Indian Campuses Under Siege
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Indian Campuses Under Siege KNOWLEDGE | RESISTANCE | LIBERATION A Report: People’s Tribunal on Attack on Educational Institutions in India People’s Commission on Shrinking Democratic Space Editorial Team Pre-Tribunal: Testimonial and Jury Amit Sengupta Panel Confirmation Lara Jesani Bondita Acharya Mathew Jacob Lara Jesani Priya Pillai Drafting Inputs Pritisha Borah Lara Jesani Cecilia Golmeih Angshuman Sharma Mangla Varma Sushovan Dhar Design and Layout Bonani Goswami Designs & Dimensions Trishna Barman L-5A, Sheikh Sarai, Phase-2, New Delhi-17 Trisha Ghoshal Dheeraj Cover Design Dhirender Rawat Kshitij Hadke Pre-Tribunal: Research Post Tribunal: Testimonial Angshuman Sarma Transcription and Finalisation Sushovan Dhar Coordination Pritisha Borah Bondita Acharya Tribunal: Coordination Post Tribunal: Testimonial Bondita Acharya Transcription Ramesh Sharma Pritisha Borah Mathew Jacob Cecilia Golmeih Lara Jesani Angshuman Sarma Rajavelu K Bonani Goswami Pritisha Borah Trishna Barman Shabnam Sengupta Neha Narayanan Akshay Kharbanda Sam Jacob Sohail Gupta Tribunal: Audio-Video Documentation Lubhawna Choudhary Ashutosh Pande Nimisha Gupta Aakriti Srivastava Karan Singhania Convenor’s Note People’s Commission on Shrinking Democratic Space (PCSDS), a national level membership-based body, was formed in the backdrop of the concerns expressed by individuals and civil society organisations on growing intolerance, rapidly shrinking democratic spaces and increasing harassment and criminalisation of human rights defenders in India. Following several meetings involving regional processes, a national convention was organised in New Delhi on May 21 and 22, 2016, when the guiding document of PCSDS was finalised and adopted and the National Working Committee (NWC) was formed. The national convention also mandated that the first two tribunals of PCSDS be held on attacks on educational institutions and attacks on human rights defenders working on issues concerning natural resources, respectively. At PCSDS’s NWC meeting held in August 2017, in Mumbai, the first ‘People’s Tribunal on Attack on Educational Institutions in India’ was announced. Following this, the process for collection of testimonies, identification of experts, identification of members for the jury panel, background research on the thematic issues and preparation work for the tribunal commenced. Over the subsequent months, members of the PCSDS secretariat and NWC connected with students and faculty across the country and visited several campuses to collect testimonies and supporting material for the tribunal. Over 120 written testimonies were collected pre-tribunal in various languages and formats. They were then translated and processed by members of the team.The documented cases were categorised under thematic heads and shared with the members of the jury panel. The Tribunal was held from April 11-13, 2018 at the Constitution Club of India, New Delhi. In the course of the three days, the esteemed jury panel heard three plenary presentations presenting the challenges to higher education in perspective, 17 expert submissions and 49 student and faculty oral depositionson thematic issues, presenting a powerful account of the situation prevailing in Indian campuses. On the last day of the Tribunal, the jury panel released an interim report of their findings before the general public. Following the Tribunal, the process of transcription of the oral depositions presented was painstakingly carried out over the coming months by the team members and reviewed by the editing team. The drafts of the testimonies were then sent to the experts, students and faculty for their approval. The process of collating the experiences Indian Campuses Under Siege shared through the testimonies and finalisation of the documents forming part of the report was also carried out. About 130 testimonies of students and faculty have been finally received through the tribunal process. The oral depositions from plenary panellists, experts and students form part of this report, which we have attempted to put together as a speaking document which shares the lived experiences in their own words. The Tribunal process has been one of immense learning and sharing. This is a testament of collective processes and efforts. The highlight of this process is the role played by the younger generation who lead, rejuvenated and pumped in energy into this tremendous effort. The courage, conviction and fortitude displayed by the students’ movements and several struggles on campuses is the shining light and hope in these times. We express our immense gratitude to the jury members, who were extremely patient, generous and receptive through the three laborious days of the Tribunal and in the preparation of the jury report and other documents. We extend our gratitude to the experts who enriched and set the groundwork for the testimonies with their poignant insights into the crisis of education. This Tribunal would not have been possible without the determination and commitment of the students and faculty, who are the real champions of the cause of higher education and the soul of this report. The NWC members from different states need a special mention for the support in identifying and facilitating the testimony documenting process. This report is the collective effort of the secretariat team, NWC members and volunteers who worked together in the spirit of comradeship and activism throughout the Tribunal while making this report an enriching experience.We hope this report serves as a valuable resource in the future, facilitates discussions inside and outside campuses and contributes towards collectively addressing the grave challenges strangling the higher education system in India. Finally, we are pained to be faced with the irreplaceable loss of one of our jury members and a luminary in the civil rights movements, Prof Meher Engineer, on April 24, 2019, days before the release of this report. We offer our deepest condolences and miss him tremendously today at the culmination of our collective journey in this tribunal process. Anil Chaudhary Convenor, PCSDS iv PREFACE BE A REALIST, DEMAND THE IMPOSSIBLE ‘I was twenty. I won’t let anyone say those are the best years of your life’. —Paul Nizan, ‘Aden Arabia’ French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre inheritance whereby the freedom of mind wrote the foreword to this brilliant short and the idea of justice is in a constant book by Paul Nizan, his Sorbonne struggle with the cold-blooded and comrade, who made a kind of triangle of relentless machinery of capitalism, neo- friendship in synthesis with critical liberalism, fascism and the neo-Nazi theory, sharp radicalism and the politics family of hydra-headed barbarians of liberation with Simone De Beauvoir, backed by the State and its repressive inside and outside the campus. The state apparatus. In that sense, every essay pulsating backdrop of the May 1968 and every testimony, in their serious uprising of students and workers in scholarship, meticulous rigour, deep France (and all over campuses in the angst and transparent honesty, reflects world) always remains alive as an unseen the immense and intense capacity of both and expressed narrative of mass and the teacher and the student to explore spontaneous resistance and the ‘great multiple zones of possibilities, to break refusal’ of conformist and totalitarian the tyranny of fear and mediocrity, to structures of thought, values and social dream about a sublime, just and life. It was a hard and protracted struggle egalitarian world, and to push the which toppled all cliches and stereotypes threshold to re-discover and cherish that and created new rainbow coalitions of dream in all its bitter and sweet realism. knowledge and relationships, including Indeed, this is not a ‘Report’. It is a ballad the affirmative and collective denial of of the barricades, a celebration of the power. And what was their slogan? Be a classroom where knowledge is liberation, realist, Demand the impossible. Nizan is a documentary of contemporary India saying precisely the same thing. Being 20 when our campuses are under siege since need not always be a rosy dream. It can 2014 under a fascist-State with their also become a rough, angry, brave, street-vigilantes and mob-lynchers unprecedented and resilient terrain of running amok. Surely, life is not infinite struggle and dogged hope, amidst elsewhere. It is here, right here, as new all-round despair and repression. scaffoldings are built and new resistance This book enters the Indian campus songs are being written. Truly, its time to landscape carrying the graffiti and oral become a realist and demand the traditions of this rebellion and this impossible. v Tribunal Jury Panel Justice (Retd) Hosbet Suresh, Former Judge, Bombay High Court Justice (Retd) BG Kolse Patil, Former Judge, Bombay High Court Prof Amit Bhaduri, Former Professor, JNU, New Delhi Dr Uma Chakravarty, Feminist Historian and Former Professor, DU, New Delhi Prof TK Oommen, Professor Emeritus, JNU, New Delhi Prof Vasanthi Devi, Former Vice-Chancellor, Manonamaniam Sundaranar University, Tirunelveli Prof Ghanshyam Shah, Former Professor, JNU, New Delhi Prof Meher Engineer, Former Director, Bose Institute, Kolkata Prof Kalpana Kannabiran, Director, Council for Social Development, Hyderabad Pamela Philipose, Senior Journalist Contents Convenor’s Note iii Preface v 1. Key Findings 1 2. Jury Report 37 3. Testimonies 49 The Perspective Prof Krishna Kumar 50 Kanhaiya Kumar 55 Prof Romila Thapar 59 Privatisation