BJP regime has chosen Right-leaning VCs and administrators across campuses; students who don't adhere to this ideology are being targeted: Part 1 of 2-part series
Keerthana Lakshmi is in the final semester of her postgraduate course in social design at the Delhi government-funded Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD). She is required to submit a studio project worth eight credits, to be evaluated in two rounds by an external panel.
If she does not appear for these on April 29 and May 9 as scheduled, she will have to repeat the last semester — a very likely scenario at this stage.
She is one of five students suspended by the university 11 days ago, ironically for protesting against the suspension of three other students of AUD’s Kashmere Gate campus. The three, who were originally suspended for protesting the alleged ragging-related suicide attempt by a student, went to the Delhi High Court and have since had their suspension revoked.
Democratic protests
“It’s not just that we have been suspended — our student mail access has also been suspended. We can’t access any of the academic resources that the university has provided us. All this because we were democratically protesting," Keerthana Lakshmi told The Federal.
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"After the state government changed (a BJP government led by Rekha Gupta replaced an Atishi-led AAP government in Delhi in February), we can see visible changes in the university administration’s attitude towards students. A university is a space for free conversations and gatherings. Now we see barricades everywhere. If classes get over at 4 PM, the security comes immediately and locks it,” she added.
AUD Student Council member Shubhojeet Dey, a PhD student affiliated with the Students' Federation of India (SFI) who has also been suspended, claimed the AUD administration had been inspired by the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) administration, which has barred demonstrations within a 100-metre radius of the administrative block.
“Ours is a four-acre campus, unlike JNU. If you apply such a rule, it leaves us with no space. This administration is completely inaccessible. It is after a long time that AUD has a fully elected, officially recognised students’ union. We were only demanding that they talk to us about the suspension of the other three students, instead they manhandled us and suspended us pending inquiry,” he said.
National phenomenon
When The Federal contacted AUD PRO Aditya Pratap Singh, he refused to comment. Registrar Navlendra Kumar Singh disconnected the call and did not respond to messages.
Earlier, on the suspension of the five students, he had told PTI: “They hung on to my vehicle and did not allow it to move. They also blocked the vice-chancellor's car and vandalised mine. Security personnel and police had to intervene. A formal complaint has been filed. An FIR will be registered.”
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The administration going head-to-head with its students and teachers is not an isolated incident, however. In universities across Delhi and the rest of the country, students and teachers say campus democracy is under attack, with administrations taking swift action against anyone seen to be on the “wrong side”.
Test case JNU
Shortly after the BJP came to power nationally in 2014, it appointed vice-chancellors and recruited teachers with a Right-leaning agenda who went on to hold administrative positions. Students and teachers who do not adhere to this ideology are being targeted.
Nowhere is this more visible than in JNU, where former University Grants Commission chairman M Jagadesh Kumar, seen to be close to the RSS, clashed with students and teachers in a big way shortly after he took charge in 2016.
The systematic, unceasing and across-the-board assault on these that has come to characterise the present is unique in the history of Indian higher education. It is also a destruction of higher education, as democracy is part of its essential lifeblood: Prof Surajit Mazumdar, FEDCUTA
His tenure was marked by disciplinary notices being slapped on students, as seen in the sharp spike in fines collected from students — Rs 4.76 lakh between April and December 2017, three times the amount in the preceding year. As action against teachers and students increased, they approached the court, due to which JNU’s legal costs ballooned to Rs 17.72 lakh in 2018-19, as opposed to Rs 4.55 lakh in 2016-17.
Abha Dev Habib, a teacher of physics at Delhi University’s Miranda House College and secretary of the Democratic Teachers Front, said the current situation is a continuation of what began at JNU in 2016.
“Earlier, the approach was to not take any action as far as possible. Action was the last resort. But now it has become the first step in dealing with anything. And the action is selective. At JNU, we recently saw that the students’ union election committee was attacked by the ABVP (Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad), but no action has been taken against them,” she said.
Widespread malaise
Professor Surajit Mazumdar, president of the Federation of Central Universities Teachers Association (FEDCUTA) and president of the JNU Teachers’ Association, said: “Respect by administrations and governments for democratic institutions within university spaces, and of real autonomy or democratic self-governance of universities, has never been something that could be taken for granted in India.
"But the systematic, unceasing and across-the-board assault on these that has come to characterise the present is unique in the history of Indian higher education. It is also a destruction of higher education, as democracy is part of its essential lifeblood.”
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Over the past year, there have been several crackdowns on protesting students by university administrations. In February, 17 students of Jamia Millia Islamia were detained and suspended for “protesting without permission”.
Like in AUD, here too, the students were protesting the university’s order banning protests and the suspension of four PhD students for holding a commemorative event on the crackdown by the police on anti-CAA protests in 2019. Legal relief was sought once again by seven students, with the Delhi High Court staying their suspension.
Legal relief
“Without going into the veracity of submissions of either of the parties, the perusal of records itself makes the court worried about the way in which the protest being undertaken by the students is handled by the university.
"The court is not going into the reason of the protest at the moment, but the documents, as shown by the petitioners filed along with the record, prima facie show that it was a peaceful protest,” Justice Dinesh Sharma said in his observations.
When asked if she sees the incident as part of a larger pattern, Jamia Chief PRO Saima Saeed told The Federal: “I don't wish to say anything on this except that the Jamia campus is lively and abuzz with intellectually stimulating teaching-learning activities and our students are excelling in all spheres.”
Part 2, coming soon: The culture of impunity given to university administrations
