February 17, 2015
This statement is being issued by Krantikari Yuva Sangathan (KYS) as part of an ongoing militant movement of working-class youth enrolled in Delhi University’s School of Open Learning (SOL), which offers distance mode education to nearly four lakh students. We wish to begin with highlighting the huge protest rally held today (17 February 2015) by SOL students outside Delhi Secretariat. The express intention of the protest was to apprise the Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi, Shri Manish Sisodia, of the students’ numerous pending problems. During the protest, a delegation of SOL/Correspondence students submitted a memorandum to the Deputy CM, who also holds the Higher Education portfolio. Students have demanded the introduction of regular evening college in 28 colleges of Delhi University (DU) that are funded by the Delhi Government. Students also demanded the provision of all route bus pass facility for DU’s Correspondence students.

Importantly, under the aegis of KYS, DU’s Correspondence students had earlier too submitted a memorandum to the Education Minister with similar demands on 3rd February 2014, i.e. during the 49 days tenure of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government. At the time the AAP government gave little assurance of taking a proactive stand on Correspondence students’ issues. Of course, it has not escaped our notice that in the 2015 Delhi election, the AAP strategically excluded the issue of Correspondence students from its manifesto. It is precisely for this reason that the KYS-led DU SOL Students’ Union gave the call to Correspondence students to press NOTA when they went to vote.

Given the fact that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) party has come to the office this year with a thumping majority based on promises of alternative politics and of representing the marginalized sections of society, Correspondence students and KYS activists have beefed up pressure. The delegation that met the Deputy CM Sisodia during today’s protest strongly argued that the Minister should take more serious cognizance of the fact that 28 colleges of Delhi University are funded by the Delhi government and therefore can be made to cater to the needs of Correspondence students.

Expectedly, the Deputy Minister Manish Sisodia tried to skirt the issue by resorting to a typical Aam Aadmi Party populist tactic of promising something in abstract. The Minister expressed the willingness to introduce 20 new colleges in DU, while at the same time refusing to engage with the fact that of the existing 28 DU colleges funded by Delhi Government immediate remedial measures could be taken, i.e. by making the existing 28 colleges start the evening college shift and thereby accommodating Correspondence students in the regular mode. The Correspondence students also find the AAP Government’s promise of “reducing the gap between government and private schools” as an empty promise, considering the fact that the AAP government continues to bypass the long-standing demand of the Left movement for common schooling/common education system from KG to PG.

Expectedly, the lukewarm response of the Minister has convinced Correspondence students to strike back with even greater force and take their message to the city’s slums, factories, sweatshops and government schools.

The struggle of Correspondence students is an extremely important one. It is a struggle that has been waging for some years now and is based on active participation and organization of working-class youth as well as students from lower middle-class families. The fundamental issue around which the entire movement has evolved is that of inequality nurtured by the dual education system and the resulting exclusion as well as the marginalization of working-class youth within the university/higher education system.

Through their several protests outside the University Grants Commission (UGC), HRD Ministry (Government of India) and at the level of DU, Correspondence students have continuously exposed that contrary to popular conception, the distance learning mode (Correspondence) student community does not consist primarily of those who wish to pursue studies part-time. In fact a majority of students studying through the distance learning mode consists of those who wish to study in regular colleges but are forced to enroll in the correspondence mode because they do not get admission in such colleges. Majority of students enrolled in SOL come from economically impoverished and vulnerable sections of the society. Most of these youth are products of our country’s neglected government schools (such as Sarvodaya Vidyalayas) and small, poorly-run private schools. In the rat race to get into regular college education in universities like Delhi, they obviously get left behind. This is especially due to the shortage of seats in regular colleges of DU and resulting high admission cut-offs. Ironically then, government school students themselves constitute the largest section of youth who are denied admission to government-funded universities, particularly regular colleges.

Even this year 2,78,000 students applied for the undergraduate courses in regular colleges of DU. But with just 54,000 seats, most of the students have had to settle for the informal mode of education or distance learning. Most of us end up enrolling in SOL because we cannot get past the outrageously high cut-offs of the regular colleges. In such a situation, it is the duty of the Government to gradually try and ensure that an increasing number of such students are properly incorporated in regular courses. Unfortunately, the policies of successive governments have not been moving in this direction at all. As a result, there is a tendency towards increasing informalization of education for an increasing number of students. Indeed, in May-June 2014 there was an institutional pressure on behalf of DU to discontinue the Political Science Honors/B.A./B.Com undergraduate programs in SOL and to replace them with certificate/diploma courses! Due to this unholy design, the DU administration did not apply to the UGC (distance education board) for extension of recognition of its Correspondence courses. Only after much protest by Correspondence students did DU seek extension of recognition and began admission in July 2014.

The engrained anti-working class stand of the DU authorities is reflected in the actual functioning of SOL itself. SOL is running in an extremely informal and ad-hoc manner. The personal contact program (PCP) is most ineffective because the classes are very few and irregular. Even this year the classes of first year students were abruptly stopped after offering just 12 days of classes; leaving more than half of the syllabus incomplete. Similarly, classes of second and third year Correspondence students have started late, i.e. with exams just two months away. Students also pointed to a huge scam in sending messages regarding PCP classes with most of the students getting messages of just 3-4 days of classes.

Expectedly, due to non-completion of coursework and poor teaching during PCP classes, year after year, Correspondence students perform badly in DU’s examinations. With more than 50% students failing in the examinations and almost 95% students out of those passing just about scraping through, the institution’s failure to provide equal and meaningful education is evident. The fact is that there is a huge infrastructure crunch due to which SOL does not send messages to more than 20% student on any of the days of classes. On top of that even a byline is sent in the message saying: PCP classes are not compulsory just to discourage students from turning in huge numbers.

The students also pointed out that despite the fact that the number of students in the Correspondence mode is much larger than in DU’s regular colleges, the number of courses offered is too few. For example, popular courses like B.A. Honors in History, Sociology, Hindi etc. are not made available in the Correspondence mode. Moreover, the study material is outdated and is highly rote-oriented. The Library facility of SOL too is utterly inadequate and in need of a major overhaul. DU’s determination to keep SOL students outside the fold of quality higher education is also reflected in the delayed declaration of SOL B.A. results. Such delay ensures that SOL students cannot seek admission in DU’s post-graduate programs on time. Hence, every year so many eager SOL students have been turned away from seeking admission in courses like LLB, B.Ed, MA, etc. because DU fails to release their third year results in time for them to confirm their provisional admission to post-graduate courses. This is despite the fact that they pay the same examination fee and sit for the same examinations alongside regular college students of DU.

This story is not peculiar to DU’s Correspondence mode. Distance education (both at the school and higher education level) and the perpetuation of the dual system of education (i.e. co-existence of government schools and private schools) is a tool used by the Indian state to just about educate the country’s future workforce and to push working-class youth towards lower rungs of the capitalist labour market. That the interests of the working-class youth across different religious communities and castes are strategically kept out of educational reforms ensures that they continue to be excluded, or at the most, reluctantly incorporated into the margins of government-funded educational institutions. It is the message of this educational apartheid that KYS is highlighting through the struggle of DU’s Correspondence students.

Shahnawaz Jaman & Rohit Singh

KRANTIKARI YUVA SANGATHAN (KYS)
DELHI UNIVERSITY S.O.L. STUDENTS UNION (KYS)
Type III/300, Ayurvigyan Nagar, Near Ansal Plaza, New Delhi
Conveners: Md. Shahnawaz, Rohit
Ph.: 9958116114

Prepared by the Nagpur Section of the Organising Committee for Sevagram- New Delhi discussion series on working class politics

We do not need deep analytical tools to understand that worldwide women’s situation today is, at best, those of second class citizens and at worst chattel for male rapists. Everywhere, social division of labour between men and women is at the core of women’s subordinate condition and manifests itself in the society through sexual violence, segregation and ideological legitimations of imposed gender roles.

Regarding democratic rights, both in the public and private sphere, women widely remain under rules framed by men. It is difficult for women to escape from the prison house of marriage and prostitution because of their historically subordinated role in the labour force and unwaged position within the ‘family’ or the domestic /reproductive sphere. In a way Capitalism in fact has, in a double movement, widened women’s oppression as well as improved their situation while putting them in the modern factories and other workplaces outside home, enlarging the proletariat and thus the material basis of women’s struggle within ‘family’ and against Capital. At the same time it has been reacting violently to women’s own efforts and struggles towards emancipation since these struggles are an attempt to break the split between productive and reproductive spheres. The Capitalist Mode of Production (CMP) has proven to be able to transform, that is to say, destroy in a negative way the ‘family’, with a higher cost for the women who are left alone with their children.

In advanced capitalist societies (i.e., at the centre of Capital), women have largely been integrated in the wage labour while some partial (and reversible) socialization and small mechanization of domestic labour have been realized and women’s struggles have been pushed towards more “freedom” and “equality” within the CMP – allowing for example working class women not to get married (despite high levels of poverty amongst them) or giving bourgeois women opportunities to run big companies. As workers, women are employed in inferior positions with average wages lower at least by 20% than their male colleagues. As women, a vast majority of women still have to carry the burden of domestic work as well as taking care of children – which means a double day of work for them. Women in capitalist society still have to conform to the male objectification of their body, sexuality and mind. They still face everyday violence inside ‘family’ and outside, in the workplaces and in society in general.

In small towns and in the rural areas (i.e.in the peripheries of capital) women pay a heavy price, both as workers and as women. They are more under the social pressure and economic necessity of getting married – too often with a man they have not chosen – and therefore they are under constant pressure to preserve so-called chastity and family “honour”. They often do not have choice in matters of having children, taking contraceptives or abortion. On a world scale, they are routinely beaten up physically or even murdered on a massive scale – sometimes as soon as they are born. They have less access to education and their financial autonomy is far from being realized.

Women’s subordination already existed in pre-capitalist societies. In fact it has existed from the very beginning of human species, since the first division of labour between men and women anchored itself in the reproduction of the species – and then got consolidated in the “family’.

Within the CMP, women’s exploitation as workers and oppression as women take specific forms. We thus need to give a detailed look at the situation of women at workplaces (education/training, sectors of activity, wages-levels, hierarchies etc.) and in the family (marriage, sexuality, procreation/contraception, domestic work, bringing up children etc.), and also to the phenomenon of interaction between the production and the reproduction in order to fully grasp women’s situation under capitalism. And considering that CMP has not already unified women’s conditions everywhere, a detailed study of the conditions of women in different countries must be undertaken to understand the specific forms of women’s oppression, like in India for instance, where existence of caste adds another dimension to women’s oppression

From a communist perspective, we believe that freedom for women (and for all human beings) won’t be accomplished within the CMP, despite some “positive” changes we may have achieved within this mode of production. We may even say with Inessa Armand:”If women’s liberation is unthinkable without communism, then communism is unthinkable without women’s liberation.” But the solution will not automatically come from Communist revolution because women’s oppression existed even before capitalism. Women, as an oppressed community will have to take up that struggle upon their shoulders in co-operation with their male comrades, and sometimes against them, since men have a tendency to take advantage of women’s subordination. Freedom for women should lead to the emancipation of all.

Discussion

We invite you in this workshop to discuss the following points:

Day 1: Historical and theoretical background of women’s oppression

– Going back to Marx and Engels’ works, how do we analyze and understand the origins of women’s oppression in the context of “primitive communism” and given the emergence of class societies, with a specific focus on the sexual and social division of labour?

– What are the specificities of the capitalist mode of production regarding women’s oppression and exploitation? Based on Marxist economical categories, what has capitalism done and is still doing to women’s condition in the workplace and in the family structure? What is the relationship between the reproduction of labour-power and the capitalist production of value and surplus-value? In other words, how does the CMP use women workforce (for example as labour in “excess” with an impact on wage levels) and how is the CMP benefited by a ‘separate domestic sphere’ where the reproduction of the labour power is furnished “for free”?

Day 2: Women’s oppression in India and struggles against it

-What is the situation of women in the workplaces and in the family in India? What are the differences and maybe the common experiences between working class, bourgeois and of upper caste women? What is the role of the State in the regulation of the reproductive sphere and maintaining women in an oppressed and exploited condition through legal and economical means? Also, how is CMP benefited by violence against women and how is the State responding to that issue?

-Can we characterize the massive anti-rape movement in India which emerged in 2012 (and still exist sporadically), as a radical democratic movement? If so, what are the opportunities and also the limits of such movements regarding women’s oppression and notably in pressurising the State to take action? Finally, what is to be done in order to end women’s oppression and how can we support women to self-organize on an autonomous and on a class basis?

We invite all activists (men and women) working for women’s liberation and working class emancipation to participate in the discussion at this two-day workshop at Sevagram on 15-16 November, 2014. The discussions will be held at Yatri Nivas, Gandhi Ashram, Sevagram, beginning from 10 am on 15th November and will conclude by 5 pm on 16th November. Those who wish to present papers on the different points of the discussion mentioned above are requested to send them by 15th October 2014.The expenses incurred during the workshop will be shared by all participants like we did in our previous workshops at Sevagram.

Bhumika Chauhan

Much has been said about the recent protests of the Masters students of the Department of English, University of Delhi. Yet some things remain to be said, some need iteration. Although I am not directly part of this movement, it holds significance for me as an academic worker and as a Dalit in the university.

1) The most recent development are the responses to their complaints by the Ambedkar Reading Group (ARG) – their emphasis on the need to change the terms of the debate, to change the discourse, is well taken – responses that are nuanced, and express reservations that need to be distinguished from the low grumblings of teachers from various (including English) Departments; on occasion these grumblings have translated into an open stance, in some cases they have not. The charges levelled against the protesting students are of ‘casteism’ and ‘elitism’. The idea is not to defend the students. Responses to the ARG intervention clearly show that multiple tendencies exist within the struggling students and only the attempt to save the baby from going out with the bathwater is worthwhile. The fact that two of the three teachers against whom complaints were made were from the reserved categories may finally be the only basis for these charges. The manner in which the protesting students articulated their complaints does not in itself prove these accusations. The fact that a teacher does not take class regularly (one complaint) would have to be related to the teacher’s caste in some mysterious way for the complaint on this count to be casteist. Admittedly casteism can often parade in the garb of seemingly legitimate issues, but to imply that all such protests are casteists simply because they are made against persons who inhabit certain subject positions is to misrepresent too many complexities. Such assertions are often grounded in the compromised politics of a political correctness that tries to steer clear of complications that a multiplicity of conflicting subject positions produces. No an implicit casteism informs the early letter, and continues to colour some later responses to criticisms, and this needs to be addressed by the movement. But we must also recognise that this group is a heterogeneous one, and the movement is overdetermined by very many factors.

2) If a reserved category teacher lacks knowledge of basic texts (another complaint) it is a problem inherent to an inadequate reservation policy. This is an argument that has to be made by the defenders of affirmative action, not its reactionary critics. We acknowledge the disparity in the education available to different strata of society, and we struggle for justice, and end up having to make do (justifiably) with temporary solutions, such as affirmative action, to compensate for historical exclusion. The conflict between the interests of the reserved category teachers (livelihood, self-respect) and the interests of the students (of whom almost 50% are also from the reserved categories) for “quality” education should remind us of the incompleteness of such solutions. The offhanded, rather safely poised rejection by some, of the students’ complaint on grounds that they are ‘elitists,’ conceals the fact that much still remains to be accomplished especially in the lower rungs of the education ladder to ensure any semblance of equality in access to education. Instead of seeing this as a moment which forces us to recognise that the struggles of oppressed identities need to push themselves further, we get caught in the legalistic discourse of safeguarding the limited and limiting gains of affirmative action, even at the cost of alienating struggles emerging from other subject-positions. And to push it a little further: a teacher fails to explain what racism is and ends up actually deploying (perhaps unwittingly) a classic ploy used by racists to expound the naturalness of racial difference. Students complain against this. It is a strange irony that those who see themselves as being grounded in the anti-caste movement, seemingly forgetting the efforts made by the anti-caste movement to associate itself with the anti-racism movement, find it easier to call students elitist than to address the implications of the teacher’s arguments. But surely, the classroom too is an ideological space, pedagogy a moment of politics, and the teacher-student relation a power relation. Should we not take issue with what takes place in the classroom too? That ideologically compromised arguments and attitudes inform the practice of many other teachers is probably true, and the Ambedkar Study Circle’s attempt to highlight the lack of this recognition in the discourse of protesting students has to be registered; it is something that the movement too needs to address.

3) As to teachers, from the English Department and from other departments who have charged the protesting students of elitism and casteism, some introspection seems in order. What have they done by way of pedagogy, in any way for that matter, in their classrooms to address disparities in the cultural capital that students carry? (The efforts of the KSP Women’s Studies Centre in University of Pune come to mind.) This is not an ethical question (or not just that) to be addressed by individual teachers, but more than anything something to be struggled for collectively. Do not departments, syllabi and pedagogical methods, the way they are structured, foster elitism? Can elitism be seen to emanate solely from the attitude of students, many of who undeniably carry some amount of cultural capital, or is this elitism also materially grounded in the practices of academics here and now? The English Department, for example, stuck to the CATE (Combined Aptitude Test for English) for admissions to B.A. (Hons.) English for as long as it could. The argument was that the test is a better measure for students’ capabilities than Class XII marks, hence more ‘fair’ to individual students. The CATE basically tested students for skills that the university should provide them, and so invariably students with some amount of cultural capital ended up in the best colleges. (In a perverse way the Board exams, in which students who cannot speak and write correctly score 98 out of 100, may in a way be more democratic, for it does not always allow those with greater cultural capital to come out on top. It would, of course, be silly to say that one way of testing merit is better than another, but this observation should at least be able to bring out the manner in which elitism is fostered by those who continue to use the language of merit.) As a result not much attention is given to imparting the skills for which CATE tests students. How did English Departments develop the skills of the reserved category students admitted after relaxations of the selection criteria? If departments address these complicated matters the workload would increase, which in the current situation instead of creating more jobs will probably overburden teachers already teaching; the administration does not care how skewed the student-teacher ratio gets and how it effects classrooms. All the more reason for student and teachers to fight together; less reason for teachers to charge students of elitism that they have ended up becoming agents of.

4) Many leftist teachers have stayed mum on this issue. It is a political laziness that pushes leftists to take an easy ‘politically correct’ stance, supporting a kind of identitarianism that they would criticise in theory using nuanced political arguments. It is much more difficult to get your hands dirty, to be on the side of ‘elitist students’ against reserved category teachers. Such leftists must rememorise an old, relatively simple argument. Identities struggle, we struggle for an egalitarian world, and in the process of mediation end up with temporary solutions – affirmative action being one. Once institutionalised, affirmative action often leads to a kind of amnesia – those who have gained become part of the univers(al)ity that has historically excluded them, they forget the struggles of the past and those who still struggle. It is pretty much public knowledge that the selection of these teachers took place under shady circumstances. They were appointed by the administration in order to strengthen its hold. Their alienation from the struggles of the past is pretty much complete; in fact they stand in the way of that struggle, well and truly co-opted by the state. It is the anti-caste movement that must and will call them out. Our politics is not limited to defending upwardly mobile Dalit individuals, although this too has its role; we defend the Dalit movement, participate in it, for liberation of all Dalits (in the broadest possible sense).

5) The Leftist teachers who have in the past few years participated in various struggles against the administration and have raised concern over shady recruitments, need to explain their complete lack of engagement with the students’ assertions on such a closely linked matter. These teachers failed to enquire about the extent to which for some students the participation in the struggle was overdetermined by their concerns about their future in the academia, and undoubtedly also by the recent struggles in DU against the current administration. Those who wish to continue in the university see how such recruitments jeopardise their future. By not engaging with the struggle, even if by struggling against the compromised discourse that structures it, these teachers have missed an opportunity to constellate the segmented struggles of teachers and students over working conditions, to the detriment of all. The same is reflected in the teachers’ resistance to the students’ demand for an agenda-less joint General Body Meeting of teachers and students. Those who offered qualified support were more concerned with legalisms and procedures than with the possibilities the demand held for democratising education and for synchronising the struggles of teachers and students against the administration. Perhaps the early concerns about ‘student-feedback’ still troubles the teachers. When the students first registered their complaints some teachers argued that this is dangerous territory because it comes close to the VC’s ploy of pitting students and teachers against each other through mechanisms like student-feedback on teachers’ performance. This fear seems made it impossible for some teachers to imaging a student-teacher collectivity, perhaps they even fear it. But they should know that if this collectivity does not form itself, the state will, at some point, impose a form.

6) Now that some of the students’ demands have been granted – where do we go from here? In their response to the ARG, some MA English students called this issue “an open and shut case”. Were their problems with these three teachers all that brought the 200 students together in protest? Is the meeting of the demands the end of their movement? For those who see their future in the academia, it is more obvious that the struggle ought not to end here; there is much to be done towards gaining control of their workspace. But ought we not enquire about how the students were thinking about the struggle and what shaped their participation in it? Moreover, while some (or all) of them might hope for the Student-Faculty committees to lead to some meaningful engagement and democratisation, they have also seen enough evidence to expect the institutionalisation of the committee into a mere grievance cell where teachers address students’ complaints. Till the movement’s energy sustains perhaps this process will be stunted, but what about next year? How is the movement to ensure that it sustains, generalises itself? The movement did create a moment in which the struggles of various subject-positions could be seen to synchronise. The teachers have tried their best to squander this opportunity, and the anti-caste movement cannot connect with it till the discourse of quality and merit with its implicit casteism is chucked. But what can the students now do to further the possibilities their struggle offers?

Prasanta Chakravarty

The hallowed idea of teacherliness is a singular form of patronising drivel. It is only possible to impart a special nobility to tutelage once an institution of education is separated from our experiences of the world at large — which is textured with greyness. Teacherliness will, therefore, lead to infantilising the group of human beings whom we pigeonhole as students — loyal, genteel and, at the most argumentative, in the best traditions of participation. In a different imaginary, teachers might consider themselves to be helping facilitate alternative community bonds that might seem to act as buffer to our everydayness. This, though sometimes a response to our alienated existence, is finally an ethical form of romanticism that hopes to keep the conflictual outside of this community’s ambit. It is another form of tuning in to higher frequencies. Unfortunately, conflicts are not going to vanish, even within institutions and imaginary communities. Visualising student-teacher relationships in and through such equations only discourages either group of the collective from growing up and facing the big bad world with its full panoply of crassness and craftiness as well as its manifold joys and relational solidarities. Holding mere private discourse or opting out of the struggles and travails of existence are not options.

The very idea that an educational institution is a secluded buffer — that it can and ought to be guarded against outside impurities and influences — is a venerable Kantian invention, one that sharply divides enlightened scholars from the hoi polloi. This move is exactly and predictably what we are witnessing from some votaries of teacherliness in responding to the predicament that Jadavpur University finds itself at this point. That JU is a gated community. Or ought to remain such — although we do, of course, outwardly acknowledge the immense outside support in its time of crisis. It is ironical that the protesters in the movement, in spite of the many hardships that they continue to face, are resisting such a distinction between the insider and the outsider (bohiragoto). The bahir (outside) is imbricated within the bhitor (inside) — whether we wish to see it or not. The outside has now spread all around the globe and Jadavpur cannot claim a naive, sacramental and sanitised inside for its inhabitants. The whole political nature of this debate is about conflating the two and taking it to its logical conclusion. Any attempt to segregate the inside from the outside will be a travesty of the things that are at stake for Bengal. The movement can potentially have a far larger fallout. Any attempt to narrow it down to a matter of JU’s internal collegiality — wonderful as it might seem — is going to unsettle and derail those possibilities.

The very notion of a safe haven is a chimera. To invoke goodness and humane qualities in any institute is risible, an unfortunate form of pathos by which the academe is often bound to justify its existence, a delusional and infantile mode of denial of the rough and tumble of our daily existence. Goodness and greatness foment a vision of normalcy that is simply non-existent. It divests us of the same greyness that I referred to — of the university space — that in actuality universities are places of educational exchange and occasional camaraderie as well as spaces of intense manoeuvre, gaming and subtle hierarchies. Just like in any other walk of life. If activists are manipulative, so also are the detached scholars, often in a much more invidious and nuanced fashion. Here is a chance to be self reflexive about a truly political moment. Let us not demean this moment.

The anti-Left Front and anti- TMCP nature of the protest demonstrates not its apolitical nature but its self-organising potentiality to resist its segmenting and straitjacketing within a politics of delegation, representation and etatisation. Such attempts render the movement the very opposite of the politics it posits in its objectivity, by projecting it as one seeking to restore normalcy and order. And reinstating a culture of moral guardianship in the process. Their best bet in this respect is to begin by segmenting the space-time of the university from the outside. In other words: to divide the intellectual from the manual. This is thoroughly insidious. More so at a time when the BJP-led dispensation at the Centre has been trying to fish in troubled waters by seeking to capitalise on the anti-Left Front, anti-TMCP character of the movement through the good offices of governor Kesri Nath Tripathi, a dyed-in-the-wool RSS fanatic.

Dubious scholarly attempts to read, represent and co-opt the larger movement by invoking teacherly sentimentality must be countered steadfastly. Sharply. For that is how universities return to detached, mature and superficial normalcies. By paying homage to collegiality. By creating a bogey of divisiveness among the protesters. By trying to differentiate students from the protesters — as two divergent species of being! This is the time to step up the offensive on multiple flanks — directed at the mercenary goons, of course, but also at the ideological warfare the system is now beginning to wage via the seemingly freelance agencies of the ‘independent’ and ‘apolitical’ scholar-teacher – which is a patronising, rearguard, fifth columnist action by the university don — a pattern all too well-known.