Jawaharlal Nehru University, which was shaping up as a prestigious institution in recent decades, has today become the hub of political violence. A confrontation is on between the students and the establishment on issue after issue especially after the BJP-led government held power at the Centre. The confrontation has more to do with ideology and less with academics. A meeting called by the HRD ministry on Monday for discussions with student representatives failed and ended in a fresh confrontation between the students and the Delhi Police, resulting in arrests.
The present round of troubles started with a steep hike in fees at JNU which led to student protests. The protests also led to a fight between the pro-BJP ABVP and the well-entrenched Leftist student unions there, and ended up in a major offensive against a section of the students by a masked gang which broke open hostel doors and targeted many after dusk on January 5. The brutal attack left scores of students injured and hospitalized. Allegations are that the police on the campus did little to stop the mayhem and that Home Minister Amit Shah worked from behind the scenes.
The Modi government seems bent on facing the situation squarely, as it did in the past too when students protested against the Rohit Vemula suicide in Hyderabad Central University in 2016 and a similar offensive against the hanging of the 2001 Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru the same year. These had also led to confrontations between the leftist students and pro-BJP lawyers outside a Delhi court. This time, the nocturnal attack at the campus took place after students, as part of their protests against the fee hike, prevented varsity office staff from operating the Central Information System (CIS). As a result a sense of fear has gripped the university campus where a large section of the apolitical academic-oriented students are feeling suffocated.
A university campus is a marketplace of ideas and political views. No single ideology should exert control over students’ minds. They should be free to toy around with ideas and ideologies without being trapped in any single one. When a single ideology gets entrenched in any academic institution then confrontations are inevitable since their will be those with a counter ideology that will want to capture space too. In JNU the Left ideology has remained unchallenged for decades. This is now sought to be replaced with Right Wing ideas. The clash of ideologies is inevitable. The CAA was just a trigger. What is unfortunate is that the keepers of law too have become tools of partisan politics. And the students are ultimate sufferers.
