In 2013, Bollywood movie Raanjhanaa made a box office collection of around Rs 135 crore. Why am I saying this? Because, a section of that movie was about student activism, based in Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. The film was a hit, the audience did not hesitate while empathising with the dying activist Akram/Jasjeet (played by Abhay Deol), or the bereaved lover Zoya (Sonam Kapoor), who was spearheading the left leaning All India Citizen’s Party in the campus.
The audience did not see them as ‘anti-nationals’, they were not the ‘#TukdeTukdeGang’, and they were not seen as a threat to the integrity of the nation.
Six years after that film was released, as JNU students we are now scared to disclose our institutional identity in public, despite being a part of a NAAC accredited A++ university.
We are apprehensive of the backlash that we receive when we disclose our institutional affiliation, because we are now the ‘anti-nationals’, and while this narrative is set by some of the big media houses, we sit helplessly, anxious of our potential to antagonise people. But why are JNU (as well as other public universities in the country) and its students so threatening? Why are the pro-government media houses so adamant in maligning the image of JNU which also happens to be one of the best public universities in the country?
Why is the hostility so severe that netizens across social media platforms are demanding to ‘Shut Down JNU’? Is it because JNU students are critical of the anti-people position the government, and in extension its representative the VC, has taken in campus?
On 19 March, eleven students across centres and batches started an indefinite hunger strike. This JNUSU initiative demands immediate roll back of some arbitrary rules that the administration has imposed on its students, which are:
1. Online MCQ Entrance Examination
JNU encourages independent research. Even in its masters programmes various departments demand their students to submit research papers in requirement of their degree completion. I believe that despite its merits, the MCQ format is incapable of identifying students with an aptitude for research. So, this flawed format will eventually ruin the very foundation of the university which is advancing research and furthermore deteriorate the standing of a world class university in the country.
2. Non-Implementation of Deprivation Points, Scuttling Reservation and Seat Cut
JNU has always aspired to be an inclusive space and to enable students from across social, economic, and regional backgrounds; it introduced deprivation points in its admissions policies. As a result JNU has successfully managed to contribute a fragment of inclusivity in the public sector in the country since the 1970s. Curtailing deprivation points will thus not only change the demographic structure within the campus, subsequently it will also lead to the floundering of cosmopolitanism in the public sector of the country.
Similarly scuttling reservation which is unconstitutional in itself will disable a large section of the country from joining higher education and will re-enforce existing discriminatory practices even more stringently.
3. Absurdly High Fee and Exclusionary Admission for BTech and MBA Students
JNU has recently introduced BTech and MBA courses, and staying in tandem with the other premier institutes of the country like the IITs and the IIMs the fee structure for these courses are skyrocketing. But the problem is that, unlike the IITs and the IIMs JNU is yet to build the infrastructure for its BTech and MBA courses. We have not witnessed any new building coming up, where these students can attend their classes; there has been no new hostel since 2011.
I feel the discriminatory fee structure will also ensure admission to an exclusive group of upper class students, which is detrimental to the tranquillity of an otherwise cosmopolitan campus. The lack of infrastructural facilities will also prevent the newly recruited faculties in their smooth functioning.
Evidently, JNU students are not fighting for themselves, but for the generations to come who would want to be a part of the JNU community. Online MCQ entrance examinations, scuttling deprivation points and reservation, seat cuts, high fee – none of these would affect the eleven students who are on an indefinite hunger strike, or the 300+ students who are doing relay hunger strikes for the last one week.
The students are doing this because unlike the present government or its representatives these students feel a sense of accountability towards their peers and the generations that will follow.
Their accountability is extended across class, caste, region, religion and gender, their accountability is extended to those who are eager to shut down a premier institute in the country and above all their accountability is also to their own conscience.
JNU students are not like their administration, where the absence of a conscientious being has led to the unflinching arrogance and absolute non-cognisance of the fact that students are protesting, falling sick with jaundice, hepatitis, heart conditions, they are getting hospitalised, yet the administration’s apathy towards the student community is unperturbed.
So, what is it like to be a JNU student in 2019?
It is a constant struggle for survival, because the benefactors are the oppressors. It is a constant negotiation with the self, because one is made to feel guilty for having a conscience, it is difficult because students are systematically criminalised for trying to strive for a better society.
And in 2019 JNU students are left to wonder what happened to the audience from six years back? The audience who cried with the fictional Zoya, and the Akram – how did that very audience turn its back to the non-fictional students of JNU? Who inflicted such animosity in them and what did they have to gain from silencing the murmurs of criticism?
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