Campus fires —right, left, centre

Talk about students, talk about idealism, justiciable action, inaction, with(out) a course. Revolutions, democracies, (crony) capitalism, existentialism, political pornography and endless discussions on love and revenge — what have you? Yet university students haven’t brought about revolutions, they have ignited all of them, from as latest as the Arab Spring to a Leftwing sweep in parts of Latin America and Europe and Asia. Closer home over the last few months, our democracy has come to be recognized as a system under stress. So, is it a systemic failure or is it that yet another chapter of Right versus Left is being written through street demonstrations over Jawaharlal Nehru University’s latest episode of a student leader Kanhaiya Kumar being charged with sedition? 

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“The slapping of charges of ‘sedition’ …is a matter for a separate discussion. More importantly though, ‘sedition’ as a crime has no place in a modern democracy, there is no justification whatsoever for provisions that criminalise and silence dissent and ethical challenges to the dominant order. These provisions are unconstitutional and anti-democratic. This colonial era provision loyally upheld by India was in the meanwhile repealed in the United Kingdom in 2009,” writes Nivedita Menon, a feminist scholar and a JNU professor, in a leading daily. 

There’s a contrarian view. “There have been so many unacceptable student activities over the years. Internal inquiry committees often give the accused students a clean chit because of similar ideological affiliations. The result is that you have anti-national slogans on the campus,” says ABVP’s Delhi state secretary Saket Bahuguna who is also a JNU alumnus. 

All of it appears JNU-centric, but is it? “The flare-up began with Pune’s Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) students’ agitation earlier last year. The students of the country’s premier film education centre went an indefinite strike from June 12 protesting the Information & Broadcast Ministry’s appointment of TV actor-turned-politician Gajendra Chauhan as chairman of the FTII,” says Amit Sengupta, a former JNU students’ union president and associate editor of Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC) in Delhi. The agitation, supported by Leftwing All India Students’ Association (AISA), the Kolkata-based Satyajit Ray Film Institute and JNU students lingered on for over 139 days. In the end there seemed a new beginning. Vikas Urs, student representative who was a part of all the meetings with the governing council of the institute, said, “We started off by asking who Gajendra Chauhan is. The question stirred the entire nation. We were subjected to arrests. However, our message went out to the government. After nine meetings since they were unable to resolve the issue, we realized that they don’t have the mandates to take a decision. Today, after 139 days, we have decided to go back to academics with immediate effect and will continue to protest through our films, scripts, music and art.” 

Universities and institutes of higher learning are supposed to be nurseries for higher goals of life, not just centres for generating jobs. “Therefore, there should be assimilation of even extreme, non-conforming ideas,” says Sengupta. 

But things are frequently going from one extreme to another. In 2009, when ultra-Left ideologue Kobad Ghandy was arrested under Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, the police came out with a list of three senior doctors from AIIMS and some JNU research scholars. In May 2014, GN Saibaba, a professor of Delhi University, was arrested by Maharashtra Police for his alleged links with Maoists. Then there’s a tragic case of former JNU leader Chandrashekhar Prasad who was killed in broad daylight while addressing a public meeting in Bihar’s Siwan district in 1997.

 There seems a vacuum in the emerging leadership space; instances of student leaders becoming national leaders or statesmen are few and far between. This is despite the fact the country has had a string of national-level leaders — pre and post-Emergency — who came from universities/colleges. There are multiple questions and multiple answers. Tick the one you like as you read on reports from various states and Delhi, of course: 

Vacuum in Punjab

Universities and colleges continue to be frozen in the time zone of the 1980s when student elections were banned in Punjab. Though the violent era of the ’80s and ’90s, in which a section of students was engaged in separatist activities, is a thing of past, no ruling dispensation has taken steps to revoke the ban. 

A student body is elected on the Punjab University campus, but this does not happen in the colleges affiliated to it. Students’ elections were banned in 1984 when Punjab sank deep into trouble. Despite opposition from the administration, it was only partially revoked in 1997. 

There are several politicians, who have joined national-level politics. Among them are Prem Singh Chandumjra, Kuljit Nagra, Bir Devinder Singh, Balwant Singh Ramoowalia, Jagmeet Brar and others.

A closer look gives you the impression that engagement of students in debates on politics, social, economic, modern state apparatus, and structural changes in the economy have almost ceased to exist. Kulbir Singh, who was elected president of the Punjabi University in 1982, says elections should be held in universities and colleges on a regular basis. “If Assembly and Lok Sabha elections can be held in the state, why not in state universities,” he asked.

Ideologies collide in UP

When Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, the youngest CM of the country, came to power in 2012, one of his first orders was to restore direct elections to student unions under the Lyngdoh Committee recommendations. However, despite a visibly enabling environment under the Samajwadi Party, state universities have remained without students elections.

The Mayawati government in 2007 imposed a ban on the elections for the state’s 13 universities and 242 government degree colleges. On a writ petition by a Lucknow University student, the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court has stayed the elections. The university has, meanwhile, finalized a proposal for indirect elections. According to Proctor Dr Nishi Pandey, for a large university with more than 25,000 students the indirect system will work better as direct elections lead to anarchy and violence. 

The 119-year-old Allahabad University recently made history by electing a woman president for the students union. Independent candidate Richa Singh has, however, been surrounded by controversies ever since she was elected in 2015.

Besides her all the other four office-bearers are BJP-backed ABVP members who had invited firebrand Gorakhpur MP Yogi Adityanath to inaugurate the newly elected students union. Richa opposed it by going on a hunger strike and even suffering a fracture when attacked.

It was in retaliation that the ABVP elected members saw to it that the seminar organized by Richa Singh on January 20 on ‘Media, Democracy and Freedom of Speech’ was cancelled.

At Benaras Hindu University (BHU) also, the stark contrast in the reaction of students was visible when last month the contract of IIT-BHU professor and Magsaysay award winner Sandeep Pandey was prematurely terminated for alleged anti national activities. 

Hyderabad hotbed

Why did Rohith Vemula, a Dalit research scholar at the University of Hyderabad (UoH), have to die? The circumstances have raised disturbing questions over caste inequalities, restrictions on freedom of speech and callous administrative response in the seats of higher learning. The agitating students UoH are now planning to launch a nation-wide movement demanding enactment of ‘Rohith Act’ on the lines of ‘Nirbhaya Act’ to put an end to caste discrimination in colleges and universities.

Ground Zero: JNU

“JNU allows you to question caste and ideology and deconstruct ideas. It also gives you space to disagree,” says JNU student Saumya Mani Tripathi. “JNU is capable of managing the fringe or extreme ideas,” says Ajay Kumar Patnaik, JNU Teachers Association president, adding the fringe does not have mainstream support. Inquiry committees may be constituted in case of specific incidents and everyone should be free to approach the committee. 

“Critical thinking, debates and discussions are essential. But the red line should not be crossed,” says Bupinder Zutshi, JNU registrar.

There is freedom of expression and space to protest anything. At times there are protests and counter protests on the campus. If anything goes out of hand, the JNU administration intervenes.  So did JNU's internal investigating mechanism fail? The fact is that the internal mechanism has not got its chance; it was overtaken by events. It’s simply a clash over the definition of nationalism between the Left-dominated JNU and the ABVP – the student wing of the ruling BJP at the Centre.

Sparks in Maharashtra

Elections to students’ councils were scrapped after a student, Owen D'Souza from the National Students Union of India, was murdered in 1992. Since then, colleges nominate members of the students' councils on the basis of their academic performance.

While the end of student politics brought peace, it also ended dissent and dialogue on the campuses. Students’ wings of most parties have a token presence in most colleges, though. “There are no passionate debates and intellectual arguments in most colleges now,” said Abhishekh Majumdar, a professor in a Mumbai college. He said students now come with specific careers in mind and most of them are busy with coaching classes and corporate training programmes.

The Kalina Campus of Mumbai University and other institutions such as Tata Institute of Social Sciences apart from the Indian Insitutute of Technology have vibrant students’ bodies like hostel committees and hold debates and discussions on important topics. 

More of ban in HP

Over a dozen student leaders from Himachal Pradesh University (HPU) have made it to the assembly and Parliament. But student elections have been banned in HPU and its 110 affiliated colleges for the last two years, for fear of violence. Moreover, there has been a serious talk of banning teachers from taking part in political activities. Vice Chancellor ADB Bajapi is being stoutly opposed for taking such a step. 

The Red brigade has dominated the HPU student elections since 1978. The year 2001 was an exception when the ABVP managed to wrest all four posts of the student body. "Universities are centres of ideological churning, there should be political vibrancy or else we'll move from democracy to dictatorship," says Deputy Mayor Tikender Panwar. 

Kanhaiya’s Bihar

“We have political genes in our family. Kanhaiya has groomed himself on the political ideology of Marxism. I am proud of him,” says Kanhaiya’s bed-ridden father Jaishankar Singh, who was the sole bread winner for the family. Kanhaiya’s mother Meena Devi works as Anganwadi Sevika. “My son has never disrespected anyone, how can he go against the nation? He is implicated in false cases.” 

State secretary of AISF, student wing of Communist Party Sushil Kumar, said: “Officials know the power of student unions, so they don’t allow such elections.”  

Seema Kaul in Delhi, Sarbjit Dhaliwal in Chandigarh, Shahira Naim in Lucknow, Shubhadeep Choudhury in Bangalore, Shiv Kumar in Mumbai, Suresh Dharur in Hyderabad, Pratibha Chauhan in Shimla & Jitendra Kumar Shrivastava in Patna. Coordination and anchoring: Prashant Saxena

Ideological cauldron in emerging India

• Hyderabad: Jan 17: Rohith Vemula, a research scholar at University of Hyderabad, committed suicide. The suicide note was found in a room shared by him with one Umma Anna, as Vemula was expelled along with five others from the hostel by the university authorities. The university reportedly stopped paying him the fellowship of Rs 25,000 per month.
• Pune: June 12, 2015: FTII students protest appointment of Gajendra Chauhan as the premier film and TV institute’s chairman. The protest continues for 139 days.
• Allahabad: Mid-2015: Students’ union first woman president Richa Singh heckled for refusing to let BJP MP Yogi Adityanath inside the campus. Some students disrupt a talk organized by Richa on freedom of speech.
• Delhi: May 10, 2014: Professor G.N. Saibaba, a Delhi University professor, was arrested on by the Anti-Naxal unit of the Maharashtra police for his alleged links with Maoists. Wheelchair-boundSaibaba was deputy secretary of Revolutionary Democratic Front. 
• Kolkata: Aug 22, 2015: Students of Presidency University gheraoed V-C after several students were allegedly manhandled on campus by the police during Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's visit. The students were protesting SFI leader Sudipta Gupta’s death allegedly in police custody.
• Kolkata: April 13, 2012: Jadavpur University professor, Ambikesh Mahapatra, arrested for allegedly spreading “anti-Mamata Banerjee” cartoons on the internet. The state police  charged Ambikesh Mahapatra with cyber crime offences.

There’s a real threat to freedom of expression in educational institutes. Policy makers, university academics and administrators must formulate systems to ensure that the democratic space on the campuses is enlarged so that no student is alienated and pushed to a point to think that death is more liberating than life.

Prof G Haragopal retired faculty member of university of hyderabad

The law is merely prevention, not a cure. For a cure, you need to bring about a change in attitude and understanding among youth from diverse social upbringing. We need to develop pedagogy to sensitize students, make them develop sympathy and believe in equality and fraternity.

Sukhadeo Thorat ex-ugc chairman and professor emeritus at jnu 

JNU is capable of managing the fringe or extremist elements. Inquiry committees may be constituted in case of specific incidents and anyone should be free to approach the committee with one’s account.

Ajay Kumar Patnaik, president of the jnu teachers association