The Winter of Our Discontent
After Prof Jagadesh Kumar took over the JNU Campus as VC,
the scholarly community had quite a few shocks. To tell the truth, every day
was a shock. Almost as soon as he had come in, some extreme left wing students
decided to test the temperature. So they invited some Kashmiri youth, mourning
the death of their cultural hero, Burhan Wani, and they danced around a bonfire, letting off
their sorrow and loss with clapping and rants. Now, among young people, this
can be a sign of normalcy, but the paid right wing press swooped in and
complicated the case by taping
fictitious footage, so clumsily, that it was easily recognizable. Then they
accused JNU students collectively of being traitors to India.
Every time someone says Pehan Chooth or sister fucker, on the streets, he should
be arrested by the same count, since the truth value of abuse and curses are by
the same count to be authenticated.
Once the JNUSU President was taken prisoner and bundled off
in a jeep to jail, and then others too, who were seen to be equally incendiary,
the police arrived in campus as if this was their rightful home, and the tv
crew also set up outside the gates, filming endlessly. The years passed with
great difficulty, as most of the time, 6500 students and 550 teachers were
constantly protesting, while fulfilling their academic obligations as well as
they could. The right wing teachers actually
condoned by their silence, the beating
up of a Muslim PhD student, Najeeb, who
never was seen again, and whose mother has become an honorary resident of the
kerbstones of JNU, now that the steps to VC office are out of bounds to
demonstrators.
The rightwing administration and right wing wardens and
right wing Vice Chancellor were given a clean chit by the CBI, who maintained
that the missing student Najeeb had joined the Islamic State! We were already
living in Amit Shah and Modi’s Gujeratified
India, where Muslims are abhorred, and everything is done to make Aliens of
them. The democratic principles of India are not so hard to undo, for apparently one samosa a day with bajrang dal satsang, is sufficient
to include or exclude citizens, and so
the protests by intellectuals who honor the Indian Constitution, continued.
Now in November 2019,
we have reached the ultimate culmination of the preceding months, which have
brought us to such desperation, that the teachers union supports the student
shut down. Many are alumni, who have known halcyon days, and Professor Sapori, the previous VC, is
remembered with affection because the students never protested during his term,
as they do continually now. Prof Sapori
was always available to students and teachers, used a five rupee ball pen to
sign classified papers and petitions.
Roland Barthes talks about hearing and listening, and Prof Sapori, always heard, and listened to students. He
once read a paper to us on Scientific
Collaborations, and engaged his audience with his statistical evidence that
there could be 100 collaborators on a 30 page journal paper, as API points
would go to each. Now the mediocrity of Prof Jagadesh Kumar can be seen in his
ability to see Education as a money making project, and his illegal statute
breaking ploys are recorded at every turn by the press and the academic
community in JNU.
Each one of us can individually chronicle the odd mess we have
landed in. Why else would there be demonstrations every day in the streets,
where 7000 students regardless of party affiliations turn up. Each story is one of terrifying proportions.
No tribunal can collate now the degree of violence that has been perpetuated on
the community of scholars in JNU who have lived peacefully writing their books
and research papers, supervising their students, and taking their classes. 48
teachers were chargesheeted for peacefully demonstrating, picked out purposely by fellow colleagues who
being RSS members had been trained to do what the Master said. Anyone who
remembers the photo of Narendra Modi in khaki culottes as a young man, will
balk at the idea that Pol Pot and he could have any resemblances. Yet, the
image of pellets hitting small children in Kashmir, so that honeymooners can
visit Sri Nagar fills one with shock. Lies
now have become the common signs of the induction of the common people
into this world where Ram Lalla rules, but children die continuously. The
statistics of loss are hard to come to terms with. The JNU students are
striving to make education the symbol of liberation, autonomy and choice. The
Humanities have been vilified because the principle of free choice is seen to
be an impossible goal. Money is the only symbol of success, and the Scientists
believe that the poor have no rights because they could not even hope to climb
the ladder to prosperity. Such casteist people say, If you don’t have money, then
don’t come back next semester. If you don’t
have money to pay your hostel mess bill, then don’t eat.
So the students symbolically shut down the University, because
they and the teachers too, and the 4000
clerks will all soon be without tasks or jobs, if the present conduct of the
Vice Chancellor is condoned. If they could shut down the Planning Commission,
why not JNU? Is that what the people want? We will know soon.
