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Chilling effect: ABVP threats have prompted Delhi colleges to apply unwritten censorship code
With the BJP in power, the party's student group has been emboldened.
The violence in and around Delhi University’s Ramjas
College on Wednesday is the latest sign that the Akhil Bharatiya
Vidyarthi Parishad, a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh affiliate, has
consolidated its grip on India’s universities in recent months.
The
ABVP’s attack on freedom of expression in universities – by silencing
students and teachers using a mix of threats and violence – began well
before the arrest of three students from Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru
University for alleged sedition in Feburary last year, and Dalit scholar
Rohith Vemula’s suicide at Hyderabad Central University the previous
month.
In fact, Delhi University had succumbed months earlier. In
August 2015, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad-led Delhi University
Students’ Union stopped a screening of the documentary, Muzaffarnagar Abhi Baki Hai at
Kirori Mal College on the North Campus. For eight months after that,
its film club could not screen anything at all, not even the Japanese
classic Seven Samurai.
“I do not think any college in
Delhi University has the nerve to invite Nivedita Menon although she
used to be very popular before,” said a teacher attending a protest at
the Delhi Police Headquarters on Thursday. Menon is a Jawaharlal Nehru
professor who has been targeted by Hindutva groups and sections of the
media for her remarks deemed to be anti-national. She was in the news
again earlier this month in connection with a conference she attended at a Jodhpur university.
Wednesday’s
violence came a day after the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad
intervened to stop a seminar titled “Cultures of Protest” at Ramjas
College at which Jawaharlal Nehru University scholar Umar Khalid, who
had been arrested for alleged sedition last year, had been invited to
speak. The police had allegedly refused to intervene when members of the
ABVP demanded that the invitation to Khalid be withdrawn.
The
seminar was eventually cancelled. But on Wednesday, when Delhi
University students attempted to take out a protest march from Ramjas
College to the Maurice Nagar police station, a 10-minute walk away, they
were attacked on the way, and faced a lathicharge and detention by the police.
Silent censorship
The cancellation of the Ramjas College seminar was not a one-off incident at Delhi University.
“Delhi
University colleges now practice a form of unwritten censorship,” said a
teacher from a North Campus college, who did not want to be identified.
“Principals are very reluctant to grant permission [for certain
events]. They feel is it too risky and fear attacks from the ABVP. There
are also other ways to scuttle programmes too. We are told seminar
halls will not be free.”
The teacher added that college
administrations are reluctant to allow even members of Pinjra Tod – a
group that fights gender discrimination in student hostels – to speak at
events.
A student of Lady Shri Ram College, which is in the university’s South Campus, agreed. “Many programmes such as seminars with Kamla Bhasin, Arundhati Roy and Dilip Simeon
had to be cancelled,” she said. “Our programme to commemorate Rohith
Vemula’s death anniversary was conducted in the park outside college.”
She
added that the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad tended to stifle
conversations on Kashmir and caste. “They do not want any dialogue,” she
said.
An MPhil student added that a seminar on Partition in Delhi University was recently cancelled too.
A protest against the ABVP in Delhi on Thursday. Photo: Shreya Roy Chowdhury
‘Fascism on campus’
On
Thursday, hundreds of students and some teachers gathered outside the
Delhi Police headquarters at ITO in East Delhi to protest against the
police who have been accused of standing by silently while members of
the ABVP beat up students on Wednesday. Several journalists and students
have complained that police personnel also joined in to assault them.
On
Thursday again, Khalsa College in North Delhi, down the road from
Ramjas college, was forced to cancel a street-play contest “after
repeated threats from DUSU [Delhi University Students’ Union]”, said
Saikat Dasgupta, staff advisor to the college’s theatre society. He
added that the police had appealed to them to call off the event in the
interest of restoring peace and normalcy in the campus.
None of
the teachers gathered at the protest outside police headquarters could
recall the last time the university saw anything like Wednesday’s
violence against faculty and students. However, many said that they were
waiting for the other shoe to drop after the chaos at Hyderabad Central
University and Jawaharlal Nehru University last year.
“This is
the face of fascism,” said Debjani Sengupta from the English Department
of Delhi University’s Indraprastha College for Women.
Said Saumyajit Bhattacharya, who teaches economics at Kirori Mal College: “It is happening in campus after campus.”
The ABVP factor
Students
allege that the police “did not touch the ABVP students” during
Wednesday’s violence because they are affiliated to the Bharatiya Janata
Party, which is in power at the Centre.
This is a refrain in
other universities too where students have accused the ABVP of misusing
the state apparatus to target specific students or campuses. Senior
politicians, BJP leaders and even the police have been accused of siding
with the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad.
For instance, in
2015, it was after a complaint from the ABVP that Union Labour Minister
Bandaru Dattatreya wrote several letters to Smriti Irani, then the Union
Minister for Human Resource Development, demanding action against
Rohith Vemula. Irani obliged, writing to Hyderabad Central University five times
in three months that year. The university subsequently suspended Vemula
in November 2015, and he committed suicide two months later.
When
Jawaharlal Nehru University was in the spotlight in February last year
over the issue of alleged anti-national slogans being shouted at an
event, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh said on Twitter that he had
given “necessary instructions to Delhi Police commissioner about what happened in JNU [Jawaharlal Nehru University]”.
Three
Jawaharlal Nehru University students – Umar Khalid, Aniban Bhattacharya
and Kanhaiya Kumar – were subsequently arrested and did time at Tihar
jail.
“They [the ABVP] can do all this with impunity because they
think their government is in power,” said Jacob George, a first year
student at St Stephen’s College.
ABVP protest in Bangalore in February. Credit: PTI
After JNU
Between
what students refer to as the “attack on JNU” last February and its
sequel at Delhi University exactly a year later, there have been several
instances of protests against certain events or simply the presence of
academics – especially those from Jawaharlal Nehru University – in other
universities. The ABVP has been directly or indirectly involved in the
majority of these incidents.
For instance, retired Jawaharlal
Nehru University sociologist MN Panini was prevented from speaking at
the Central University of Jharkhand in Ranchi in March. The organiser of
that event was briefly suspended
following protests that are believed to have been instigated by the
ABVP. Another retired Jawaharlal Nehru University professor, Chaman Lal, was prevented from speaking on Bhagat Singh at Delhi University, also in March.
Earlier this month, Rajshree Ranawat
from the English Department of Jai Narain Vyas University in Jodhpur
was suspended for inviting Nivedita Menon to speak at a conference.
Jawaharlal
Nehru University students also hold the ABVP responsible for the
disappearance of Najeeb Ahmed, a student, from the university’s campus
in October. He went missing after a scuffle with some members of the
Hindutva students’ group at his hostel.
Before JNU
Students
and teachers at several universities faced several instances of threats
and intimidation even before the Jawaharlal Nehru University
controversy flared up.
In December 2015, ABVP members at Mohanlal Sukhadia University, Udaipur, objected to a speech
on the representation of Hinduism in the writings of Western scholars
by retired Delhi University professor Ashok Vohra. The students were
offended by his quoting Indologists Paul Courtright and Wendy Doniger –
even if it was to counter their positions – and the Rajasthan higher
education minister had reportedly asked the vice-chancellor to file a police complaint against Vora.
In January 2016, the ABVP stopped journalist Siddharth Varadarajan from participating in a seminar at Allahabad University.
“Thinking
that they are just a set of hooligans is already a mistake,” said Rimli
Bhattacharya, a professor at Delhi University’s Department of English.
“We are losing space every day and the relentless dumbing down of
universities is creating a culture in which such goons can thrive.”
‘Communist conspiracy’
The
ABVP’s national spokesperson, Saket Bahuguna, dismissed the anger
against the students’ body he represents as a “conspiracy by
communists”.
“I believe in facts,” he said. “We have been
sweeping student union elections across the country.” At last count in
2016, the ABVP was present in 7,197 colleges and had a total membership
of 28.3 lakh. “We are the largest and the only credible students’ union
in the country, if not the world,” said Bahuguna.
That, for him, is enough to justify ABVP’s stand on any matter.
“Ordinary
students vote for us,” he argued. “We contested the Delhi University
Students’ Union elections last year, promising to drive out
anti-national people from the university. We won three of four seats. We
have the mandate of ordinary students for what we do.”
But there
are some gaps in that argument. The Delhi University victory, at least,
may not have been that easy if colleges like Lady Shri Ram and St
Stephen’s – there were sizeable contingents from both colleges at
Thursday’s protests – were a part of the union and voted to select its
leaders.
Bahuguna denied that the ABVP engaged in any form of
vigilantism or that large sections of ordinary students feared its
interventions.
“This is the Left’s propaganda,” he said. “All
sorts of people are called for seminars. The Kashmiri documentary
filmmaker Sanjay Kak had been invited to Ramjas too. We did not bother.
We cared about Umar Khalid because there is a court case that he shouted
slogans about India breaking into pieces.”
The Delhi Police has not filed a chargesheet against Khalid as yet.
Bahuguna said that the ABVP had objected to the screening of Muzaffarnagar Abhi Baki Hai at Kirori Mal College because “propaganda about caste and religion was being served to young, impressionable minds”.
His
reply to a question on the ABVP being involved in practically every
campus controversy over the past few years was telling. Only campuses
“where there is a presence of Left politics” have seen strife, according
to Bahuguna.
“The Left manufactures anger and discontent about
caste and religion,” he said. “People start thinking they do not have
freedom.”