Reading UoH Student Movement
By Dillip Kumar Dash
30 March, 2016
Countercurrents.org
There has been several attempts to demoralize the movement led by Joint Action Committee for Social Justice since the incident of vandalism on VC’s bizarre return. Before judging the movement by reading into those particular acts, one must look through a pretext to it. Even though, it is condemnable to resort to any kind of violence, it will be a limited and partial understanding if we don’t locate them in a larger context of structurally manufactured mutual disharmony, anger and vengeance in recent times. Different binaries and bipolarities have occupied our imagination so much that dialogue has become almost impossible. It is pertinent to make sense of the shifts made by the current regime from mutual disagreement to acute disharmony that immensely contribute to such violence. At one level one has to look into an utterly divided and provocative condition and at another level the reaction of some of the protesters and the aftermath.
Polarizing Politics:
Immediate provocation for the protesters resembles a larger polarization of public sphere. An example from an earlier time might help. Couple of years back, one fine morning, I was out with a few of my friends to buy mutton (goat meat). It was a traditional mutton shop. After a small bargaining, he started chopping of the meat. In the meantime, one of my friends asked him to give more flesh rather than bones. The seller informed us about the practice of proportion in that area and my friend requested him to be a bit flexible. His reaction was interesting. He stopped chopping of the meat and put them back in a tray. In an angry voice, he not only denied to sell it but also showed us the direction towards a nearby super market where we might buy mutton of our choice (flesh and bone separately). As we wanted fresh meat, we apologized and bought it from him. His behavior was a submerged resistance against the mode of development and discomfort towards a selfish upwardly mobile new urban middle class.
While walking back to our room we discussed his behavior and mutually disagreed on many points. The tags like anti-development, leftist or anti-national were not so frequent in public domain then. Otherwise some of us would have used them against the seller or at each other and spoiled the morning without any productive outcome. Earlier, in different projects, national interest was prioritized over local rights. Resistance was suppressed, sometimes brutally, but not tagged as anti-national; hence, not thrown away from the public discourse. Development and its complexities are out of debate now as it has been taken for granted. Debate is more about the sanity of those who conform and the insanity of those who do not. In a similar passion, a critique of caste society is anti-Hindu, a critique of state repression is either anarchist or anti-national and so on. Recently, the Finance Minister has introduced two more words like ‘jihadist’ and ‘ultra-leftist’ into the tag-vocabulary. Consequently, the non-resisting loyal sections automatically carrying all available positive tags do not continue to remain confused spectators; rather with newly given recognitions join the army of defending, assisting or protecting the authority in different modes. Thus, even mob-trials look virtuous, if not legal. It is a bipolar civil divide, where people are politically charged against each other, albeit a narrower scope.
Divisions and Provocations:
In the particular case of University of Hyderabad, the VC’s return was so meticulously planned that a polarized division of otherwise relatively harmonious university community was evident. A leaked outline of activities reveal how like-minded people were selectively invited from among the faculties and students. Faculties, many of whom were co-travelers in the administrative process that resulted Rohit Vemula’s death and some so called neutrals, who might have never valued student politics or any resistance, were part of the invitees. Instead of either Student Union or larger student community being informed, only students from life sciences (well known for their leaning towards ABVP) were chosen. And, of course, non-teaching staff were there in support of the VC. Though one can argue (like in the case of suspension of five ‘dalit’ students) rules and protocols were followed and everyone was not required there, the conspiracy to split a university population into antagonistic camps can easily be noticed. One is acceptable to the authority and others are troublemakers. No wonder, the so called good guys from life sciences took up the responsibility of guarding the VC when JAC for Social Justice arrived there, and faculties were peeping through windows at police brutality against students and later justified it as security measure. Non-teaching staff went a few steps ahead. They acted against the abuses of protesters by shutting down all student messes and threatening to stop supply of other basic amenities.
Reactions of Protesters:
Though it is undesirable and deserves criticism, unruly reactions are a possibility in a protest depending on the available provocations. A movement is neither constitutive of homogeneous entities nor an en-mass conscientised category. Everyone in a movement may not share one ideology or emotion. Some are easily vulnerable to provocation. That is why Gandhi differentiates between a ‘satyagrahi’ and normal participants. But blaming the entire movement based on a few instances of violence is a unitary understanding- a methodology close to right wing and traditional left wing.
The activities of JAC for Social Justice, in the aftermath of indiscriminate police action, were aimed at restoring governance that was squeezed in a divisive atmosphere. They moved towards community alternatives to denied services. Food was one among them. Students arranged community cooking at different places for the entire student community on campus. Along with cooking, resistance continued in the form of candle light marches, ‘Eklavya speaks’ (sharing experience of discrimination), street plays and the like programs. Cooking as well as sharing experience of police horror were different forms of community action to reclaim the university space from police.
What else the whole struggle is for!! It is to reclaim our universities from casteist, heterosexist, and patriarchal, communal as well as authoritarian rule. This space is to critique ideas and build new. It is a space to argue, to disagree and to question status quo. It is the divisive McCarthyism that emerging from institutions polluted a space meant for creative engagement. The democratic space has to be restored beyond antagonism.
Dillip Kumar Dash, Research Scholar,Department of Sociology, University of Hyderabad