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Uneasy calm in DU

Kashmir Times. Dated: 2/24/2017 10:38:23 PM

Action should be taken against those behind the violence at Delhi's Ramjas College in order to restore normalcy

An uneasy calm prevails in Delhi University's North Campus with anxiety and tension gripping colleges and hostels after two days of violence early this week. Discussions and dialogue between various groups of students are still continuing for restoration of peaceful atmosphere that should be the norm for serious academic activity. The trouble started on Tuesday when members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student organisation linked to the BJP, stormed Ramjas College to disrupt a seminar titled "Cultures of Protest" organised by its English department and the literary society. The organisers focussed attention on the participation of Umar Khalid, a student leader from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), who had been controversially booked for sedition last year in a particularly fraught ideological stand-off between the establishment and the left-leaning JNU. The protesting ABVP students forced the cancellation of not only his session at Ramjas College but also what remained of the two-day event. A day later, as a protest against the incident was organised on the DU campus, ABVP members again arrived on the gates of Ramjas College to prevent students from participating in the march. In no time, clashes erupted, with students of the college alleging violence by the ABVP members and a hands-off response from the Delhi Police. In fact, police was being seen as facilitating the activities of the ABVP students. Student politics in DU has often been edgy, but this week's events mark a dark and worrying turn and fears are there that free speech may become a casualty in the academic institutions. Fearing trouble, many students associated with the anti-ABVP protests, who live around the campus left to stay elsewhere. Unfortunately some of the students have been fearing trouble from the ABVP activists during the past one year because of their ouster from the DU campus politics. Now majority of the students are mobilising their efforts to demand that the first information report make a distinction between those who disrupted the seminar and those rallying in its defence. But the most grave consequence is the message that is being sent out about the possibility of free debate. It is a sad state of affairs that the right wing groups of students subscribing to the 'Sangh Parivar' ideologue have been allowed a free hand by the central government to take law into their hands and resort to violence as and when they deem it justified.
Unfortunately, the activities of the ABVP have been justified by those ruling the roost in the corridors of power since the BJP-led government took over at the centre. Umar Khalid was invited to speak in a session on "Unveiling the state: Regions in conflict - the war in Adivasi areas", which is reportedly based on his research on conflict in Bastar region of Chhattisgarh. It was part of a bigger programme including the seminar which was cleared by the college administration. If they are so quickly intimidated into cancelling the seminar, if the police do not rally sufficiently to protect debate on the campus, the signal goes out that students and faculty are on their own in defending the right to free and fair debate and speech. The Ramjas College incident also comes a year after the events in JNU campus when the ABVP-led the Sangh Parivar's charge against what they thought to be "anti-national". An impression has been created that the police were easily led to tow the ABVP's agenda. The aftershocks of the events that took place in JNU last year are still being felt. The institutions of higher studies including the colleges and universities are areas for intellectual learning. The colleges and universities are meant to be spaces where discussion and debate push boundaries, where students learn not only the art of provocation but also the argumentative skills to defend and oppose such provocation. Certainly, there are necessary curbs such as a bar on speech that incites violence and hate. But when a students' organisations use violence to have a seminar cancelled, and when the authorities succumb so easily, Indian academia stands diminished. Moreover, there is every apprehension that such academic activities will not be carried on in the university campuses, which have been set up for the purpose of evolution of intellectual learning.