If Friday’s violence, force, brutality and bizarreness wasn’t enough, the mainstream media’s silence throughout the weekend, the connivance of the police to accuse JNU students of rioting and a grotesque apology to have harassed a journalist, assuming she was a student, reflects the crisis our democracy is in. The crisis our rights are in. As citizens. As students. Our right to access and have a safe space, right to education that isn’t privatised, to our freedom of speech, to express dissent, to question non-implementation of reservation, to critical knowledge and pedagogy, our right to just legal inquiry-procedures and not an internally elected sham.
These were the concerns our march upheld. While journalists from established houses accompanied us, many clarified that they were only allowed to cover the ‘Atul Johri sexual harassment case’ and no other beat from JNU.
To clarify, beats that would articulate our struggles for a safe space and justice, as much as, for a learning environment free of surveillance and bureaucratic diktats from an incompetent administration, the ‘authorised’ Vice chancellor’s role in replacing the Chairpersons of multiple centres in the university (those who disagreed with the compulsory attendance system), our demand to restore GSCASH, our woes with a 100% hike in hostel and mess fees; our resistance to a crackdown on student lives on campus, were to not be covered.
The JNUSU and JNUTA had called for a march, which was also joined by many alumni members and students from other universities. We were stopped at Laxmi Bai Nagar, with double barricades, the Rapid Action Force (RAF) and hundreds of policemen with lathis and water cannons. Even before we could request or negotiate our way forward, the police marched in and started pushing us.
The last time I recollect having seen RAF deployed was when I had visited Kolkata during vacation, and some areas were reported to have had a communal confrontation. Does that not speak loud enough already? Student protests require RAF? Really?!
We continued with our slogans and watched stretches of the protest be cannoned with water. No weapons. Not even placard bases. Just our voices. I was standing on the right side, and I had about a couple of rows stand in front of me.
The last water cannon was targeted to the extreme left, the direction we were all looking at, till I realised that the first row on my side pushed backwards. Some of us assumed that the police was preparing to cannon us from this side too. In the next second, I watched the row in front of me collapse and make a run. The next thing we saw were lathis in the air and the police charging and screaming at us.
While most students were able to move away or run, some stood utterly confused in the chaos, still trying to comprehend what had just happened. Others froze in fear. We watched helplessly as our fellow mates were ruthlessly caned. The little sense I could make of that moment was only to move students, frozen, away from the police. And as I did, my right leg was subject to a solid flog with merciless strength. The policeman didn’t even look twice to check where or whom he’d struck.
Have you seen people strike carpets and blankets in the sun, to get rid of dust? That’s exactly what we felt like. Something the police simply wanted to thrash and vent their frustration on. That we weren’t human enough. That it didn’t hurt. Neither physically. Nor emotionally.
When the police lost their pace with students, with no one else to intimidate, they attacked the auto-rickshaw driver, who helped us through the march with a speaker that was too heavy to carry. They shook his auto, yelled at him and almost caned him till a couple of students intervened.
In the backdrop of these chaotic and frightening minutes, I could hear policemen say, “Maar saale ko!”, “Laga kheech ke!”, “Women force ko lao aur maaro saali ko!”
By then, I saw multiple familiar faces break down in tears. We learnt that more than 20 of our students had been pulled away from us and detained, randomly. They were abused, manhandled and beaten up. Evidently, as friends, and as students, we were horrified and livid. We didn’t know where our friends were taken. What state they were in, if they were alright? Why were they dragged away? Detained? FOR WHAT CRIME?!
On trying to negotiate with the police, to get our friends back, one of the senior officers said, “Dimaag garam hai, do-chaar kheech ke lagaunga, tab samajh me aayega! Lagau kya?!” It wasn’t just us students being harshly behaved with. We helplessly watched a number of our senior professors being disrespectfully spoken to, by the police. Remind me again which protesting university students and teachers, across the world, are threatened this way or misbehaved with? Or is this the general way that the police talks to its citizens?
If this madness wasn’t enough to deal with, we learnt at the march that students who were back in the university to continue with the lockdown were at the receiving end of the administration’s aggression. They stormed in with a group of guards and administration members and tried to move the students away forcefully.
One of the three female students at the centre defending the lockdown narrated her experience – “We were ruthlessly being pulled by our waist, away from the gate and all the female guards were pinching in places where it generally hurts the worst. All of us have cuts and scratches because we kept holding on to the gate. They kept saying ‘Haath kaat do. Haath kaat do!’ So another girl there picked up the chain and put it around her neck and said, ‘Ab kaato!’ The administration seemed scared at that moment. So they started laughing and walked out.”
She added, “One of the girls threw up in pain while the second person cried. The physical trauma was one part. But the mental trauma of being treated so ruthlessly, just because they were given orders was unacceptable. They didn’t even think twice before threatening to break our hands. The administration we interact with every day, seemed so hell bent on hurting us and that’s what hurt the most. There was almost a sense of vengeance that we could feel. Even the ruthlessness seemed planned and calculated.”
One of the female students dragged away and detained from the march added – “As women police persons were really less in number, the male police began manhandling female students with lathis and boots. There in between, I saw some lady police trying to tear my friend’s dress. I went to stop them. Then there they held me, beat me up, and dragged me by my hair onto a police van, and it was evening by then. My neck and my left elbow has been injured. While in police custody, they forcefully took our photo and without our consent took us to do an MLC. They even dragged us into the van that time. In the van, a lady police without uniform threatened us, saying “Gala noch lungi,” after that they took us to AIIMS. We got our MLC done there.”
At the end of the weekend, more than 20 of the students who were detained at random were slapped with multiple accusations under sections of rioting with weapons, assaulting public servants, obstruction and using insults to outrage the modesty of women. Tell me again, of the thousands who were present there, why were roughly 20 of them accused of crimes that they didn’t even commit?
On another note, shouldn’t the police have been held accountable for their actions? And I mean those giving such orders.
Our demand was to continue marching, and theirs was our dispersion from the very point that we were stalled. When we denied leaving, they detained about 20 students only to hold leverage over the situation. They demanded that we disperse and only then would they think of releasing our students.
In many ways, the apathy that had been strewn became evident in the silenced weekend that followed the violence that the police meted out to the protesting students. Quite a few news houses were more interested in Kareena Kapoor’s 45k worth gym t-shirt and Taimur Ali Khan crying than multiple students being slapped with numerous FIRs over time, being detained, denied basic rights and justice. Eight FIRs were filed against Atul Johri, and the administration still hasn’t taken a firm stand on his suspension. He was bailed within an hour of arrest.
Adding to this, what also seems appalling is the indifference that those in positions of power have had towards the struggle in JNU, and most importantly after what happened on Friday. In other words, those with privilege have been indifferent, and that would include most of the university’s alumni. The choices made – to not state, condemn or opine about the immediate struggles that those in the university are facing, also speaks aloud of the power dynamics at play. Indubitably, the politics at play.
The resistance to these problematic administrative proceedings aren’t unique to JNU. There are multiple universities constantly fighting them. But the extent of inhumaneness and bureaucratisation, the crackdown on the academic community, is robbing away the campus’ essence of learning and teaching which is something extremely painful to witness as a student. The constant sense of fear, suspicion and perpetual state of anxiety about what mayhem the administration will unleash next, is extremely taxing and exhausting. Worse, the apathy is flabbergasting!
Yet, there was a moment in Friday’s brutal episode, when the police lashed out at the auto-rickshaw driver; there was a roar of anger from the students, and for a split second, the police paused in fear. No weapons. No provocations. No attacks. Just a powerful roar condemning the threatening of the auto-rickshaw driver, and that is the power unison has. That is the power students have. That no barricade can halt. No administration can crack down upon. That no amount of flogging and detaining can silence.
Penning this, as I sit with swelling and clots (from the blow), this is what spring in JNU looks like and you can’t stop the blossom.
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