Jawaharlal Nehru University

Over the past one month, the students of Jawaharlal Nehru University, with the JNU Teachers’ Association standing in solidarity, have built a mass movement against the proposed hike in hostel charges, as they realise that what is at stake essentially is the very idea of public-funded higher education.

Dalit and Adivasi politics, long enslaved by liberal civil society, has found a new voice in the aftermath of Rohith Vemula's suicide and subsequent student protests. The left-liberal establishments will benefit from standing together with this subaltern democracy in resisting the Hindu right-wing forces.

It is time to break the mythical divide between general higher education that raises consciousness, and professional education that is instrumental to employment and marketable research. 

The February episode at the Jawaharlal Nehru University conforms to a recent pattern. The Bharatiya Janata Party’s student wing Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, ministers belonging to the party and university administration collude to declare dissent as anti-national.

If nationalist sentiments are the only and final prerogative to belong to an academic community, then it must also be reiterated, a university has no business to share these sentiments. The founding figures of JNU knew it and it is upon the entire community of students, teachers and concerned citizens to safeguard the university against such jingoistic versions of nationalism.