JNU Controversy: State Versus The Students

- Asmita Bakshi

As the nationalism debate takes centrestage—splitting the discourse into often simplistic dichotomies of deshdroh and deshbhakti; respect for the soldiers dying on our borders and terror apologists; speech and sedition; the State and the students; the taxpayer and the researcher who is overstaying his welcome; Right and Left—students seem to be both the biggest casualties and the fiercest combatants.

On February 9, 2016, an event organised at the Jawaharlal Nehru University was allegedly splattered with “anti-national” slogans such as “Pakistan zindabad”,“Bharat ki azaadi tak jung rahegi”, “Tum jitne Afzal maaroge, har ghar se Afzal niklega”. In June 2015, the appointment of Gajendra Chauhan as the chairman of the governing council of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune had students up in arms over the “government’s high-handedness”—leading them to go on a 139-day-long strike until the I&B ministry agreed to have a dialogue with the protesting students.