A group 11 professors from Jawaharlal Nehru University have alleged that “JNU has become a den of organized racket” in a 200 page long dossier compiled and submitted to the university administration in 2015, indicating that the crackdown on JNU that followed after the Afzal Guru event held on 9 February, may have been pre-scripted.
The text of the dossier resonates much with the labels propagated by the BJP leaders, and RSS mouthpiece Panchyajanya which highlighted JNU as “anti-national” and “immoral”.
The group, led by Amita Singh, who is a professor at the Centre for Law and Governance named certain professors (who have been outright vocal about their criticisms on the Centre’s crackdown on the institution) as connoisseurs of anti-national activities that challege the sovereignty of India.
A few academics of JNU particularly Prof. Ayesha Kidwai, Prof Kamal Mitra Chenoy, Prof. Anuradha Chenoy, Prof Nivedita Menon have been misusing JNU and their coveted position of senior teachers in the university for propagating secessionism in Kashmir and North-East, legitimizing and rationalizing terrorist activities in these states, stoking the fires of hate and anti-nation sentiments by organizing seminars, lectures, issuing pamphlets, posters, publications and nukkad nataks, rallies, demonstrations, sit ins, hunger strikes and strikes in JNU for several years without any fear. The main goal of their activities is to attack Indian sovereignty in Kashmir, North-East, keep the Indian state in a destabilized state through Naxal, Maoist violence, secessionist movements. They are actively recruiting young minds in JNU campus and elsewhere by addicting them to night parties/revelries, alcoholism and cash payments to carry forward their agenda through mass campaigns, strikes etc.
In the document written a group of professors who appear to be sympathetic towards the BJP, ABVP and RSS ideologies also stated that “sex workers have been openly employed in hostel messes, where they not only lure JNU girls into their organized racket but also pollute the boys.”
...In this process JNU has become a den of organized sex racket in which some hostel karmacharis, maid servants, beauty parlours being run in Munirka village and the activists of DSF, DSU, AISA and other rogue elements are coordinating their activities. They have turned the autonomous body like GSCASH to strike at those students and faculty who do not fall in line with their nefarious agenda.
Speaking to The Wire, Hari Ram Mishra, assistant professor in the Special Centre for said:
The reason we compiled and submitted the dossier to the university administration was to prevent future disturbances in the university. I plan to tell the JNU teachers’ association to propose a complete ban on alcohol and motorcycles on campus. We need to strictly adhere to the JNU manual.
Many of the points written in the dossier has also been mentioned in the police report against JNU. Both the police report and the dossier claimed that beef was served in the hostel messes, that “leftist student” celebrated the killing of 76 CRPF personnel in Dantewada, that public meetings were held in the campus on the human right abuses in Kashmir and Chattisgarh.
Nivedita Menon, who is a Professor in the Centre for Comparative Politics & Political told The Wire:
Basically what this semi-literate, scurrilous, shoddily produced document ‘accuses’ some JNU faculty and students of, are publicly conducted intellectual and political acts that are basic rights in any democracy. This ‘dossier’ painstakingly puts together, as if secretly gathered through underground means, ‘evidence’ of ‘anti national activity’ – and what is this evidence? Copies of posters advertising events that have been publicly pasted all over campus – in the names of organisations, not anonymously; leaflets publicly distributed and fact-finding reports released at press conferences!
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