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Assault on academia
On February 25 activists of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP),
the student wing of the sangh parivar, attacked and vandalised the office
of SZH Jafri, the History department head at the Delhi University. Said to
be protesting against certain "objectionable" portions in the BA History (honours)
syllabus that contained "offensive" references to Hindu gods, the
activists manhandled the professor, hurled abuses at him and overturned
the furniture in his office.
Later that evening, following a complaint by the university
authorities, the Delhi police arrested three persons – former Delhi
University Students’ Union vice-president Vikas Dahiya, Rakesh Sharma and
Manvendra – for their role in the incident. The next day the three were
produced in a local court which remanded them to judicial custody until
March 11. Denying bail to the accused, metropolitan magistrate Siddarth
Sharma said the vandalism was not acceptable in a democracy and the
activists could not be allowed to take the law into their own hands.
Meanwhile, condemnation poured in from various quarters as students,
academicians, cultural organisations such as SAHMAT and others decried yet
another attempt by the sangh parivar to use violence and strong-arm
tactics to curb free thought. On February 26, a day after the attack, a
number of Delhi University students and teachers marched to the
vice-chancellor’s office protesting against the vandalism. The Delhi
University Teachers’ Association said the review of any work should be
demanded through academic debate and not through the "culture of
violence".
Denouncing the ABVP’s tactics, Jawaharlal Nehru University students’
union president Sandeep Singh stated, "Whether it is the murder of
Professor Sabharwal in Ujjain, vandalising the Bhandarkar Institute in
Pune, the acts of lumpenism against the dean and students of Baroda
University or the attack on SAR Geelani, the ABVP needs no excuse to
engage in acts of violence and destroy the democratic fabric of our
country." |
Communally motivated
The assault by ABVP activists on the department of
History of the Delhi University and the manhandling of Professor SZH
Jafri, head of the department, and other acts of violence and
vandalism committed by them must shock the entire academic community
of the country. It is to be underlined that the article objected
to by the ABVP was included in the ‘reading materials’ two years ago
and the raising of the issue only now seems prima facie motivated and
designed to lend a communal colour to the question. While everyone is
entitled to have his own opinion on the rationale or appropriateness
of a particular part of the reading materials, such criticism should
have been made in a civilised manner and addressed to the proper
authorities.
If there were any students involved in the assault
they should consider if their action has brought honour to their alma
mater, one of the premier educational institutions of the country.
We hope that authorities in charge of law and order and of discipline
at the Delhi University will take all the necessary measures to ensure
that the guilty are punished.
(Signatories include DN Jha, Irfan Habib, Utsa
Patnaik, Prabhat Patnaik, BP Sahu, Javed Alam, Jayati Ghosh, Ram
Rahman, MK Raina and several others.)
SAHMAT, New Delhi, February 26, 2008
(Email: [email protected])
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