The 10-day-old agitation by students of India’s prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University over the arrest of its student body president for alleged sedition caught the attention of eminent academics, scholars in the U.S. as well as of students who condemned the “shameful act” of arrest of Kanhaiya Kumar and expressed solidarity last week with the agitating students in New Delhi.
“We have learnt of the shameful act of the Indian government which, invoking sedition laws formulated by India’s colonial rulers, ordered the police to enter the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus and unlawfully arrest a student leader, Kanhaiya Kumar, on charges of inciting violence without any proof whatever of such wrongdoing on his part,” the academics said in a statement signed by over 130 academics from the U.S and abroad, and posted on the social media Feb. 18.
“These actions of the police have brought great dishonor to the government; and the failure of the vice-chancellor to speak out against these actions, and moreover to allow the suspension of seven other students on charges that have not been established by a fair and transparent inquiry, will bring great dishonor to the most prominent university in the country in the eyes of the academy all over the world,” the statement said.
Kumar was arrested Feb. 12 for raising allegedly anti-India slogans at an event organized by students on JNU campus to commemorate the death of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru, who was executed in 2013.
His arrest has triggered widespread outrage among students and teachers and drawn severe criticism from non-BJP political parties, many of which felt this was yet another instance of the ruling party’s growing intolerance of different opinions and views that do not follow party lines.
The statement by scholars and academics in the U.S. was signed, among others, by Noam Chomsky, Emeritus Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Jonathan Cole, former provost of Columbia University; Richard N. Zare, Professor of Chemistry, Stanford University; Mriganka Sur, Professor of Neuroscience, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Sanat Kumar, Professor of Chemical Engineering, Columbia University; Sheldon Pollock, Professor of Sanskrit, Columbia University; N. V. Ramana, Professor of Physics, Princeton University; Arjun Appadurai, Professor of Media, Culture and Communication, New York University and Partha Chatterjee, Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University.
The statement noted that based on reports of a large number of witnesses and the “most highly-respected journalists” in the country, Kumar spoke critically of the Bharatiya Janata Party Government’s policies at a student meeting which it noted, was within the campus and that he was “well within his rights” to do.
It said that Kumar, whose speech, which is available on a video, cannot in any way be connected with the slogans uttered on the previous day at another meeting in which he did not speak, was nonetheless arrested for ‘anti-national’ behavior and for violating the sedition laws.
“Since there is no evidence to establish these charges (against Kumar) we can only conclude that this arrest is further evidence of the present government’s deeply authoritarian nature, intolerant of any dissent, setting aside India’s longstanding commitment to toleration and plurality of opinion, replicating the dark times of an oppressive colonial period and briefly of the Emergency in the mid-1970s,” the statement said.
Joining the academics in criticism were some students from Syracuse and Colgate universities, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in New York as well students of Harvard. In a statement they the students of New York-based schools said that they are in solidarity with their comrades at JNU against the anti-democratic actions by the Indian Government. “We demand an immediate end to the police action against students on campus, and withdrawal of all charges against Kanhaiya Kumar. We further demand that the Central Government put an immediate end to its prejudiced persecution of student activists on campuses across the country,” the statement said.
“We strongly believe that the charge of sedition against Kanhaiya Kumar follows spurious claims. This arrest is an excuse for the state to root out dissenting voices on JNU campus, a move towards converting educational institutions like JNU into an arm of the authoritarian state,” it said, adding that attempts of a similar nature have been witnessed recently at other Indian educational institutions such as Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) and Hyderabad University.
“The growing threat to academic freedom posed by the current political climate is transnational, and extends beyond India to other parts of the world – it is a threat we face here in the United States, too.”
The Harvard University students have announced a rally that was to be held Feb 18 at Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts where the students were to stand in solidarity with the students and faculty of Jawaharlal Nehru University.
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