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When I joined as a student, I was amazed at the miraculous absence of any violence in the electoral politics of JNU. The system is managed exclusively by students, without the aid of police or the administration, involving a model of politics that revolves around informed debate, an activism based on secular ethics, the complete absence of money and muscle power, creative campaigns, and a culture of free debate
Tucked away in the sylvan surroundings of Aravalli’s foothills, the picturesque campus of the Jawaharlal Nehru University—otherwise an oddity in the landscape of Delhi—is a home away from home for scholars from all over the country. I passed out from the university a little more than a decade ago, and yet like any other student who has ever stepped onto its hallowed ground, I carry a bit of JNU inside me. Often, and recently more so, I have wondered if JNU were the Hogwarts of India—a truly magical place—and I am certain that I am not the only one to have had such a fancy.
It is not surprising though that such an association with J.K. Rowling’s fictional school should naturally arise; the ascendancy of the incumbent regime in Delhi and the gathering in strength of ominous dark clouds of doom over the once-pristine horizon of JNU seem to have coincided. Much like the heroic resistance put up by the fearless teachers and students of Hogwarts, against the evil machinations of Voldemort, JNU too has defiantly picked up the gauntlet against the might of Modi’s government, transforming itself into a veritable battlefield in the process.
The Jawaharlal University saga begins with the dramatic events of February 9, 2016—the alleged chanting of the now-infamous azaadi slogans on the campus that shook the political firmament of the nation and forced a needless debate over nationalism upon the entire country. What followed was the unsavoury arrest of students on trumped-up charges of sedition, and a sinister campaign to malign the finest institution of higher learning in India. The shockwave of that epochal incident has not yet subsided. It has engulfed more territory in its sweep, with Ramjas College—the institution where I currently teach—falling prey to a similar bout of sloganeering in the month of February this year, as if to mark the anniversary of the JNU episode. With premier universities getting afflicted by the deadly virus of azaadi, and the student unrest mounting since the death of Rohit Vemula, the government has assiduously fought back, using nationalism as its weapon of choice to reorder spaces of democratic dissent into safe havens of conformity.
It is in the above backdrop that the recent proposal by the JNU vice chancellor to install a decommissioned tank within the university campus—ostensibly to instill a sense of nationalism in the students and remind them of the sacrifices made by soldiers—has to be evaluated. We should remember though that this latest gimmick is in continuation of a series of steps taken by a vindictive administration to undermine the ethos of the university. The embedded media did everything to make the students, already reeling under the accusatory gaze of the government, labour under manufactured guilt of the so-called February fiasco by conspiratorially turning the civil society against them.
Not to be left behind, the university administration vengefully froze admissions to M. Phil and PhD in many courses on flimsy grounds, scrapped its unique reservation policy with deprivation points to female candidates and students from backward regions—a policy specifically designed to make JNU more inclusive and more representative of India—slapped fines on dissenting students, and served notices to many teachers. More generally, the government, too, has been on a scholarship-cutting spree and has gleefully abolished many advanced centers of study and research, mostly in social sciences and humanities, across universities, citing a lack of funds.
Evidently, this orchestrated onslaught was not enough to satisfy the bloodlust of the powers that be. It seems as though the saffron government is hell-bent on meting out exemplary punishment for the historical wrongs that JNU has committed in their reckoning—the purported adventurism of ideas, its pitched resistance to unlawful authority, a refusal to sit on the fence and partake in the prevailing culture of condonement, its fierce independence of the mind, its unflinching progressivism on social issues, an infuriating obsession with a nineteenth-century old economic theory, and above all, a unique capacity to lend a moral voice to the struggles of the oppressed. In other words, the ideological irreconcilability between the Hindu Right and the Left-dominated JNU is a Gordian knot that simply refuses to unravel. The panacea for all ills, according to the vice chancellor, unfortunately, is the embellishment of the campus by an ornamental Tank, mooted obviously at the behest of the government, and egged on by war-mongering Generals.
Syed Areesh Ahmad
I am not suggesting for one moment that Jawaharlal Nehru University is free of problems. It has always had its share of troubles, as any university has. The lofty perch of its idealism does not hide the many holes it carries on the terrain of reality. The espousal of ideas is not met adequately with practice. The Left, though it has been historically dominant, is not the only political voice on campus. Its long control of student politics is not without blemishes, the most prominent of them being allegations of caste discrimination that has eventually led to the rise of an Ambedkarite movement of late.
Also, the Left is not a monolith but has many shades of red, some of them virulently opposed to the policies of the more popular outfits. The Rightwing groups, too, enjoy some support and have become emboldened with the rise of Modi. There is also a plethora of independent groups, cultural associations and free-thinkers vying for political relevance on the campus. In a sense, it is an erroneous essentialisation to stereotype the vibrant political terrain of JNU exclusively in terms of the Left, which the mainstream media knowingly propagates so as to demonise it as an anti-national space by building the myth of communist support for naxalite violence.
However, what all former and current students would attest to unequivocally is that JNU is a campus like no other. When I joined as a student, I was amazed at the miraculous absence of any violence in the electoral politics of JNU. The system is managed exclusively by students, without the aid of police or the administration, involving a model of politics that revolves around informed debate, an activism based on secular ethics, the complete absence of money and muscle power, creative campaigns, and a culture of free debate. Compare this with the state of student politics in any other university of India.
The presidential debates and counting of votes are major events in the university and present an impressive spectacle—bitter rival groups clash but with slogans. It is a marvel of democracy that one has to see to believe. The other equally significant achievement of the ‘anti-national’ JNU has been in ensuring a relatively safe campus for women. It was one of the first institutions to set up a committee against sexual harassment in India, in pursuance of the guidelines laid down by the famous Vishakha judgment. However, more than the legal apparatus, it was the socialisation on campus and the awareness created by students themselves that led to this revolutionary change. Outsiders would gape at the sight of girls taking a late-night stroll, all by themselves, on the deserted ring road inside the campus—something that is still impossible for girls to do in Delhi University.
The moot point here is why ornamental weaponry that adorns many schools and campuses across the country has failed to instill values amongst students. Why was it that tanks or fighter planes—imposing as they might look—are powerless in ensuring a campus which can pride on diversity, tolerance, democracy and gender justice as JNU legitimately can? Can nationalism be strait-jacketed to mean just military pride? If the installation of a tank can do anything even remotely similar to what JNU has achieved, then they should be put up everywhere. To my mind, the real reason why this proposal is a signal to society at large that JNU is an anti-national space, since it embodies the values that it does, in contrast to the ruling nationalist-militarist ideology of Hindutva. How can the last bastion of dissent be allowed to remain in a burgeoning sea of conformity? All this talk about honouring soldiers is hogwash as JNU already is intimately associated to the National Defence Academy and gives degrees to its pass-outs. The proposal is symbolically punitive therefore, and seeks to show JNU its place in the new terrain of post-secular politics in India.
There are many contestations that are inter-woven in the tank proposal. At the outset, the very purpose of a university is called into question. The Sangh Parivar has a rather narrow view of a university, which is conceived basically as an instrument to the larger project of Hindu nationalism, hence it is not imagined as an autonomous space where criticality is nurtured or celebrated. To put mildly, the Hindutva view of a university is to see it as an extension of the state—or worse, as an ancillary of the government—with a function to reinforce state-ideology. Lost in the rubble is the nuance that the state may be occupied by forces that promote transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich, or by agents of social oppression and injustice.
Opposition to the government is understood as opposition to the nation-state and what has transpired recently on many university campuses bear witness to this fact. Such a skewed idea of a university works in tandem with an increasing militarisation of the public sphere where regimentation in thought and obedience to authority—as is characteristic of military discipline—are values which define nationalism. In such an imagination, territory-fetishism overtakes and emasculates the idea that it is the people who make the nation. The valour of the army is institutionalised to such a crescendo that the principal truth that the army is for the people and not vice-versa is mystified in a cacophony of heightened jingoism. The reason why JNU is resisting tanks on the campus has to be understood in this context.
It is ironical that the Jawaharlal Nehru—the man in whose memory JNU is named—had a diametrically opposite view of a university as a space of free-debate and dissent where even the absurd should be tolerated. The idea of a public sphere a la Kant—where the use of reason is free and unhindered even in the face of the might of the government or the entrenched structures of social power—is what defined Nehru’s conception of a university. JNU was built on that vision, and even though it ran into confrontation with the Congress—most notably during the Emergency years—its independence was not shattered by hostile governments possibly in deference to Nehru’s exhortations.
The recent attacks on JNU are unprecedented, hitting at the very core of what a university is supposed to be. These tanks, in a manner of speaking, are not just tanks but figurative bulldozers levelling to ground the pillars on which the grandiose edifice of JNU stands. As a former student, I am proud of the way in which the JNU community has responded to the attempted mutilation of its being. Literally under siege, the university has taught the meaning of nationalism and democracy to an entire nation by courageously holding open lectures and educating society about the pitfalls of fascism. It has admirably managed to instil better values amongst students and the larger society much more deeply than any gaudy display of weapons can.
The Hogwarts analogy with which I began makes greater sense to me as I conclude. To indulge in this political fantasy a bit more, could it be that Nehru’s spirit might play a Dumbledore for JNU? To the resistance, Nehru must never be a mere relic of the forgotten past, but a trophy that has miraculously acquired a new-found glint—not in the dirt and the grey of its own decaying substance, but—in the eyes of those who wish to reclaim the university space. The fact remains that beyond all his failings, Nehru managed to nurture and bequeath to us a democratic India and a vibrant culture of dissent flourishing in universities that were nourished on his vision. The attempt to substitute Nehru with Savarkar, not just in our imaginations of a university but also the nation, is the defining battle of our times. For Hindutva to succeed, Nehru’s India will have to be dismantled, unraveled thread-by-thread and violently at that. Although his memory has faded, his ideas and spirit lives on inextricably intertwined with our civilization. The battle is on. The turf is JNU. The tanks are rolling, but it will be a while before Nehru is exorcised from our consciousness, from our universities.
Syed Areesh Ahmad is a former student of JNU and currently an assistant professor at Delhi University, Ramjas College, teaching political philosophy
