of the state isn’t a crime.

I’m not an anti-nationalist, but I believe that physical and verbal abuse by lawyers against the accused in a courtroom in the presence of the police is a defamation of our legal system and violation of the Right to Fair Trial as stated in the Article 10 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

I’m not an anti-nationalist, but I believe that verbal harassment of an accused on National Television in the name of Media Trial is unjustified. I don’t know journalism or media better than those running the news provision system of our country but what I do know is that each journalist or media personnel or any human being for the matter of fact is subjected to converse or debate with another human being with a certain decency and a sense of respect towards other’s opinion.

Defamation of an accused by a journalist by labelling him/her as an anti-nationalist and calling them a shame to the nation is a violation of the article 41 of the Norms of Journalism Conduct published by the Press Council of India in 2010 and a threat to one’s dignity and public image.

I’m not an anti-nationalist, but I do get furious when the media and the government portray an entire university as a hub of anti-national activities just because it’s students stood up and spoke out their opinion.

I’m not an anti-nationalist, but as an aware student and sovereign individual I’m not afraid to put forth my opinion which may be different from that of my government.

I may not be in support of everything the students of JNU have said, but I believe that as students and well informed citizens of a democratic nation they deserve all the chances to speak out their opinions without the fear of being jailed or tried in the court or media or being labelled anti-nationalists.

I’m not an anti-nationalist, but I believe that India is going to complete 70 years as a democratic nation and it is just time that we do away with the Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code which was introduced by the British during the Colonial Rule to suppress the Freedom struggle. Ironically, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Mohandas Gandhi were also tried under the same law.

Mahatma Gandhi famously commented on this law calling it a law designed to suppress the liberty of a citizen. The presence of such a law poses a threat to a citizen’s freedom of speech and our nation’s democracy.

I’m not an anti-nationalist, but I feel scared that if the student’s of this nation are suppressed for difference of opinion today, the future students of our country would be afraid to speak in times of national crisis because of the consequences of today’s student protests.

All those against the movement by the students all over the country need to realise that none of these students are fighting for themselves. But they are standing up for what the believe is right and opposing what they believe is wrong. All those calling this uprise a political conspiracy by the opposition need to understand that these students aren’t politically motivated today.

Their only motivation is to change the situation in our nation and by suppressing them in such unfair ways all you’re doing is proving them right. They may have political aspirations in the future and they are justified to join politics because the only way to change the issues in the system is to be internally a part of that system.

I’m not an anti-nationalist, but I might be called one for writing this letter.

Yours Truly,

Simar Singh,

A Concerned 15 year old.

Courtesy: Kafila
 

The post I am 15 years old and I am not ‘anti-national’ appeared first on SabrangIndia.