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Ten days after Delhi University’s Ramjas College witnessed clashes and a charged environment, students of Mumbai’s Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) received a mail of six points from the administration. The last and the longest point in the mail read:
The mail meant that students must avoid getting involved in controversies.
For Mohan (name changed) and other students, the mail from the director meant that they were no longer free to express themselves.
TISS is one of those institutes that is taking precautions to avoid situations that arose in Jawaharlal Nehru University in February 2016, and a year later in Ramjas College.
“To express pro-Kashmir or pro-Bastar or anti-military stand, it means inviting troubles for yourself,” says Mohan.
“The institute wants us to make a good dissertation, take a good placement and leave,” says Mohan. Students are perturbed at the loss of space for free debate and surveillance from the authorities.
When students around questioned him as to why he was recording, the person said that he was doing it casually.
In JNU, which landed in controversy in February 2016 for organising an event marking Afzal Guru’s death anniversary, the court cases against students are still going on. The students there feel the government and the university authorities are “distorting progressive education policy, and the free thinking that JNU stands for”.
From court cases and FIRs against the students to the seat cut and financial crisis in JNU, students decry “political motives”.
In August 2016, the JNU administration had ordered the famous Ganga dhaba to be closed. This place has been a hotspot for debates, discussions and protests.
Ramjas College has been the latest addition in the list of campus controversies. The organisers had invited Shehla Rashid and Umar Khalid of JNU to speak at a seminar “Cultures of Protests”. The guest list did not go well with the Akhil Bhartiya Vidhyarti Parishad (ABVP), student wing of BJP. Violent clashes rattled Ramjas for two days.
The college authorities are now taking precautions to avoid more such incidents, but it is taking a toll on the students’ rights. Organising events is not that easy now. “Before organising events, the administration inspects everything, from the number of posters to the guest list,” says one of the students of Ramjas College, wishing anonymity.
The principal of Ramjas College, PC Tulsian, agrees that the college authorities are “keeping an eye on the activities in college, but in a democratic way.”
Tulsian said:
He deems certain curbs necessary for the “sake of college’s goodwill”.
For its annual theatre festival, St Stephen’s College used to invite other colleges. However, this year, no college was invited for the fear of being caught in a controversy. St Stephen’s College has so far stayed away from any major controversies.
Interestingly, at the Academic Conclave of St Stephen’s College in March this year, a policeman dressed as a civilian attended the event. He approached the organisers asking about the speakers.
The college management, however, seemed to have no problem with the police official’s presence, said the students.
(The writer is a freelance journalist based in New Delhi. This is a personal blog and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)
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