Tag: Jamia Lathicharge

‘BJP Wants to Dictate What to Eat, What to Wear…’

By LokMarg

Nivedya P T, a student at the AJK Mass Communication Research Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia, says the current regime uses multiple tactics to quell even peaceful dissent

A Delhi Court recently dismissed the cases against Sharjeel Imam and 10 other Jamia Millia Students who had been in prison for a long time. Remarkably, the court also observed that a strong democracy depends on the fundamental right to peaceful dissent, which is guaranteed by the Indian Constitution. However, it hasn’t always been the case in recent years.

Anyone in India who expresses political dissent today runs the risk of being arrested on fabricated charges and is likely to face a tough time getting a fair trial and bail. From Anand Teltumble and Varavara Rao to Akhil Gogoi and Umar Khalid, we have witnessed that anybody who dares to challenge the status quo or something deemed ‘unfavorable’ to the current dispensation in Delhi, is arrested and charged under draconian laws like UAPA.

The charges are used to exploit the legal system as a tool for persecution. The process itself becomes the punishment; years are taken to resolve the cases, causing immense suffering for them and their families. The arrest of journalist Siddiqui Kappan is one case in point.

Another is of Safoora Zargar who was arrested when she was in the second trimester of her pregnancy and sent to an overcrowded Tihar Jail. How much more inhuman can the system be? Father Stan Swamy died while in police custody, after being denied basic health facilities despite being 80-plus and terminally ill.

Nivedya (left) says the current dispensation seeks to destroy campuses which are fertile ground for new ideas

In this light, the Delhi court judgment is welcome, but we must not forget that there are many activists charged under similar penal provisions, to whom justice has not yet been served. These activists, including women, Dalits and Adivasis, often arrested on baseless grounds, are still awaiting trial which put in dock not just the government but also the judicial system.

ALSO READ: ‘Stan Swamy Dies In Jail, Bilkis’ Rapists Are Released’

Ever since the BJP has come to power, there has been a tendency to brand a certain section of people, especially peaceful dissenters, and students, as anti-nationals, urban Naxals, or even terrorists. Various forms of hate campaigns, misinformation, and trolling are hurled at certain communities of our society by the people who exercise power, and their supporters.

There is a constant effort to push back the upliftment of minority communities. Look at the discontinuation of the Maulana Azad National Fellowship, a scholarship whose biggest beneficiaries were students from the Muslim community. Look at the Hijab ban in Karnataka where Muslim students were denied the basic right to education. The strategy is simple and scary: rob an entire section of Indian citizens of every basic right so that they won’t be able to raise their voice against this oppressive regime.

As a student who has been manhandled by guards and whose phone has been snatched inside the campus by the directions of the Chief Proctor, and who was detained without knowing the reason, I do not have the answer to where this country is heading to. Everything works at the whims of the current ruling party. There is no space for logic, rationality, arguments, debate, discussion or dissent.

From what to eat, what to watch, and what to wear, everything is dictated by this authoritarian regime! Campuses and students are falling prey to this brutality largely because campus spaces shape the future of the country. Such spaces are fertile grounds for the growth and development of ideas and the intellectual expanse of students. If such spaces are not regulated, controlled and crushed at their initial stages, then they will turn out to be a threat to an authoritarian regime. This is their biggest fear.

Besides, they do not want a section of society, the marginalized and minority communities, to access education, nor do they want to face a citizenry that would raise questions, protest or who would not follow them like puppets.

As told to Amit Sengupta

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A young, working woman, going home with a friend on a scooty, after a New Year eve get-together, is dragged for hours, trapped in the underbelly of the car, on the desolate midnight streets of West Delhi, by men loaded with machismo, money

No Antidote For Toxic Masculinity!

By Amit Sengupta

Some things just refuse to change, even in the acche din of ‘New India’! They come back like a memory frozen in cold blood in this biting cold wave, and life goes on just as before in a bitterly ritualistic scenario where the stunning lack of empathy strikes the deepest core of humanity like the icy north wind cutting into the flesh, as if with a sharp knife.

A young, working woman, going home with a friend on a scooty, after a New Year eve get-together, is dragged for hours, trapped in the underbelly of the car, on the desolate midnight streets of West Delhi, by men loaded with machismo, money, and, perhaps, unlimited alcohol. One of them reportedly has connections with the ruling party at the Centre.

Even while multiple versions come forth, sometimes in brazen contradictions, for instance regarding the identity of the driver, with or without a licence, and that if the music was too loud inside the car, etc, it is widely believed that the drivers knew what they were doing. However, what is striking is the manner the entire episode was enacted for such a long time, pointing to the inherent barbarism enclosed in the deepest recesses of a society.

Why did the killers keep driving, apparently taking the same route again and again, reportedly trying to jerk the woman away from the underbelly of the car, instead of helping her, if, it was, truly, an accident? What drives human beings, inebriated or otherwise, to enact such a prolonged public spectacle of cold-blooded murder and in such a terribly grotesque manner, unimaginable even in the most inhuman, perversely secret, viciously sadistic fantasies? What is the kind of upbringing they have had that compelled these men to instinctively behave in such a manner? What kind of schools and colleges did they go to, what were their family and social values, what kind of friendships did they cultivate, how did they relate to other women, their friends, classmates, sisters, strangers?

The cops are so predictable in Delhi that their conduct too follows a pattern, and it, seemingly, remains unchanged. Since 2014, under the muscular dispensation in Delhi, they seem to have become more predictable. Be it their tacit silence when ABVP goons brutally attacked JNU students and at least one teacher with rods etc, including the woman president of the JNU Students’ Union, her head smashed, blood all over her face! Or the manner the Delhi Police went berserk in Jamia Millia Islamia, attacking students for their peaceful dissent, so much so, entering the library and beating the hell out of shocked students immersed in reading. Remember that viral moment of male cops, trying to beat up girl students in Jamia, for absolutely no rhyme or reason, and the students defying them with a totally unafraid and brave act of non-violent defiance – a true act of Satyagraha?

The partisan conduct of the Delhi Police during the violence which rocked Northeast Delhi in the midst of the peaceful and massive anti-CAA protests across the country has been pointed out by critics. Remember that Muslim boy being forced to sing the national anthem? Remember the cops throwing stones along with the Hindutva mobs? Remember the homes and shops of one community being ravaged, so openly and brazenly?

Remember a police officer, standing in abject silence, as a small-time ex-AAP-turned BJP leader, spewed venom as a public spectacle? Or, when, a BJP politician, later rewarded with a Union minister’s post, made a public declaration, brazenly instigating violence, during the non-violent protests by the mothers and sisters of Shaheen Bagh, against the communal and anti-constitutional CAA: ‘Goli maaro… ko!” Did anything happen to these politicians or the goons who attacked the JNU students?

ALSO READ: ‘Police Action In Jamia Exposes Beti Bachao…’

If anything, this case uncannily reminds of the BMW case in which the son of a powerful family with big connections was involved. Did he stop to help the injured, some of them cops manning a barricade? Did he call a helpline, the police or an ambulance – or try to pick up the injured and rush them to a hospital? Instead, he and his friends went back to a safe home, got the servants to wash the car, removed all the traces of human flesh and blood on it, and life was happily lived ever after. Indeed, his and his friends’ life continue to be a happy-ever-after saga.

While many fear that the killers in the car which dragged the woman this New Year eve might eventually escape punishment, amidst the haze of hazy evidence, the big questions remain. In this disturbing bitter realism of a Hobbesian, brutish and nasty realm, no one is safe, especially women, with scores of men getting drunk inside their cars, in what is popularly called ‘Carobar’. Not only can they drive rash and turn the car into a killer machine, but, together, in a macho and mindless gang, many of them have the potential to celebrate a kind of savagery unimaginable in any civilized society.

More than that is the stunning lack of empathy. The eye-witness kept calling the cops – so what happened? He saw the car again and again, kept calling, and even chased the car – so what happened?

Remember how Nirbhaya, totally brutalized, and her friend, assaulted and smashed, were lying on the ground on a street as scores of cars passed by and no one even stopped by to help? At least that tragedy created a huge storm in Delhi and elsewhere with that bus stop in Munirka in South Delhi, where JNU students protested with candles again and again, becoming a tragic milestone of a tragic memory. However, has the reality of that brutal night changed for the better in the capital of India? It does not seem so.

However, there are stories of hope and inspiration. If not in Delhi, then from far-away America. And there are lessons for all of us.

Amidst the fierce snowstorms in sub-human temperatures stalking America recently, the ‘Independent’ of London reported about Sha’Kyra Aughtry, an Afro-American mother of three, who is rightfully being hailed as a ‘true angel’. If she and her boyfriend had not moved out of the cozy safety of their home into the deadly blizzard on a dark dawn, risking her life, the life of a developmentally disabled man who was lost in Buffalo at Christmas could never be saved.

The newspaper reported: “She saw Joe White, 64, caught in a snow bank and being buffeted by strong winds and heavy snowfall. She cut off White’s socks as they had become frozen to his legs, and used a hairdryer to thaw his frozen pants. The couple fed him and tried to treat his hands for frostbite, which had begun to turn gangrenous, and piled blankets on him to try to keep him warm. Aughtry contacted White’s sister, his only living relative, and staff at the North Park Theater cinema house where he has worked as the custodian since 1980…With Buffalo’s streets paralyzed under 50 inches of snow and emergency vehicles unable to reach the house for more than 24 hours, Aughtry took to Facebook on Christmas Day to plead for help in getting White to the hospital…”

Soon, after seeing her Facebook posts, neighbors joined in and cleared the snow. She took White to a hospital. His life was saved.

As a tribute to her, her boyfriend, and the community which responded collectively in this moment of crisis in trying to save the life of an unknown man who lost his way in the snowstorm, the North Park Theatre announced that they would hold a film show in honor of Sha’ Kyra and all others. No wonder, in the media and amidst her community, she is being hailed as an ‘angel’. An inspirational role model, who showed exemplary empathy and selfless courage, in saving the life of a fellow human being.

Read more: http://13.232.95.176/