Besieged by protests, is DU the new Jantar Mantar?
NEWDELHI: It’s like any other day at Jantar Mantar in the heart of Delhi on Tuesday afternoon. Twelve groups, some known — others unknown, are demonstrating with their charter of demands.
A few hundred bank employees are protesting against bad loans and outsourcing. None of the agitators, however, draw media attention. And there is a reason.
24x7 news channels have focused their cameras on protests at the University of
Delhi. From students of DU and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) to teachers, from non-teaching employees to National Students’ Union of India (NSUI) office bearers, people with varied demands held the campus — which resembled a protest site — to ransom on Tuesday.
Thousands of students assembled at Sri Guru Tegh Bahadur (SGTB) Khalsa College for a march against the alleged violence by Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad students at Ramjas College on February 22, amid chants of “hum honge kaamyaab”.
But many are upset over the university campus — once a platform for free thinking — turning into a hub of protests.
“Not that there were no protests earlier. But what we are witnessing these days is unprecedented in the sense that it has hijacked every other constructive activity the campuses should prioritise,” said Dr BS Rattan, who retired as a professor from DU before settling in Chandigarh.
Dr Ratan recalled a “few protests here and there” on the campus over issues such as “not giving admit cards to students for want of required attendance” or over matters related to “distribution of admission forms”.
But that was in 2000. “Now, it seems, politics has taken over,” said the 70-year-old former professor of English. Cut to 2017. As angry students from other universities such as JNU swarmed the campus, the road towards Arts Faculty was fortified with heavy police presence.
An actor and a teacher at SGTB, Kuljeet Singh, agree. Singh, whose association with DU spans over two decades, says the last major commotion was in the 1990s when Hansraj College students were injured in a lathi-charge ordered by then joint police commissioner Kiran Bedi.
“The campus used to encourage dissent till lately. But now we see stone pelting. It’s hard to imagine where we are headed,” Singh, now an assistant professor, said.
Deepak Pental, professor of genetics and DU vice-chancellor between 2005 and 2010, sees a partial role of police in mishandling the violence on campus.
“I think there is more to it than meets the eye. I don’t understand why we give so much of importance to the so-called anti-nationals,” Pental said.