The Big Story: A university in peril

More than two years after they were arrested on charges of sedition, student leader Umar Khalid has been rusticated and Kanhaiya Kumar fine Rs 10,000 by an inquiry panel in Jawaharlal Nehru University. It is a sorry sequel to a sorry saga. In 2016, Khalid and Kumar were among the students who unleashed a media frenzy when they were arrested for allegedly shouting anti-India slogans on campus. Footage of the alleged incident, played on loop on television channels, was later found to be doctored but the charges stuck. The media turned on Khalid with particular viciousness, branding him a “Jaish-e-Mohammad sympathiser”. Two years later, according to reports, the Delhi Police have still not made out a chargesheet in the sedition case.

Much of the episode was farcical, with whiskered generals roaring about the need for nationalism on campus and the home minister linking Khalid to Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Saeed, basing his claims on a parody Twitter account. But it helped define the Bharatiya Janata Party’s favoured bogeyman, the “anti-national”, it drew the bounds of what could be said in New India and marked out what was no longer up for question or debate. The most lasting damage, however, was perhaps done to Jawaharlal Nehru University. While the political storm swirled outside, students and teachers held programmes on campus in support of those arrested. But as an institution, the university caved in to political pressure, setting up a high-level inquiry committee to investigate the students instead of protecting them from the rising tide of unreason and bigotry. According to Khalid, this was the third time the committee set up by the university had punished him for the same alleged activities; twice, the court had set aside its decision.

In the last two years, there have been more worrying incidents as students’ and teachers’ bodies have resisted an autocratic university administration, which seemed to show signs of creeping political control. Under the watch of the new vice chancellor, there have been several allegations of political bias in academic appointments. Eyebrows were also raised when scholar-activist Madhu Kishwar, known for her loyalty to the Narendra Modi government, was appointed as representative for the School of Arts and Aesthetics at the Academic Council, despite the objections of the dean concerned and her arguably slim credentials for the job. A growing authoritarianism was also on display earlier this year when the university administration abruptly removed seven deans and chairpersons for failing to implement new attendance rules. The spaces for dissent and critical thinking, which have long characterised Jawaharlal Nehru University, seem to be closing up.

It could spell a worrying decline for the university, one of India’s leading centres of learning for the liberal arts. As historian Romila Thapar writes, the university was imagined as an institution that combined social justice with the freedom to debate and a rigorous questioning of received ideas. In the sedition case, it has failed to live up to this vision.

The Big Scroll

  •   Shoaib Daniyal interviewed Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya shortly after they were released from jail and tracked the media frenzy around sedition charges.  
  •   Ipsita Chakravarty listened in on Kanhaiya Kumar’s speech as he returned to Jawaharlal Nehru University and traced how the sedition drama rejuvenated campus politics there.  
  •   Romila Thapar looks back on the man who built Jawaharlal Nerhu University.  

Punditry

  1. In the Indian Express, Tilak Devasher on how the Pakistani Army’s political tinkering is setting the stage for the electoral rise of fundamentalists.
  2. In the Hindu, Gopalkrishna Gandhi on why we need governors.
  3. In the Economic Times, Sujoy Chakravarty on why India’s middle class is central to its developmental narrative.

Giggles

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