The research paper “Dalit Counterpublic and Social Spaces on Indian Campuses” published in 2020 argued that political activism was watered down across three major Indian campuses in the years after 2013. One of the universities discussed by the paper’s author Kristina Garalytė, a professor at Vilnius University in Lithuania, is the English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU) in Hyderabad. Adding to Kristina’s arguments in the paper, several students from EFLU remark that the University administration has been suppressing dissent for a long time and uses various nefarious means to do so.
Across party lines, EFLU students have been protesting against the sexual assault of a woman student on campus and calling for the resignation of both the proctorial board and the Vice Chancellor Suresh Kumar. In an attempt to clamp down on the protests, a police complaint was filed by the University Proctor T Samson on Thursday, October 19, naming 11 students. The First Information Report (FIR) stated that the students intended “to arouse communal feeling and create disharmony”.
Who gets to access spaces?
“The EFLU administration has been doing similar and far worse things for a very long time now. This is hardly a new story. It isn’t just protests that are silenced, but any event that is not organised by the administration,” remarked another Muslim student who completed his Master's degree from the University in 2023. However, the student added, any event organised by the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), an affiliate of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), is easily granted permission.
An example that the student cited was an event sponsored by the ABVP and the Vidyarthi Seva Samithi (VSS) on February 12, 2023. Originally arranged to be held at the Open Amphitheatre on campus, the venue was changed to Keshav Memorial High School in Narayanaguda after several protests. “The running joke is that the space is, in effect, a ‘closed’ amphitheatre as we weren’t allowed to access it for a long time. But the ABVP event, titled ‘Students’ experience in inter-state living’, was granted permission,” he added. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP K Laxman was the chief guest while Swamy Maralpura, ABVP’s South Central organising secretary, was the keynote speaker for the event.
An EFLU student associated with the left-wing Students Federation of India (SFI) pointed this reporter to a series of circulars through which the administration promoted the events organised by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led Union government.
In a notice issued on January 24 this year, students were invited to the New Academic Block (NAB) to watch a live telecast of Prime Minister Narendra Modi interacting with students in Delhi during the Pariksha pe Charcha event. A circular issued on April 28 promoted the 100th episode of PM Modi’s Mann ki Baat, and was screened live at the University’s multipurpose hall. On July 27, the administration invited students to attend the live telecast of PM Modi inaugurating the celebrations for the Akhil Bharatiya Shikshe Samagam, which coincided with the third anniversary of the New Education Policy 2020. The event was also live telecast at the University’s New Academic Block (NAB).
A student commenting on the above-listed screenings said, “There is a clear back channel between the administration and the ABVP. Any event that they wish to organise is given a free pass. On the other hand, the events proposed by other student political organisations are suppressed.” Another added, “When students celebrated the birth anniversaries of Kerala social reformer Ayyankali and Dravida Kazhagam leader Periyar in August and September this year, there were attempts by security officials in EFLU to hinder the event by constantly questioning students, asking them to shut down.”
“A Feminist Collective at EFLU had tried to arrange for a talk on sexual assault by women’s rights’ lawyer Flavia Agnes in March 2015 post the gang rape of a post-graduate student in November 2014. At the last minute, the then Proctor Prakash Kona denied permission for the event even though Agnes had reached Hyderabad. The talk was then shifted to a hall in Osmania University campus. This triggered the culture of seeking permission for talks and other events at EFLU which up till then hadn’t witnessed this kind of culture,” a member of the Collective said.
In 2022 alone, permission for a Queer rally during Queer week was denied by the Proctor as was permission for a film club to screen films on September 29. A conference on Humanities and Social Sciences for undergraduate students was denied with the explanation that “BA students are immature and there wouldn’t be a slot available for MA students.” In April 2023, the Students Organising Committee wrote to the Proctor asking to conduct a musical night. While permission was seemingly granted, the event was forcefully stopped by the adminstration just before the scheduled time. Every student TNM reached out to said that the administration has tried to suppress events on progressive politics even as ABVP was given a free hand.
"One of our leaders was manhandled by members of the ABVP earlier this year. We filed complaints to the hostel authorities and the Proctor but no action has been taken," adds a leader of the Fraternity Movement, a student political movement .
Recently, on October 18, the Muslim Students Federation (MSF), the student political wing of the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) had planned to organise a discussion on “Palestine: Perspectives on Literary Resistance”, which intended to discuss the works of Mohammad Darwish, Edward Said, Noam Chomsky, and others. The administration denied permission for the event. Unrelated to the MSF event, students had gathered outside the NAB on the same day, after they noticed that the building’s gate was being measured in order to fence it which resulted in a scuffle between the students and security officials.
“Even though we can access the NAB, there have been attempts to fence it and hinder access. Students are banned from using several spaces on campus for any kind of academic activity,” said a student member of the Democratic Students Association (DSA). “The ABVP organised a talk by Rashmi Samant, the first Indian woman president of Oxford University’s student union, on October 11. She discussed ‘Hinduphobia’ and spoke on her book A Hindu in Oxford. ABVP can organise events, but, we cannot do much else,” he added.
EFLU’s history of student activism
In 2011 and 2013, the EFLU campus was the stronghold of the Dalit Adivasi Bahujan Minority Student Association (DABMSA), which was formed in the 2000s. EFLU had garnered media attention through the counter-cultural beef and Asura festivals held during these years.
The Asura festival, a five-day event held in September 2013, was intended to narrate alternative histories and deconstruct the mythological Asuras. The event allegedly ‘hurt the religious sentiments’ of some of the students, who filed a police complaint, resulting in four male and two female students being slapped with an FIR under Section 153 (A) (Promoting enmity between groups) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). The celebrations were held at the campus with posters and cut-outs of characters like Shoorpanaka, Ravana, and Tataki, all popular antagonists in Hindu mythology. It was on the third day of the event that some students lodged a police complaint against the organisers. The then deputy proctor Kona Prakash had submitted a letter at the police station, stating that the events would “lead to potential trouble”.
Similarly, the beef festival organised by DABMSA in May 2011 turned violent and student activists were beaten up by members of the ABVP. In response, the DABMSA along with the Telangana Students Association, initiated a ‘food bandh’ with the intention of overturning the hegemony of Brahminism and acknowledging Dalit cultural practices.
The founder of the news outlet Dalit Camera and a former general secretary of DABMSA, Raees Mohammed spoke to TNM about how during his student days in EFLU, DABMSA was formed as a political response to the Mandal agitation, the demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992, and the lack of Other Backward Classes (OBC), Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) reservations for students across India.
Interestingly, two very prominent Dalit voices who have faced political opposition under the current regime are EFLU professor Dr K Satyanarayana and ex-professor Hany Babu, both accused in the Bhima Koregaon case of 2018. Satyanarayana’s house was raided in August 2018 by the Maharashtra police. He alleged that he was punished for being renowned Telugu poet Varavara Rao’s son-in-law. The second, Hany Babu, a professor of Linguistics at EFLU, was a well-known Ambedkarite voice. ‘He had an undeniable impression on EFLU students,'' Raees remembered.
“The ideological commitment of students was very strong in the late 90s, and early 2000s. Several Dalit intellectuals believed that the Babri demolition was an attempt to distract people from the Mandal agitation. Further, there were students from Andhra Pradesh who witnessed the Tsundur and Karamchedu massacre and came from strong political backgrounds,” Raees added.
As Kristina Garalytė noted, “Another contestation of DABMSA’s influence in the campus came from Telangana Student Association (TSA), an organisation that largely stood for the Telangana cause, but more broadly was also involved in Dalit student activism.” In fact, EFLU had housed students from Osmania University when the State Reserve Police Force (SRPF) cracked down on student activists participating in the Telangana movement.
Dalit Camera was largely run by EFLU students belonging to different social backgrounds, including those from dominant castes, who were associated with DABMSA. “Without Professor Hany Babu in EFLU, there would be no Dalit Camera. The Dalit discourse in EFLU heavily influenced the discourses in other campuses as well,” observed Raaes.
However, Kristina wrote that things changed when she revisited the campus in 2019. “Posters with Ambedkar’s images and protest writings on the walls were absent. Security guards, who had doubled in numbers since 2012, in a demonstrative military-like fashion marched through the campus during the shift exchange periods twice a day. A former student activist in EFLU, now having a position in another university in Hyderabad, told me that every time he got back to ELFU, he felt being looked upon with suspicion because of his former student activist identity,” she said.
“Discussions held by several reading circles have declined in number over the last few months. The last active offline discussion to my memory was held in May, as access to spaces is limited,” added a current student.
‘If you protest, you don’t study further’
A former Muslim student who pursued his Masters from EFLU between 2012-2014 told TNM that he was denied admission to the PhD programme in the University because of his political activism. “I applied to the Cultural Studies and Social Exclusion departments for PhD. I was denied admission on the grounds that I was ‘politically active, and would instigate students on communal lines’. The then Deputy Proctor Prakash Konareddy had written to the Vice Chancellor accusing me of this. I challenged this in the Telangana High Court, but after a year of waiting for a result, I had to let go,” he said.
During his time at EFLU, he said, counter hegemonic programmes, like a celebration of Asura kings for a week in 2013, organised by politically active students, were commonplace. Even then, the students used to face resistance from the administration. “Festivals like Ganesh Chaturthi were allowed but Iftaar wasn’t,” he recollected. Speaking to The Hindu in October 2013, a student representative had said, “About 40 campus residents, both teaching and non-teaching staff, gave a written complaint that the Ganesh idol procession, accompanied by loud music, created inconvenience to them, but no action had been taken.”
Abdul Jabbar, a student at the University from 2014 to 2016, and a former member of EFLU’s Students Alliance for Justice and Democracy (SAJD), narrated a similar tale. “My academic career was ruined by the administration. I filed a case against the University when they denied me admission for no valid reason. I can only assume it was because several of us had conducted a beef festival in 2015 along with students from Osmania University. In response to my petition, the University told the Kerala High Court that they had discretionary powers to deny admission to anyone. The court ruled in my favour, but I was then failed in my interview. This has happened to a lot of students, several of whom eventually quit higher education,” he adds.
Jabbar added that it is difficult to prove that the administration is targeting students as there is no clear proof. “They will just remark that admission was denied because they failed the PhD entrance exam or a student had to drop out because of low attendance. We cannot appeal against that,” he said.
A female student who went to EFLU between 2012-2014 spoke to TNM about the death by suicide of Mudasir Kamran in March 2013. Mudasir was taken to the Osmania University Police Station and detained for a few hours the night before his death, which was preceded by his roommate, accusing him of making physical advances. The then proctor allegedly questioned Mudasir’s mental stability and abused him in front of other students.
“During my time, the then vice chancellor Sunaina Singh had come down heavily on students protesting Mudasir Kamaran’s suicide. She threatened to cancel the semester and several students were blacklisted,” the student said.
In essence, EFLU’s political history of student activism isn’t just scattered cases of grandstanding. It carries a legacy of identity and left politics, which despite suppression, has risen on various counts. With the University announcing an extension of holidays till October 29, presumably to quell protests, it would be interesting to witness which path the protestors take next.
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