I strongly condemn the brutal attack on JNU Teachers and Students on 5 January, 2020. Under the present BJP/RSS rule unusual levels of violence has been let loose on campuses. For the first time in higher education history after independence masked forces with lethal weapons entered the campus and brutally beat teachers and students. This signals a new level of disturbing trend of organized violence with a support of University and higher administration.
The danger is that a democratically elected national party instead of encouraging its student wing to fight its rivals through academic righting and public speaking directly encouraging to attack the opponent ideological students and teachers violently is un-Indian. A ruling party can evolve its own intellectuals, if it seriously want to rule through democratic means, from universities like JNU and Delhi University, but BJP/RSS which were given a great opportunity to rule a vast country like India with 1.3 billion people is not choosing an intellectual path. In many democratic countries in the world right wing parties have their own serious academicians —economists, historians, sociologists, political scientists and so on to run the countries with a meaningful guidance. The left and liberals have done this and also the right wing parties all over Europe and America . Otherwise the British Conservative Party and American Republican Party would not have achieved what they achieved.
The BJP/RSS in spite of the fact they got elected to rule India from Delhi never realized that its students wing should engage in serious reading and writing by building rational knowledge from the universities. They can build their own ruling class thought with serious study and writing. ABVP was/is not know to the academic rigor even in their own ideology.
They always deploy muscle power on the campuses but not brain power.
The academic world must condemn this approach. We all must stand by the JNU teahers and students who are seriously injured.
Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist, social activist and author of many books, the latest being From Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual—My Memoirs
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