JNU vandalised

INDIA’s best social sciences university, which produced a Nobel laureate, has been vandalised. The Central government, which controls the Delhi Police, watched while masked goons barged into Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) on Sunday evening to beat up students and teachers. This attack was obviously planned to destroy one of those rare world-class educational institutions post-colonial India has built. A revered seat of learning has been defiled and turned into a place where thugs roam around with iron rods to break the heads and spirit of brilliant young women. JNU Students’ Union president Aishe Ghosh, with blood flowing out of her broken head, is the new face of JNU. Every parent, now, will think twice before sending his children to a battle zone, where the State stands guarantee for the safe passage of vandals, who, after their dance of death, walked out in droves, clubs in hand, spouting abuses, with the street lights switched off and the police in attendance.

JNU students have always been responsible rebels, who grew up to run the system like Foreign Minister S Jaishankar, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and former Director, Intelligence Bureau, Asif Ibrahim. There is a famous picture of CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury, as JNUSU president, reading out a charter of demands to the then PM Indira Gandhi and she in turn listening to it with maternal amusement. That picture told the story of the covenant between JNU and the Indian State. There were aberrations: JNUSU president DP

Tripathi was imprisoned during the Emergency and Chandrashekhar Prasad was gunned down in Siwan by Lalu Yadav’s goons.

Despite provocations, JNU always remained ready for a structured debate — logical, rebellious and intellectually fashionable. Now, the registrar blames JNUSU for the violence, claiming it had stopped students from getting registered for the new semester. If it is true, JNUSU has grievously erred in denying ABVP activists their democratic right to attend classes and oppose the strike against hostel fee hike. But that does not absolve the Vice Chancellor of this terrible failure of letting a barbarous attack happen on the campus; he has lost his moral right to continue.

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