New Delhi, India – A Bollywood movie known as JNU will probably be launched throughout India subsequent week. The tagline on its publicity posters asks: “Can one instructional college break the nation?”
The movie is simply the most recent, thinly veiled assault on Jawaharlal Nehru College (JNU), considered one of India’s premier public universities that for many years has additionally been a cauldron of political activism, with admission standards designed to make sure that college students from a few of the nation’s poorest and most uncared for areas get a shot at high quality increased training.
The college, a standard bastion of left-liberal politics that’s named after unbiased India’s first prime minister, has been a central goal of political assaults from the nation’s Hindu majoritarian proper, particularly below Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rule. Like within the movie, the college’s critics affiliated with Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Get together (BJP) have described JNU as an “anti-national” hub over its politics. College students and ex-students have been jailed for treason. Academics have accused the college administration, appointed by the BJP authorities, of weakening high quality requirements and processes for appointments to inventory the college with ideologically aligned professors.
Amid a heated marketing campaign for nationwide elections scheduled for April and Could, the college held its personal vote final week for the JNU College students Union (JNUSU), which has traditionally been considered one of India’s strongest and influential scholar our bodies. These had been the primary JNUSU polls in 4 years, and outcomes got here out on Sunday.
Nationally, the BJP is predicted to win. At JNU, it misplaced.
“This election was a referendum in opposition to the best wing,” Dhananjay, the brand new college students union president, mentioned in his victory speech. The 28-year-old scholar of theatre and efficiency research at JNU’s College of Arts and Aesthetics can also be the primary Dalit to be elected JNUSU president in practically three a long time.
Positioned on rocky, forested slopes in southern New Delhi, JNU is commonly described as a bubble, and there may be little proof that the end result of its scholar physique elections is any reflection of the nationwide temper. However for a lot of within the establishment greatest recognized for its pedagogy and analysis within the social sciences, the win on Sunday of a coalition of left-wing organisations, provided a breather from perceived efforts by the BJP and its allies to take over their oasis.
‘Solidarity and hope’
The JNUSU has been dominated by teams affiliated with India’s many communist events for many years. Nonetheless, the rise of Hindu nationalism within the early Nineteen Nineties noticed the emergence of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), a pan-India scholar organisation affiliated with the far-right Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological mentor of the BJP.
The college’s alumni embrace Nobel Laureates like Abhijit Banerjee, who received the economics prize in 2019, and overseas leaders corresponding to former Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan and former Nepal Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai. A lot of India’s high political leaders — from Sitaram Yechury, the chief of India’s greatest communist get together, to the present BJP authorities’s overseas minister S Jaishankar and finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman — studied at JNU.
On Sunday, 1000’s of JNU college students gathered outdoors their union workplace to study the outcomes of the elections held final week, during which the ABVP was a robust challenger. However three of the highest 4 posts had been received by Left candidates whereas the remaining chair went to a queer girl from the Dalit neighborhood, which sits on the backside of India’s advanced caste hierarchy.
But the nationwide elections arising may form the way forward for JNU as a lot, if no more, than the scholars elected over the weekend.
Since Modi turned the prime minister in 2014, his authorities has portrayed the college as a hub of actions designed to interrupt India.
College students and ex-students – particularly Muslims, corresponding to Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam – have been arrested and charged with sedition and “terrorism”. Many stay behind bars. College students alleged that the college administration’s failure to carry elections since 2019 was additionally a part of a sample of actions aimed toward stifling campus political activism.
Whereas COVID-19 lockdowns prevented the polls in 2020 and 2021, the next years noticed a reluctance by the JNU administration “as a result of it needed elections to cease ceaselessly”, outgoing JNUSU President Aishe Ghosh informed Al Jazeera.
“Conducting the election once more appeared not possible, however the college students confirmed solidarity and hope,” she mentioned. Not like different public universities, the elections at JNU are performed by college students who type an Election Fee to supervise the vote.
“The hiatus in conducting the election was a serious problem because the Election Fee consisted of many new members. However I informed the varsity administration that if I start the method as soon as, I’ll end it,” mentioned Chief Election Commissioner Shailendra Kumar, a doctoral scholar in South Asian research.
“Now we have accomplished so efficiently and sensitively,” he mentioned, including {that a} Braille system for visually challenged voters was launched for the primary time.
‘Punching bag for BJP’s politics’
The JNU vote got here weeks earlier than India goes to the polls in a marathon six-week train, beginning on April 19. And the college is prone to determine into the BJP’s marketing campaign, as is clear by the discharge of JNU, the movie, on April 5.
The film is a part of a slew of comparable movies produced by a piece of Bollywood filmmakers to ostensibly promote Modi’s BJP. The movie’s publicity posters, cut up in half between shades of saffron and crimson, clearly present a distinguished college constructing with two rival teams of scholars demonstrating in entrance of it.
“The Left successful in JNU is just not a brand new factor. It has been successful for a few years and has been dominant ever since JNU got here into being,” Harish S Wankhede, a professor at JNU’s Centre for Political Research, informed Al Jazeera.
“The brand new factor is that the central authorities’s makes an attempt to vary JNU, each ideologically and demographically, didn’t have an effect on the campus a lot. The efforts by the federal government to malign JNU, defame it, calling it a den of anti-nationals, didn’t bear any fruit to the right-wing scholar group.”
Wankhede mentioned it was “stunning” that the ABVP, supported by a political setting for 4 years, didn’t win.
“JNU was thought of a punching bag for the BJP’s politics,” Amisha Thakur, a doctoral scholar, informed Al Jazeera. Wankhede agreed: “That’s true as a result of no different college was giving an mental opposition to BJP with as a lot fervour as JNU was doing.”
However Govind Dangi, a 29-year-old scholar and an ABVP candidate within the election, described the Left as a dying drive at JNU.
“The flame of a candle sparkles earlier than it ends. The Left is that dousing candle,” he mentioned.
Throughout an election debate held a day earlier than the voting, ABVP’s presidential candidate, Umesh Chandra Ajmeera, made a gesture just like what RSS members do at their conferences — a raised hand that critics of the Hindu proper have in comparison with the Nazi salute.
Whereas the gesture was met with indignant protests, Dhananjay thinks Ajmeera could have accomplished it unintentionally. “Nobody would settle for Hitler in India,” he mentioned.
Ajmeera was unavailable for a remark regardless of repeated efforts to achieve him.
Caste assertions
Priyanshi Arya, the primary Dalit queer particular person to be elected the JNUSU normal secretary, belongs to the Birsa Ambedkar Phule Scholar Affiliation (BAPSA), which derives its names from a few of India’s most distinguished caste and tribal leaders, together with Bhaimrao Ambedkar, the nation’s first legislation minister and the chief architect of its secular structure.
“Your entire nation has its eyes on JNU. A primary win for the Ambedkarite motion after 10 years of BAPSA’s inception, has created inspiration and hope coursing by all the nation. It’s an emotional second for us,” Arya informed Al Jazeera.
Ajay Gudavarthy, additionally a professor at JNU’s Centre for Political Research, mentioned that whereas the college could symbolize a microcosm of the nationwide politics, the declare that its College students Union election has “an impression on the nationwide vote is an exaggeration”.
Nonetheless, he mentioned, “all elections are being fought on the infallibility of Modi’s picture. Any loss in an election is a dent on his larger-than-life persona,” he mentioned.
“By some means the BJP regime doesn’t look assured regardless of being in energy for a decade, … so it creates a hype understanding that its survival is simply there until the hype lasts. There’s nothing past. However the ones in energy dwell within the worry of dropping it. That’s a horrible way of life.”
And what in regards to the JNU movie? Al Jazeera requested ABVP’s Dangi if he agrees with the movie’s declare that his college is a “nation-breaker”.
Dandi mentioned the movie “portrays our college in a unfavourable means and has no reality in it”.
“I personally oppose these movies,” he mentioned.
