JNU’S ‘Jane Umbrige’ must go!

For Harry Potter fans, JNU is going through Potter’s ‘Order of the Phoenix’ (Book 5) phase.

M Jagadesh Kumar, the VC, is to JNU what Dolores Umbridge was to Hogwarts. Umbridge was appointed by the Ministry to surveil and destroy Hogwarts, Jagadesh Kumar is appointed by the Modi Government to destroy JNU. Umbridge had her Inquisitorial Squad comprising hand-picked students, the current JNU VC’s Inquisitorial Squad is the ABVP, a small cabal of administrators, and faculty members he is appointing in violation of all rules and norms.

Umbridge revelled in punishing dissenting and defiant students who fought to defend the spirit of Hogwarts; Jagadesh Kumar hands out fines, rustications and show-cause notices to the students (and even faculty) who defend the spirit of JNU.

Umbridge issued draconian ‘Educational Decrees’ every other day; Jagadesh Kumar issues farmaans via circulars every other day. Umbridge interfered with teaching at Hogwarts, reducing teaching to rote-learning from ‘Ministry-approved’ books; Jagadesh Kumar is interfering with long-standing practices of teaching and evaluation at JNU. Like Umbridge, the JNU VC is at war with the institution he heads.

JNU is one of the centres of learning that was truly ‘Made in India’, and nurtured thousands of scholars, bureaucrats, journalists, writers, activists, and politicians, many of whom were first-generation learners or from very deprived backgrounds and regions.

Today, JNU and other Universities like JNU, are in danger of being destroyed to make way for the ‘Reliance Jio’ type institutions which buy ‘Eminence’ from the PMO, and charge lakhs from each student in fees.

What has the JNU VC already destroyed?

He has destroyed a huge number of MPhil/PhD seats; decimated constitutionally mandated SC/ST and OBC reservation (to a mere 20.75 % of the total seats); JNU’s unique system of deprivation points at the MPhil/PhD level; and the JNU GSCASH which was a model for the whole country.

JNU now has the shame of being an institution that is protecting a professor (Atul Johri) who is accused by eight women students of sustained sexual harassment.

The JNU VC, by proposing to take a hefty Rs 515-crore loan from the Higher Education Financing Agency (HEFA), is shackling future generations of students to steep fees and privatisation, which will eventually exclude those from deprived backgrounds.

Umbridge-like, the JNU VC behaves like a petty tyrant with utter contempt, disrespect, and distrust for JNU scholars (both faculty and students). In a university where students love to study and teachers love to teach, and where two-hour classes stretch to four or five hours, and where research students spend weeks in libraries and at field-work, the VC has imposed compulsory signing of attendance sheets on students and teachers!

He refuses to meet students and teachers and instead prefers to communicate through punitive circulars, fake news via social media, pliant media and the police! Contrary to the media picture of JNU, the struggle in JNU now is not “Left vs Right.”

Our problem with the JNU VC is not because his ideas differ from ours. It is because he is out to kill any ideas and institutions that do not fit his ideology and that of his masters.