Never support any unconstitutional activity inside campus: JNU teachers association

First it was a maverick show on TV that puts down JNU students as anti-national, followed by buoyant Delhi Police raiding the campus and arresting the JNU Students Union leader saying it has enough support to show that he had shoulted against India and on Friday, police enter even girls hostels looking for fugitives. He went on to prod me further in an effort to gauge my political alignments, but I fobbed him off with the line that has become my favourite description of JNU-that it’s too liberal for the leftists, too left for the liberals.

Senior Congress leader Sharma had claimed that he was physically attacked by ABVP activists on JNU campus while he was returning with Rahul Gandhi after attending a protest meeting held by students.

Training his guns on the government, he said, “They will not understand that in crushing you, they are making you stronger”.

Last month a young scholar from India’s lowest Dalit caste committed suicide, sparking protests over social discrimination after he was suspended from Hyderabad University for allegedly assaulting the head of the student wing of Modi’s party.

The legal implications of the police crackdown on the campus apart, JNU student politics over the decades has been unique in two ways: its freedom from money and muscle, and its propensity to see ideological debates and dissent as an integral part of politics. People who suppress the voice of this institute are anti-national.

Referring to the JNU incident, the top RSS leader said, “They were supporting and eulogising a person (Afzal Guru) who was executed by the verdict of the top most court of the country”.

Leader of Opposition in RS Ghulam Nabi Azad said whatever charges of anti-nationalism and sedition were slapped against the students by the Home Ministry and the Delhi Police, they were very serious.

JNU Students’ Union joint secretary Saurabh Kumar Sharma, who is the only ABVP member among the four office-bearers, said, “These are all tactics to tarnish our image and attack us as we have objected to their anti-national activities”.

Rahul Gandhi addressing students at JNU. A professor of the Linguistics department said the “university is doing an inquiry, police is probing the case, the Delhi Government has also ordered a magisterial inquiry”.

Scores of JNU students formed a human chain and raised slogans, demanding that sedition charges against varsity’s students’ union president Kanhaiya Kumar be dropped.

They said police picked them up while they were on-route for a performance in CP.

It also strongly condemned the biased national media reporting on the issue. Abetment of any kind of anti-national activity is a punishable offence.