It has been almost ten days since acts of severe violence were committed inside JNU campus. Where are you, sir? This is a question everyone is asking. You have kept yourself distanced from our pain and struggles, our agony and our demands. If you had even the slightest care for the university community, you would have bothered to reach out to us and inquire about those who were injured. You would go to meet them at the AIIMS Trauma Centre and ensure that they receive proper and timely treatment. You would have set up an inquiry committee that very night to probe who were involved in the violence and later initiate disciplinary action against the guilty. You would question the security guards what they were doing; you would call out the police for sheer inaction. Am I expecting too much from you, at a time when your humanitarian consciousness seems to have faded away?
You along with your sycophants have crossed every limit of insensitivity and inhumanity. You left us to die in our own University and hostels. You did nothing to ensure that we are protected inside our own campus. No probes, no slightest pretence of responsibility. The Registrar conveniently passes on the blame upon ‘masked goons from outside’, but what about the enemy within? Your mask has now been revealed.
In a blatant show of insensitivity, the University Registrar continues to send us circulars regarding extension of last date of registration without payment of late fee. Where is your conscience, where is your soul? Anybody could have died! What moral grounds are you left with to ask us to register? And why should we, when this morally incompetent administration has left us to the mercy of goons and vandals? You never stopped them when they committed acts of violence earlier; you ensured them impunity. What have you made JNU into? You have normalized violence and crime in the university space which is supposed to be sacred.
You, more than anybody else, are responsible for the lockdown in the university since the past three months. You must immediately resign from this position of responsibility, and so must all your stooges who have compromised on not only academic integrity but also the culture of the university merely for feeding your extremely fragile ego. If you thought you could destroy JNU, I hope the fearlessness and spirit of resistance that the campus community has shown and the support that has poured in from all over the country has made you realize that you were mistaken. JNU is made up of more than walls and bricks. It will not bow down to a violent, undemocratic and ‘incompetent authority’.
First you came for our posters, then you came for our rocks and sky. Then you came for our canteens and hostels. Then you came for our lives. But you failed, Mr. Vice-Chancellor. You do not have the courage to show up; at least show the courage to leave. We need someone who can stand up for us and for the University.
- The views and opinions expressed in this piece are solely that of the writer and are not endorsed by The New Leam
