ON 12 FEBRUARY 2016, THE ELECTED president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union (JNUSU), Kanhaiya Kumar, was picked up by the police from the campus. The arrest of two more students followed. During the three weeks that the arrested students, including Kanhaiya Kumar, remained in jail before securing bail, the JNUSU president, teachers and media persons faced physical attacks and intimidation at the court premises, even in the presence of the police.
All this was perpetuated in the name of ‘nationalism’. Some television channels and print media aroused passions by pronouncing judgments against students, faculty and even branded the university as ‘anti-national’. With law enforcement agencies remaining mute spectators, teachers were assaulted in different parts of the country by those who had reduced nationalism to sloganeering and to the exclusion of many groups on the basis of identity. The JNU Teachers’ Association (JNUTA) resisted this orchestrated assault on the university and the very idea of critical and independent thinking. The campaign to ‘Save JNU’ was led and supported by JNU alumni that included many eminent politicians, bureaucrats, police officers, journalists, writers and intellectuals in India and abroad. Hundreds of academicians and institutions from within and outside the country sent letters of support to JNUTA and organized protests in their campuses in defence of free speech and liberal values.
With each passing day, more and more citizens came out to ‘Stand with JNU’ to defend the ‘freedom of expression’ and ‘autonomy of academic institutions’. These two became the rallying points for the protest movement that continues in one or another form.
The protest in JNU was also unique in the way it went beyond rallies, dharnas and hunger strikes. It demonstrated a strong cultural and intellectual component. The JNUTA decided to organize lectures on various perspectives on nationalism and on different meanings of freedom to defend the heterogeneous intellectual tradition that is today under threat. Hundreds of students and teachers from different disciplines gathered in the evening at the protest site, called Freedom Square, to listen to scientists, philosophers and social scientists speaking on issues of nationalism, academic autonomy and freedom of speech.
The credit for sustaining the protests and organizing different activities including the lecture series goes to the teacher colleagues who were always ready to volunteer for any activity that was planned. The JNUTA was successful in carrying forward most of its decisions during this period due to the untiring efforts of its executive committee members and other teachers who stood by the association during a very critical juncture. Their participation in each and every event went into the making of this strong protest movement.
Prof. Janaki Nair, Dr Rohit Azad, Dr Rajarshi Dasgupta, Dr Joy Pachuau, Dr Mohinder Singh and Dr Mallarika Sinha Roy were part of the team that organized the ‘Nationalism Lecture Series’ and deserve special mention. We would like to thank Samim Asgor Ali, Gayatri Balusha, K. Fayaz Ahmad and Sorit Gupto (Down to Earth) for the images. A word of thanks to Rahel Philipose for her work in transcribing the lectures. And Kartikey Singh of Jamia Millia Islamia for the ‘Rose Fist’ on the spine, painted as part of a mural on the JNU Administration Building during the hunger strike. Dr Nupur Chowdhury, Dr Navaneetha Mokkil, Dr Veena Hariharan, Dr Urmimala Sarkar, Prof. Ranjani Mazumdar, Prof. Shukla Sawant, and Prof. Bishnupriya Dutt helped in various ways to bring this book together. A heartfelt thanks to all those who have contributed their time and effort in turning these lectures into a publishable form. We would also like to place on record our special thanks to HarperCollins for having come forward to publish the book. Through this, we hope to reach a wider audience and make this effort really worthwhile.
Ajay Patnaik
President, JNUTA
Bikramaditya K. Choudhary
Secretary, JNUTA