Unable to stop the ongoing assertion of students in JNU by slapping sedition charges and student leaders to jail, the Modi government has now gone back to invoking the Hyderabad model of punitive action against JNU students. In an unprecedented farcical act of ‘disciplinary action’, the JNU administration has imposed heavy penalties of Rs. 10,000 to 20,000 on some twenty students, additionally rusticating some of them for varying periods of academic year. Some students have also been evicted from their hostel accommodation and even denied entry rights into the campus. All this has been done in the name of a so-called High Level Enquiry Committee which was constituted in a most arbitrary manner violating the well established norms of the University. Even though the report was submitted to the VC in March itself, the VC chose to wait till end April when students were expected to be completely preoccupied with examinations and submission of papers thereby putting them to an added disadvantage.
But this cowardly calculation of the JNU administration has failed to deter the fighting students of JNU. Since April 27, nineteen leading student activists, including most of the victimised students, of JNU have been staging an indefinite hunger strike at the Administrative Block of JNU which has been rechristened as Freedom Square since the February crackdown of the police and the massive student-teacher resistance that followed. The hunger strike enjoys the total support of the JNU community and solidarity fasts and other solidarity actions are being organised across the country. In an encouraging expression of student-worker unity, contract workers of Mumbai Municipal Corporation collected Rs 10,000, the fine amount slapped on JNUSU President Kanhaiya Kumar. And on the 1st of May, students and workers of JNU jointly celebrated the historic May Day in support of the hunger strikers.
JNU is widely known as a bastion of the Left student movement in India. But this has been possible because of the institutionalised and deep-rooted democratic environment of the campus. This is one of the few campuses in the country where elections are held every year and elections witness a battle of ideas and not a vulgar competitive display of money- and muscle-power. The attack on JNU students is therefore an attack on the best model of campus democracy in the country. In this era of brazen commercialisation of education and the entry of foreign and private universities, JNU remains an exceptional institution of eminence and excellence where students from deprived and underprivileged sections and remote and backward regions can still acquire quality education. This has been made possible by the conscious and consistent efforts of the Left student movement and the AISA in particular to secure the full benefits of reservations in the face of a virulent anti-reservation lobby which has been quite active in the campus and has been the mainstay of the ABVP. Incidentally, a key organiser of the anti-reservation lobby was chosen to head the so-called High Level Enquiry Committee and most of the victimised students come from dalit-OBC and minority communities!
Most importantly, JNU has developed a model of student politics which concerns itself not only with the immediate world and career-related issues of students but with every major problem facing the people. JNU students have been siding consistently with the peasants and adivasis fighting against land acquisition, with the unorganised and contract workers fighting for trade union rights, with the dalit and minority communities’ quest for justice in the face of state-sponsored feudal and communal violence, with the women of the country in the battle against patriarchy, with the people of North-East and Kashmir in their battle against the draconian Armed Forces Special Powers Act. JNU student leaders have therefore been targeted by ruling establishments cutting across political boundaries. JNU leaders were arrested during the Emergency of Indira Gandhi, Chandrashekhar was killed in Siwan by RJD goons backed by Shahabuddin with the full blessings of Lalu Prasad Yadav and today JNU leaders bear the brunt of the Modi government’s attack on students and universities.
As the students of JNU wage a most crucial battle for justice and democracy, every fighting Indian must side and stand with the fighting JNU community. It is a battle India must win to thwart the fascist offensive of the Modi Government and Sangh brigade.
