Students are today rising on their own, be it here or
in France. This is the opportunity to focus on our real issues: fee hikes,
employment, research funds being cut, caste and gender discrimination. As union
members, we have a responsibility to steer these movements, or be left behind
by them. The RSS will lose no chance to twist such movements. IIT Kharagpur
students protested against the fee hike, and immediately, Giriraj Singh said:
`Nine out of ten IIT students eat beef.' They defame a university and then use
that to cut its funds.''
JNUSU vice president Shehla Rashid was in town to address a public
meeting along with union president Kanhaiya Kumar and other student leaders,
just one in a series of meetings across the country to which these students have
been invited.
Shehla admits to being overwhelmed by the response the JNU incident
generated all over. "Maybe this is because what happened in JNU resonated
with the repression all over, where the moment you criticise the government,
you are labelled anti-national. I got a call from an RSS member saying that the
JNU events were an eye-opener for him; that after he heard Kanhaiya's, Umar
Khalid's and my speeches, he left the RSS, and he was asking his RSS friends to
hear them too.''
"Even in JNU, apolitical students were initially shocked by the
turn of events, but they soon came out in support of us. Our politics are
transparent, they know who we are. Till then, they would dismiss our talk about
saffronisation of education as conspiracy theories. Suddenly, they realised it
was true." Shehla, a Kashmiri, refused to talk about herself, but after
much prodding, admitted that her identity had been targeted in the recent
events.
"I don't want to say anything about the Kashmir issue. I've been
brought up in such a censored, violent environment, and my voice has never been
heard. Indian and Pakistani diplomats meet in five star hotels to decide
Kashmir's future, but where's the Kashmiri voice in all this? Has there ever
been a process of open debate with us on this issue? Has our voice been taken
seriously? Why then should I take a position in this atmosphere?"
Interestingly, when she was voted to the JNUSU, most students didn't know she
was a Kashmiri.
"In Kashmir, I've seen India as an oppressor. But in JNU, I saw a
different face of Indians - caring and warm. And this is the university the
government calls anti-national!" Shehla said there had always been
differences between Kashmiris and non-Kashmiris at the NIT in Srinagar, but the
police had never entered the campus until now."This is the BJP
government's policy -- to destroy the autonomy of universities, appoint RSS
puppets as vicechancellors who will follow orders, and militarise these
centres, which are nonconformist by nature."
The series of events that took place in JNU had one outcome - the
decimation of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) on the campus.
"They've been exposed as goons who can only use the police to target their
opponents. They've filed an FIR against one of the best professors, Nivedita
Menon, whose classes are always packed to capacity. They don't have the
capacity to debate," Shehla said. Finally, being an MPhil student at the
Centre for Law and Governance in JNU, does she get time to study?
"Yesterday, I presented my synopsis. I am carrying a book here that I have
to finish reviewing. In JNU, we bring real life experiences to our studies,
that's why it's the best," Shehla concluded.
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