Assault on AMU students vicious and calls for an inquiry: a watershed for Muslim youth protest?

Three days after violent student protests broke out at the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) campus on the night of December 15 over the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), the AMU campus and some other areas, including those in the old city, showed signs of returning to normalcy. The city was still largely cut off from the rest of the world as internet services continued to remain blocked. All business, banking and other commercial activities remained almost totally paralysed and schools and colleges are still closed following orders by the district authorities.

The AMU campus bears a forlorn look now with about 99 per cent students having vacated the hostels. What remains to be seen now, is how the student community will react when the university reopens from January 6. The events which have unfolded in the country during the past couple of years have deeply impacted the psyche of the Muslim youth not just in AMU but all over the country.

It remains a moot point how this disturbing trend ultimately unfolds in the months ahead. A positive facet is that an overwhelming majority of students at the AMU campus, including some former presidents of the AMU Students’ Union, including Faizul Hasan, have repeatedly stressed that “the protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act is not primarily a question of Muslim right or should in any way be treated as a communal issue. It is an issue of defending the Constitution of India and protecting and preserving the ideals on which our nation was built”. He said we will spare no efforts in ensuring that the present movement remains a student movement and is not restricted to the rights of any particular community.

The deeply polarising and communal agenda which has dominated the narrative in national politics has now clearly reached a tipping point as far as the psyche of the educated middle class Muslim youth is concerned. The time of reckoning is hovering above them and if immediate corrective steps are not undertaken, then the situation may well reach a point of no return in this great game of polarising society in the pursuit of political gains.

On the night of December 15, when this writer arrived at the University circle, which marks the entry point to the campus, a pitched battle between the protesters and the police force including the Rapid Action Force was underway in the heart of the University campus in front of the old guest house. The protesters were hurling bricks while the police was trying to disperse them using tear gas shells, rubber bullets and cane charging.

At around 12 midnight, when this writer managed to somehow reach the casualty section of the Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College at the periphery of the university campus after somehow sneaking past the various road blocks put up by the police all around the campus, the emergency ward presented a horrific sight. About 50 injured persons with different injuries including mainly caused by bursting of teargas shells, brick batting and trauma caused by cane hits, were being treated by a team of more than half a dozen doctors. Some of the injured were sitting on the floor as the beds in emergency services were all occupied.

The chief medical officers on duty, Dr Ehtasham and Dr Nisar Ahmad said that out of about 50 odd injured persons, the condition of four was a cause of concern. In fact, one of the injured youths, a postgraduate student, Nasir, was in the process of undergoing a lifesaving surgery on his hand which had been badly smashed up after being hit by a teargas shell (ultimately, it had to be amputated).

On returning back from the hospital to the scene of action near Baab-e-Syed gate, a senior University official informed me that about 15 members of the police and the university security staff had been injured in the brick batting. This figure included the brick bat injuries suffered by the DIG Aligarh Zone Perminder Singh and the City Additional Superintendent of Police, Abhishek.

Trouble had been brewing at the AMU campus since Friday, December 13, when about 5,000 student protesters tried to take out a procession to the District Collectorate to hand over a memorandum to the District Magistrate addressed to the Chief Justice of India demanding immediate revocation of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act.

Having covered the campus protests for more than three decades now, I could discern that Sunday’s protest marks a watershed in the narrative of collective student anger in AMU campus. Since the past five years or so, there have been sporadic student protests at the campus, but in Friday’s

protest, there were palpable signs of an “outburst

of suppressed anger which had been building up steadily since the past couple of years or so”, according to a senior University official who was present at the spot on Friday afternoon.

That day’s outburst was somehow contained largely due to the efforts of a young police officer, the police chief of Aligarh district, Akash Kulhari, who plunged into the agitating students unarmed and alone and somehow touched the chord by persuading the student mob that “he would fully support the students’ right to protest provided they did not take the law in their hands”.

There is no elected students’ union at AMU presently and some former office bearers of the Students’ Union, along with the Secretary of the AMU Teachers’ Association, Professor Najmul Islam, played a commendable role in diffusing the situation. The AMU proctorial staff led by Professor Afifullah Khan and some lady members of his proctorial team chipped in by somehow managing the charged-up students not to proceed beyond the Registrar’s office gate where hundreds of armed policemen had barricaded the road with steel dividers.

On Sunday night, however, the authorities here were caught unaware when news started trickling in, largely through social media, regarding the violence at Jamia Millia Islamia campus, New Delhi. Many of the posts which were circulating were highly exaggerated.

One of such messages circulating in social media appeared to have been fake and succeeded fuelling passions at the AMU campus. It was at this juncture when a group of unidentified persons, whose faces were covered with mask, succeeded in inciting the students to move towards the Baab-e-Syed gate which had been locked and where a small police force, along with university security staff, had positioned themselves to prevent student protesters from spilling out from the campus.

It was at this critical juncture when nearly 5,000 students were on the verge of a direct clash with this small group of armed policemen when the University Registrar, Abdul Hamid, who is himself an IPS officer on deputation, asked the police to enter the campus and control the situation which was then threatening to go out of hand. The police and RAF which have been posted at the campus since the past several days was appearing to be highly charged.

In the earlier days, the posting of the RAF at the campus would instil confidence. This time, however, some of the remarks which this writer overheard were a clear pointer that this elite force which had been overused in the troubled state of Kashmir has succumbed to the communally polarising atmosphere which prevails in the country by and large. They were openly using abusive language directed against the Muslim community. This is no doubt a very alarming trend.

In an open appeal to the members of the AMU community, Vice-Chancellor, Professor Tariq Mansoor, who is under attack from some corners for allowing the police to enter the AMU campus, has explained that “If we had not asked the police to intervene at this juncture, there would have been heavy loss of life and property in which innocent students might have had to pay with their lives”. In his letter, Professor Mansoor has pointed out that the university authorities had information that a large number of outsiders, including criminal elements, had sneaked into the university campus and were inciting the protesting students to indulge in violence.

The Vice-Chancellor’s letter pointed out that these fears were not unfounded and now the police have confirmed that out of 26 persons arrested from the spot that night, 18 of them were outsiders from localities adjoining the AMU campus. A senior university official who was present at the spot confirmed the Vice-Chancellor’s apprehensions on this score saying, “A section of the mob was clearly trying to instigate students in a manner which could have had a polarising effect”.

A team of leading human rights activists and lawyers from New Delhi, led by activist and former bureaucrat Harsh Mander, visited the AMU campus and spoke to a cross section of students, teachers and University officials. Mander told this writer that it is very possible that the university authorities had justifiable reasons for calling in the police on Sunday night. “However, whenever the police enter the campus, there is a certain protocol which has to be followed. Unfortunately and tragically this was not done”.

Mander said that he had come across strong evidence to show that police, after dispersing the protesting mob, went on a rampage and forced their way into the Morrison Court hostel where they indulged in wanton violence. He also produced before the media a badly injured undergraduate law student who, it is said, was on his way from the university library when he, along with four others, was picked up near the Morrison Court hostel, badly thrashed mainly by personnel of RAF, abused and then picked up and taken to a police station about 30 kilometres from the city at Akrabad.

At the police station they were allegedly tortured throughout the night and the next day they were brought back to the town and released. The warden of the Morrison Court hostel told his writer that the police had in fact broken into the hostel and also lobbed a teargas shell inside a room through a broken window which sparked a fire. Three students who were inside the room, panicked and barged out of the room. They were caught by police personnel and were thrashed by them.

Yogendra Yadav, while addressing the students protesters at the Baab-e-Syed, said, “Just remember one thing, if you want this struggle to succeed, do not allow any opportunist elements to exploit religious sentiments. You are fighting to save the soul of this country, nothing else”. It now remains to be seen whether the leaders of the ongoing campus protest at AMU heed the words of wisdom.