“My beloved VC... Just tell me one good thing you did since you landed foot on campus,” asks an enraged JNU student in his viral rap video slamming the university’s move of reducing seats in M Phil and PhD courses by 80 percent.
Penned in protest against Vice Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar, 22-year-old Rahul Rajkhowa, who recently completed his MA in International Relations, said, “I wrote the song after my hopes on the outcome of the 143rd Academic Council meeting were broken”.
Rajkhowa, who is the guitarist and vocalist of a Delhi-based band, Paperboat, said he wanted to take the issue to a broader platform through rap. The video titled ‘JNU Student raps against JNU VC’ has garnered around 10,000 views since it was uploaded on 9 May.
His lyrics not only focus on the seat cuts, but also deal with the anger over the “disappearance” of JNU student Najeeb Ahmed from his hostel after a clash with ABVP members on 15 October 2016.
Hell you can’t even find the boy that went missing on your watch. Everybody knew the boys who beat him up were from the Orange Party. They still walking Scot free. (sic)
He goes on to ask, “Sir, you know, that just makes you a paranoid fascist leader. People will rise up against you, is that your fear?”
Speaking to The Indian Express, Rajkhowa said:
A lot of my classmates and I wanted to do MPhil, and all of a sudden the VC decided to have such a major seat cut. In the School of International Studies, there’s only one seat each in the Centre for South Asian Studies and Centre for European Studies – the Centres we could apply to. Many of my friends have zero seats in their Centres in other Schools. Moreover, people from economically deprived backgrounds are finding themselves in a really tough spot. All of these factors contributed in me writing the song because I wanted to be all their voices.
Students have also put up their art works on the campus to express dismay at the VC’s move. Many have been releasing balloons in the air as a mark of protest.
Even though entrance examinations for some MPhil and PhD courses are beginning next week, students of JNU say that they will resort to more novel ways of protest to raise the issue.
“We will make sure such undemocratic decisions are not taken in future, we will take up many such methods of protests,” Rajkhowa said.
(With inputs from PTI)
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