Kanhaiya and Umar assert: "Centre is destroying the idea of India"

Substance amid the bluster

While it's true that the speakers were high on rhetoric, what they said before a packed crowd wasn't entirely devoid of substance.

The talks the four student-scholars delivered on the issue of dissent, equity and public funding of universities, assume significance in light of 10 Benares Hindu University students being rusticated for demanding a 24x7 library.

There was also an incident at the Patna University, where the vice-chancellor ordered guards to open fire upon eight students, who were protesting against an agreement with an electricity contractor.

Incidentally, both the men in power, who ordered the crackdowns, are approved of and employed by the Central government.

'Ideas being crushed'

"Anti-national" and the "Idea of India" are two terms gaining wide currency among the ruling dispensation and its supporters.

Kanhaiya and Umar have, along with a host of others, been subjected to disciplinary and criminal action, which has been stayed by the Delhi High Court. They asserted: "This shows how the government is out to destroy the very principles and foundations of a secular, parliamentary democracy."

Umar said: "In essence, this government is bent upon clamping down on university students' inherent right to critique and question the 'established truth'. This government is intent upon ensuring that "idea" and "thinking" remain only hollow words."

Attempting to deflate Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's claims of winning an 'ideological war', Khalid contended that the government lost the battle the moment it unleashed the police on to university campuses - be it Hyderabad Central University - which witnessed tumultous protests after Dalit-student Rohith Vemula's suicide, or JNU.

As for another Central minister Venkiah Naidu's comment that JNU students should 'study' and not indulge in 'politics', both Kanhaiya and Umar insisted that they ARE studying, and that their political activism is directed towards getting members of marginalised and oppressed communities the right to study.

Not the den of vice

Shehla Rashid Shora, the current vice-president of the JNUSU, accused the government and its supporters of running a smear campaign. And she didn't spare the mainstream media either.

Referring to news reports that portray JNU as a centre for 'sex, violence, and terrorism', Shehla said that JNU receives the maximum number of sexual harassment complaints NOT because it is a 'den of vice and abuse', but because it has a robust committee which provides victims the strength to speak up and speak out, and an effective mechanism to take remedial measures.

At the end of the session, an attendee would have been left with the sinking feeling of the viciousness of the attacks - not always directly by the State, but inexplicit ones, on university campus spaces.and the fundamental right to dissent.