Delhi Academia Protest Assault on Motihari Professor

Demanding action against Mahatma Gandhi Central University (MGCU) Vice Chancellor Arvind Kumar Agarwal over the attack on Assistant Professor Sanjay Kumar, a group of 30 professors and scholars protested outside Delhi’s Bihar Bhavan on Thursday, 23 August 2018.

Addressing those gathered, MGCU Professor Mrityunjay alleged that Kumar wasn’t attacked for posting up Facebook posts against the late former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, but was ‘targeted’ for raising his voice against the VC. Mrityunjay claimed that the VC has several complaints pending against him and has even been accused of “financial fraud by a CAG report.”

Protests against the VC’s high-handed attitude had begun in May this year. He had terminated a professor on false charges of sexual harassment and even sent notices to people for wearing jeans on campus. Even if jail prisoners are free to speak, but at MGCU, we’re not allowed to speak freely. 

Mrityunjay, MGCU Professor.

Claiming that the men who attacked Sanjay Kumar were goons fostered by Arvind Kumar Agarwal , Mrityunjay alleged that the VC had violated the reservation policy, in both hiring professors and in admitting students.

Eminent sociologist and Delhi University professor, Nandini Sundar said it’s not just MGCU where the space for freedom of expression has shrunk. Even in DU, Sundar maintained, it has become increasingly difficult to organize seminars on various topics.

Across the country, universities have clamped down on seminars. This year alone, Mamata Banerjee and Rahul Gandhi have not been allowed to address students at St Stephens and Osmania University respectively. 

Nandini Sundar, Sociologist and DU Professor.

Debaditya Bhattacharya, who teaches at Kazi Nazrul University in West Bengal’s Asansol alleges that everywhere, there have been “deliberate attempts to appoint professors from the Sanghi camp are being made.” This has swamped out any scope for dissent, he asserts. Any remaining form of dissent, laments the English professor, meets the same fate as that of Sanjay Kumar.