The writing’s on the wall: JNU doesn’t need guns or tanks for lessons

The walls of the Jawaharlal Nehru University have been speaking for a very long time, their eloquence surpassed only by their aesthetics. At the beginning of each year, student organisations “claim” the wall space of the redbrick university and transform them into an education: about the Indian economy, about Indian history and society, about contemporary arguments and debates. The murals “figure” the walls through prose and poetry, cartooning and photographs, quotations and slogans to make up a truly unique and remarkable heritage for the university.

Here Irom Sharmila and her nasal drip remind people of her struggle against the army presence in Manipur, there Manmohan Singh stands pilloried for his economic policies, and in another place Jyotiba Phule and Ambedkar stand shoulder to shoulder in support of Dalit/Bahujan rights. A truly nationalist Last Supper seats the Congress greats at a common table. “Until the lions have their historians, tales of hunting will always glorify the hunter,” we are reminded via an African proverb on the walls of the Centre for Historical Studies. There are good, bad and banal posters. The prose is not always inspiring. But all this brilliant mural practice is the handiwork, quite literally, of JNU students.

These handmade posters and murals are proof of what so many people have declared and asserted on TV and in the press over the past 10 days: that the unique achievement of JNU is the extraordinary amount of learning that goes on beyond the walls of the classroom and the library. It nurtures an aural and visual culture which is quite simply unique. It goes well beyond political engagement.

Learning and unlearning

But if these murals are the products of students, not teachers, what happens inside the classrooms of JNU? Let me take the example I know best, from the JNU’s Centre for Historical Studies. Of the 2,200 young people from across India who apply for admission to the MA programme every year, about 80 or 90 students enter the programme. What are the attractions of History, that “unencashable” discipline in these days of information-rich jobs and placements, for these youngsters? The answers may range from the pragmatic and the mundane to loftier intellectual ambitions. Some may need a foothold in a hostel in Delhi, and some may need to prepare for the civil service examinations, but a good proportion are mesmerised by the idea of JNU and the thought of earning a masters’ degree.

Once admitted, they realise that the History programme is a punishing one, based on a tutorial system, requiring a written submission that is defended in person every 10 days. This intensive interaction (which is more demanding than lecturing) is only possible given the low student-to-teacher ratio. In these sessions, students are questioned and held to account not just by the teachers but by their peers.

There are many who have to overcome an initial hesitation about speaking in English, the medium of teaching and learning, to take their place in discussion. Whatever the differences in abilities with which they arrive, they are all beneficiaries, and most students find the two years at the Centre for Historical Studies exhausting but exhilarating. Quite unlike hundreds of credentialling institutions in the country, the Centre for Historical Studies insists that they read, write and, above all, think. So, thinking maybe the only “communicable” disease that students contract in JNU.

Not all of them stay on for higher studies and many may not even remember every text they have read. Some – very few – succumb to the fatal attraction of downloading from the internet. But they have all learned, and importantly unlearned, very important things during their time at JNU, about food habits, dress and relationships. Many unexpected romances and alliances are formed in the period, and many unexpected insights are generated by romantic sorrows.

One could go on, but what of the formal learning that takes place?

Eureka moments

A student who entered the MPhil programme speaking only Hindi now confidently reads, writes and speaks English and holds her own in discussions. Another student who arrived from a remote part with the honest declaration that she had never read a single book in her life is now completing her PhD with panache. A third student whose English was crippled by not having studied in that hegemonic medium is easily among the most well-read among his cohorts, spending an equal amount of time in libraries as on politics. And a young man who is among the first of his generation to get this high level of education is deciding between a dissertation question that critically examines his community’s past or turning his analytical skills to something else. Meanwhile, from his Bangladeshi roommate, he learns the value of reading and appreciating poetry. Sanskrit, Persian, Bangla, Marathi, Tamil Kannada, are all languages which are taught and learned in this process.

These are enriching experiences for teachers as well. It is impossible to be indifferent to what is elsewhere called a “research topic”. There are Eureka moments when a cache of interesting documents at the National Library in Kolkata warrants a late-night phone call. Many students will ask, while formulating their research question, “Why are we where we are now?” The answers may be unsettling, for teacher and student alike, and all of them may not lead to national movement or some instance of cultural pride, but they need to be asked. Other students are not interested in such questions of origins, discrimination or oppression of their communities. A student from Karnataka will work on North Eastern oral history, a Muslim student will work on the Adivasis of Chhattisgarh. If there is a demand for a past among the students, it is for a critical, rather than a glorious, one.

Despite the high visibility given to JNU as a political training ground (a feature that the previous vice-chancellor frequently applauded), it is most importantly a space of learning. Such teaching and learning is going on in many central universities and institutions across the country. But if critical thinking and analysis is to be dubbed “indoctrination”, as Mohandas Pai did, it is because these are the skills that are so devalued on our march to being a global superpower. So what is under attack today are the “ideas of JNU”. An ominous threat looms, in the suggestions of the former generals, to radically alter a unique aural-visual culture that educates, as it organises and agitates, and replace it with the silencing power of the barrel of the gun.

The writer teaches History at the Jawaharlal Nehru University.