Condemning the assault on Tamil students by the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) last week, a protest was held on campus on Saturday, February 25. The protest, organised by the JNU wing of the All India Students’ Association (AISA), was held under the banner ‘Reclaim JNU’. Speaking to TNM, Nazar, a PhD scholar who had suffered injuries during the attack, said, “The ABVP targets the identities of all those who resist the Union government on campus. In this case, it was Tamils.”
The ABVP, the student wing of the Hindu nationalist organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), attacked students on February 19 during a screening of the satirical Hindi film Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro. The RSS-affiliate reportedly took issue with a portrait of Shivaji, which they alleged had been removed. Also according to early reports, a memorial meeting was being held for Darshan Solanki, a Dalit student from IIT Bombay who had died by suicide earlier this month after allegedly facing systemic caste discrimination.
Several students were injured in the attack by the ABVP. According to reports, even ambulances rushing injured students to hospitals were blocked. Further, students alleged that the Delhi Police refused to intervene despite witnessing the violence. The ABVP also allegedly vandalised portraits of Dr BR Ambedkar, Periyar, Bhagat Singh, and Karl Marx.
The Reclaim JNU rally put forth several demands, first of which was action against ABVP. The protesting students also demanded the reconstitution of the inquiry committee formed by the university administration to investigate the matter. “The professors currently in the committee are close to the ruling dispensation,” Madhurima Kundu, an AISA activist, told TNM. “We want the committee to have representatives from the JNU-Students Union (JNU-SU) and the JNU Teachers Association,” she added.
According to a circular issued on February 20 by the Dean of Students Sudheer P Singh, “Activity in premises of the Inter-Hall-Administration including all hostels, Students Activity Centre (Teflas) and sports grounds would require formal permission from the Dean of Students.” The office of the JNU-SU falls within these prescribed areas, students point out. “The JNU-SU office has now been shut. Access to their office is an inherent right of the students’ union. The elected president of the union has been pushed out of her office and now needs someone else’s permission to access it,” Nazar said.
Recalling how until a few years back the dining halls used to be a place for students to gather and voice their concerns until the practice was stopped by the administration, Madhurima says that the students’ union office had been the only remaining such space. “Democratic spaces are being eroded on campus,” Madhurima said, adding, “There is a systemic abuse of power and there is a pattern to the violence. Each time the ABVP attacks, a committee such as the present one is formed. It is only increasing the impunity with which the ABVP functions.”
The February 19 attack isn’t the first such incident to take place on campus, as students point out. In 2020, masked outsiders assaulted students of the university’s Sabarmati Hostel with sticks and rods. Another attack at the Periyar Hostel occurred the same year, and yet another in December last year when stones were pelted at students watching the banned BBC documentary India: The Modi Question.
Echoing Madhurima’s concerns, Nazar said, “This is the latest in multiple such incidents lately. The attacks are becoming more frequent and are occurring with the impunity that no action will be taken against them.” He added that targeting the identities of those who oppose the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Union government is becoming routine on campus. “We have heard ABVP say things like, ‘you students from Kerala and Tamil Nadu are minorities here. We are the majority. You should do as we say’.”
Also speaking to TNM, president of the Birsa Ambedkar Phule Students’ Association (BAPSA), Ajinkya Sonawane, said that such incidents are intended to take attention away from larger issues like Darshan Solanki’s death. “We had been taking up the issue before the violence took place. Now his death, which is an institutional murder and not suicide due to ragging as IIT Bombay is claiming, is lost in this conversation of Left versus Right.” Ajinkya added, “Darshan’s death is not an isolated case. It is a result of institutional caste-based discrimination like the deaths of Rohit Vemula and Payal Tadvi, and needs to be viewed as such.”