As the sordid tale of morphed pictures, doctored videos, witch-hunting based on fake twitter handles and brutal violence against JNU students and faculty inside the court premises and outside begin to emerge, voices from various parts of the country and the world have affirmed their solidarity with JNU. In fact, even before the lies underlying accusations against JNU students were exposed, students, youth, cultural activists and scholars across the world questioned the crackdown on the space that encouraged debates and discussions on diverse views and where certain problematic slogans had been unanimously condemned by JNU students’ union and teachers’ association.
On 12 February a massive march took inside the campus demanding release of JNUSU president Com. Kanhaiya and withdrawal of sedition charges against other students. The march was led by the JNUTA and over 4000 students and teachers participated in the march. Besides leaders of the left, several other scholars and political leaders addressed the meeting held after the march. Disturbed by the immense support on campus with the student leaders arrested and charged, the ABVP in keeping with its destructive politics attacked Congress leader Anand Sharma inside the campus. The next day, students, faculty members, alumni and several others joined hands to form a nearly 3 km long human chain in JNU. The students and faculty of JNU have continued to stay in the ad-block, and holding a lecture series on ‘nationalism’ and the ‘idea of the nation’ in which lectures have been given by Prof. Ayesha Kidwai, Prof. Prabhat Patnaik, Prof. Nivedita Menon, Prof. G. Arunima, Prof. Vivek Kumar, noted journalist P. Sainath, among others.
Nearly 40 teachers’ associations from across campuses of this country have come out and expressed their solidarity with JNU. Teachers from some of the top universities in the world including Harvard, Oxford, Yale and Columbia have expressed their support to the JNU students. Nearly 455 faculty members from these and other universities worldwide have issued a joint statement condemning the state action on students and expressed solidarity with the JNU students. In the letter of support to JNU, they write, “JNU stands for a vital imagination of the space of the university — an imagination that embraces critical thinking, democratic dissent, student activism, and the plurality of political beliefs. It is this critical imagination that the current establishment seeks to destroy. And we know that this is not a problem for India alone”. The teachers expressed a grave concern over the unfolding situation in JNU and termed the detention of students “illegal” and “autocratic”. Noted scholars and writers like Noam Chomsky and Orhan Pamukh, besides other eminent scientists and writers across the world have also issued a strongly worded statement that says it is “evidence of the present government’s deeply authoritarian nature, intolerant of any dissent”. The letters of support have come from not just from the faculty, but even students from various universities who have sent their pictures holding the banners of ‘Stand with JNU’. Protests have been organised in cities like London in support of JNU.
Within the country, CPI(ML) and AISA organized a rally in Patna demanding release of JNUSU president and withdrawal of sedition charges against other students, of whom five are ex JNUSU office bearers. The next day a joint rally comprising of several student organizations was also taken out in Patna against the BJP-RSS-ABVP designs to malign and defame JNU. Protests were also organized in many towns including Darbhanga, Fatuha and Arwal and effigy of Prime Minister Modi was burnt.
In Kolkata, several demonstrations were organized by AISA and various cultural activists to protest against the attack on JNU. In some of these demonstrations ABVP resorted to its routine hooliganism but the protestors remained undeterred.
Similar protests by left parties, students’ organizations and progressive sections have also been organized in Chandigarh, Bhubaneswar, Mumbai, Varanasi, Udaipur, and several other places. Support has also poured in from students across universities in India such as AMU, TISS, FTII, DU, AU and several others.
More recently, three hundred and seventy-nine Indian scientists and academics have written a letter to the Vice Chancellor of JNU expressing their dismay at the recent events there. They write, “One may agree or disagree with this viewpoint — and, indeed, signatories to this letter hold different positions — but we are unanimous that students should have the right to freely discuss this issue… India is a vast country, and no one group can define what it means to be “nationalist” or “anti-national”, in specific terms of positions to hold and causes to support. The country’s fabric is strong enough to accommodate a plurality of views. It is the attempt to suppress differing viewpoints that is genuinely damaging for the country’s ‘democratic ethos”. They also castigated the university administration for allowing the witch-hunt of students. “Senior members of the government have aggressively targeted your students. The JNU administration should have protected its students against these attacks and charges that have also vitiated the police investigation. We are deeply disappointed that you have failed to carry out this responsibility”.
On 18 February, a massive solidarity march took place in Delhi in which tens of thousands of students (across campuses), faculty members, youth, progressive sections, cultural activists and common people participated. In a peaceful protest in which students carried roses, colourful banners and placards, they urged the media to stop deliberately airing fabricated news based on unverified facts, fake tweets and doctored videos which was inciting violence against JNU students and faculty. Exposing the agenda of the BJP government, the students raised the slogans of “JNU to bahaana hai, Rohith ka mudda dabaana hai” (JNU is only a pretext to bury the issue of Rohith Vemula’s institutional murder). The students affirmed that they will not let the government divert the attention from Rohith’s institutional murder and continue to demand justice for him. The students also demanded that JNUSU president be released, charges against JNU students be withdrawn and BJP MLA O.P. Sharma be arrested for violence against JNU community and sympathisers. They urged that the vicious attempts by RSS-BJP-ABVP to malign and criminalise the JNU community must be strongly resisted.
