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Renowned thinker and academician Noam Chomsky has questioned JNU Vice Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar’s decision to allow police on its campus in connection with the row over an event against the hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru.
Students and teachers are protesting against the alleged “mishandling” of the issue by the university administration and have questioned the decision to allow the police “crackdown” on the JNU campus. The administration, in its defence, has been maintaining that “the university was bound to do so” even as protesting students and teachers contended that the matter was related to indiscipline and not sedition.
Chomsky, along with Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk and 86 other academicians from renowned universities abroad, had last week condemned “the culture of authoritarian menace that the present government in India has generated” and said that those in power are replicating the dark times of the oppressive colonial period and of the Emergency of the 1970s.
The JNU students union president was arrested on 12 February in connection with a case of sedition and criminal conspiracy that was registered following an event on the varsity campus to protest against the hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru during which anti-India slogans were allegedly raised.
The university had set up a high-level committee to probe the issue and, on the basis of its preliminary report, academically suspended Kanhaiya and seven other students. The committee will come up with its final report by 25 February.
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