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The SRCC Administration cancels North East Cell’s panel discussion on the grounds of misinformation and violence mere hours before the event.

On 23 January 2020, the North-East cell of Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC) was going to conduct a panel discussion on “Why the North-East is Protesting,” where the cell wanted to create awareness about the ongoing protests in the North-East against Citizenship (Amendment) Act. However, after concerns of violence, the administration canceled the event a mere few hours before.

The speakers invited were academic scholars and journalists, among which two were faculties of the University itself. Apparently, the administration convened an emergency meeting and without any prior information to the organisers of the Program and the Heads of the Cell, called off the Program.

The statement released by the North-East Cell says, “The event scheduled to take place today, organised by the North-East cell SRCC stands cancelled by the administration. In an emergency meeting held mere hours before the event, the Administration and Dr. Simrit Kaur, the Principal, informed us that the event is cancelled due to unavoidable circumstances. We were told that they received information about the possibility of violence on campus, if the event was to take place. We were also told that there was no balance in our panel and all our speakers had the ‘same bent of mind’.”

“They also suggested this event be conducted at a later time and said it was unwise to have the event in this climate. We insisted that this was not a politically motivated event and that it was conducted because there exists a complete lack of awareness about the North-East protests in the College. This discussion was the need of the hour which garnered immense support and we were expecting a large crowd of students all over the campus.” adds the statement.

In the letter by the Students’ Union to the Principal of the College, the Union cites ‘violence and misleading information’ as the main reason for the cancellation of the event.

The Letter sent by the Students’ Union said, “The North-East society of SRCC is conducting a seminar on the Citizenship (Amendment) Act today (23.1.2020) in room no:2. This seminar is based on a one-sided ideology on the CAA act which may indulge violence and misleading information among the students. Furthermore, the Government has already circulated to educational institutions regarding spreading awareness about the facts and right information about CAA. Being a responsible institution, SRCC must not accept this seminar which is against the norms of social welfare. So, the (The Students Union) considering the interest of the majority, request you to cancel the permission to host the seminar. If this request of ours is subject to cancellation, we request you to grant permission to our seminar which will include the same kind of one-sided ideologies. Taking into consideration the benefits and well-being of everyone involved, we request you to take a favourable decision.”

However, as alleged by the Students’ Federation of India (SFI) in their statement, two days before the scheduled event, under the influence of threat of violence from Akhil Bharatiya Vidhyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the Students’ Union and the Administration pressurised the organisers to call off the event.

As told by a student to The Wire, the students attending the event also received calls from the Students’ Union to discourage the students from attending the protest.

The North-East Cell expressed their disappointment in the message circulated by the Students’ Union and said it was disrespectful towards the speakers.

“Our speakers have years of experience and research to back any statement they make, and the Union didn’t have an issue blatantly attacking their credibility. We would also like to point out that the speakers were informed by the Administration that the event is cancelled due to a technical issue,” adds the statement.

Feature Image Credits: DU Beat Archives

Satviki Sanjay

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Campus Central

Students from 30 Universities Unite Against CAA and NRC

By Avni Dhawan January 22, 2020

A fact finding team comprising the students from 30 prominent educational institutions of India has been on a move to interact and collect details from the affected during the devastating incidents that took place during 14th to 19th January.

The young enthusiasts and the students of premier institutions, with their ongoing protests and struggles against the CAA and NRC have not only exemplified the power of youth in a representative nation, but have also contributed towards making the Government to rethink on the newly passed laws under the above mentioned acts. Continuing with the same, the students of 30 prestigious universities including Banaras Hindu University (BHU), University of Delhi (DU), Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI), Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IITD), Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), National Law University (NLU), Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA), Allahabad University, and others, came together to create a students fact finding mission.

The mission was aimed at collecting facts and statements of the victims of the heavy violence that took place from 14th to 19th of January with a target to share the video and audio testimonies at a press conference scheduled for 22nd January. The team released a report on Uttar Pradesh police brutality in dealing with anti- CAA protests with specifically targeting the muslim population. The group of students travelled to all the 15 violence affected cities situated in Uttar Pradesh covering Meerut, Bijnor, and even Firozabad, primarily from January 14th to 19th.

A student of Jamia Millia Islamia informed about some of the common observations of the team which included, the police exclusively targeting the muslim ghettos which belonged to the economically weaker sections of the society. Rag pickers, daily wage labourers, workers of small dhabas were some of the few among them. As, per his statement police, instead of curbing the protest often indulged in open firing killing especially the minors paying no regard to the provision against firing above the waist.

He further explained about the instances where the injured who went for an X-Ray were not allowed to keep the reports and other documents with them. Not only this, as per his statement there are many hospitals in Uttar Pradesh who denied treatment to many wounded who lost their lives which otherwise could have been saved. In his final statements he said, “This violence can be seen as the culmination of communal polarisation spread by government and media over past few years affecting administrations and psyche of a common person, resulting in the generation of a sence of hatred towards a particular community.”.

Feature Image Credits: DU Beat Archives

Kriti Gupta

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DUB Speak

Editorial: Fighting the Thought Police: Social Media and Dissent

By DU Beat January 18, 2020

These are powerful times. These are politically volatile times. These are disappointing times. These are resisting times. Most important of all, these are questioning and questionable times.

With the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC) being protested against vehemently in the North-East and across the rest of the country, including the popular hubs of politics and entertainment – Delhi and Mumbai – respectively, the citizens of the country are awakening to the anti-people policies of the current administration, including (but not limited to) the controversial abrogation of Article 370 in Kashmir, the policies to privatize education, the Trans Person’s Bill, and the continual curbing of dissent by arresting protesting activists. As I write this, the Farmers’ Leader, Akhil Gogoi, is being charged under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Amendment Act – a move that has invited widespread criticism for its arbitrary and oppressive nature.

In a backdrop such as this, it is impossible to go about one’s life – especially as students who study Foucault, Orwell, Ambedkar, and Marx in the classrooms of one of the premier universities of the country – without being the least bit affected with the socio-political climate of the country. The slogan, “Personal is political” manifests itself powerfully before us, now more than ever, since the majority of us who are on any social networking platforms like Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, among many others, cannot possibly scroll through the feeds nonchalantly, without coming across stories, posts, or articles on the current climate. What, then, becomes of social media activism?

I confess that I myself, in the past, have sneered at ‘social media influencers’ and the like, believing that the social and cultural capital enjoyed by them, by virtue of their popularity, was taking up unfair space in the powerful discourse of ground-level activism. However, the past few months have altered this perspective drastically, because social media has now seemingly emerged as the preferred space of discourse for many, includingsystematically disenfranchised communities like trans-people, women, and people from conservative households. When paramilitary troops and police forces are employed in the ratio of three is to one, at organised protests in India Gate, Jantar Mantar, and brutalise the students of Jamia (JMI), Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), and Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), among other locations, then being on-ground becomes a life and death battle for many from the aforementioned communities.

Social media, then, serves as the forum to express dissent, become informed, and share awareness. This is not to say that the women at Shaheen Bagh, sitting in the chilling winter of Delhi for about a month now, are not palpable to a violent crackdown, or that the resistance that has engulfed Kashmir for multiple decades is on equal footing with sharing a tweet, but it is to acknowledge the newfound power that is threatening the authorities in control. Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) IT cell has been notoriously in the news for circulating numbers, advertising that calling said numbers would get the people “free subscription to Netflix” or rendezvous with porn-stars. Doctored photos of students holding placards like “Hinduo ki kabrkhudegi” instead of the original “Hindutva ki kabra khudegi,” were instantly circulated in social media pages, attempting to polarize communal sentiments against students at JMI and AMU. In no time after actress Deepika Padukone stood behind JNU Students’ Union President, Aishe Ghosh, and activist Kanahiya Kumar, that the hashtag “BoycottChhapak” was trending on social media and sexually profanity being hurled at her. Internet lockdown in Kashmir has continued for over 150 days now, while internet services in numerous states like Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Assam, and Gujarat were blocked. Instances like this are testimony to the fact that any platform of public dissent, especially a technologically savvy one like social media that people from older generations in the administration are largely unable to grasp or master, acts to counter the narrative of normalcy our Prime Minister has been propagating with his famous line – “Sab changa si!” A single tweet on the everyday violence in the country is indeed momentous enough to throttle this false narrative.

While the criticism against social media has always been the legitimacy of the sources and the accountability of any debates/discussions over it, private citizens like Mitali Bhasin, Sukhnidh Kaur, Pravan Sawhney, Divya Kandukuri, are some of the few names who have set precedent for researching their own resources for news and compiling information for public use in these tumultuous times. Pages like With Kashmir, and media houses like The Wire, The Print, Quint have proven to be reliable sources of information and discourses, publicized and accessible through social media platforms.

The language barrier parting English, Hindi, and other regional languages in India has always been a drawback for left liberal discourse in India, and the dearth of similar resources / activism in languages apart from English, including in Hindi, remains a blind-spot that needs correction in an era where the voting public, from Savarna households, including in our family WhatsApp groups is unaware of the manipulation and propaganda being targeted towards them, because of language or technological gaps that disengage their participation in social media activism. However, as millennials and post-millennials, it is our prerogative to engage in sharing the information that reaches us, creating the much-needed space for dissent amid the hoardings of propaganda.

Most important of all, it is time that to take heed of all the tools at our disposal in fighting violence sponsored by the State. It is time to change those display pictures to red, to make highlights on Instagram with curated information, to tweet and flood the judiciary, the Police, and the ministries, because when we fight fascism in Orwellian times like these, it becomes poignant to break free, in any and all ways possible, from what 1984 labelled the Thought Police.

Anushree Joshi

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