Academically suspended without any proof of guilt, threatened and intimidated. This has become the life of some students at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. In an effort to “reclaim the democratic space of JNU”, they are speaking up against their fundamental right to protest being taken away. A group of students came together a few days ago to record a series of speeches talking about the problems they were facing – being slapped with fines, having enquiries lodged against them, and their registration being blocked.
One of the students, Somaya Gupta, said her registration was blocked (video above), and an enquiry, strangely, was being planned on the same date and time when the registrations close. “Our Chief Proctor, Professor Vibha Tandon, didn’t even acknowledge me as a student,” Gupta said. She has been studying at JNU for a year.
The students also brought up the matter of the authorities increasingly curbing different forms of dissent. “Degrees are the weakness of the students,” Gupta said. The administration is “hell-bent” on capitalising on their weakness, thus furthering Brahminical notions of exploiting the marginalised, she added. Pankhuri Zaheer, another student, said (video below) that the students would fight back with their own weapons: protests, slogans and consistency.
Here are the other related speeches made by students’ union officials:
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