Saturday, November 23, 2019

The Students and Teacher Unions Struggle in Jawaharlal Nehru Univeristy.


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.

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