January 9th, 2020 / 9:10 PM
/ Updated 21 hours ago
Image Credit:Newsclick,ETIMG
Ever since M Jagadesh Kumar took over as the Vice-Chancellor of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), his tenure has been a controversial one. Right from the 2016 sedition row involving Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid and others, to the hostel fees hike, the VC has been under the scrutiny.
Although this time around, when the JNU is going through some serious unprecedented events of violence, Jagadesh Kumar has pulled himself down to a completely new low.
On the unfortunate afternoon of Sunday, January 5, a mob of masked men and women entered the university premises. The mob was armed with iron rods, sticks and even acid.
The attackers started vandalizing the JNU premises and hit students and teachers. JNUSU President Aishe Ghosh was hurt in the attack along with others. The attackers allegedly belonged to the BJP’s youth wing, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP). What’s more disturbing was that the police did little to stop the attack and stood as mere spectators.
The attack on the JNU was one of its kind, unprecedented incident. And when the VC should have come out and stood up for the students (just like the Jamia Millia Islamia or the AMU VC did), he chose to stay silent and did nothing about it. Instead, when Aishe Ghosh was under observation at the hospital, the VC, via JNU administration, chose to file an FIR against her and others. Till date, no FIR has been lodged against the attackers by the JNU administration or the VC.
After a mishappening of such magnitude, the Vice-Chancellor is expected to take some responsibility and address the students, but the VC remained silent for 3 days. He took his own sweet time to react, that too through news agency ANI, and instead of focusing on the students who were brutalised, he called them “agitators”, trying to disrupt studies.
If this was not enough, the VC, similar to the BJP IT cell, went on to target Deepika Padukone, who extended her support to the JNU students.
“I would like to ask all those great personalities coming to support agitators, what about thousands of students and teachers who are deprived of their rights of doing research and teaching? Why can’t you stand with them,” he told ANI.
As the details of the incident are starting to unfold, fresh developments are the raising questions on the role of the VC on that fateful evening.
A report inThe Indian Expresssaid that the VC sent a WhatsApp message to the DCP (Southwest), the ACP and the SHO of Vasant Kunj (North) police station. But instead of requesting them to enter the campus and bring the mob of masked men under control, he told police to be “stationed at the gates.”
This adds to the fact that the VC did not take the matter seriously from the start, did not bother to intervene earlier and when he finally decided to speak up, he put the blame squarely on agitating students.
Considering the history associated with M Jagadesh Kumar’s controversial tenure as the Vice-Chancellor of JNU, expecting a pro-student stance would be a far fetched dream.
Also Read:BJP Veteran Murli Manohar Joshi Demands JNU VC’s Removal; Calls His Attitude ‘Deplorable’
Contributors
Written by : Prateek Gautam
Edited by : Shweta Kothari