JU Again

The event at Jadavpur University (JU) on 5 May, and the sequel to it show, first of all, how the forces of militant obscurantism are getting determined to penetrate institutions where they had little foothold earlier. The trouble started when the alumni association at first granted permission to the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of BJP to show a film named "Buddha in a Traffic Jam" in the Triguna Sen auditorium and then withdrew it, after which the ABVP began the show in the university lawn without due permission of the authorities. Whatever has been brought to light suggests that the ABVP and their political masters are hell-bent on entering various reputable universities with their own brand of patriotism, which is an Indian replica of the Nazi brand of patriotism (M S Golwalkar, the spiritual guru of the ABVP, was an open admirer of the Nazi concept of nation-building). The contents of the controversial film are not, however, known to outsiders, except some vague hints. The news media have not touched on this subject at all, for reasons best known to them. The way the BJP chieftains have aired their own brand of 'patriotism' and declared Jadavpur University a den of 'anti-patriotic activities', along with making many outrageous statements, has revealed the reality that they are against any free thinking at all. This is commensurate with their relentless attempts to distort India's history, their praise of the Hindu caste system (concurrently going with Narendra Modi's hypocritical admiration of Ambedkar), their programme of 'ghar wapsi' and so on and so forth. Their ideology of killing and persecuting Muslims is backed by the sustained efforts to deprecate the Indianness of Indian Muslims finds it convenient to ignore many facts of history, among which one of which is that it is from India that Islam spread to South East Asia. It is learnt that the ABVP brought some outsiders into the campus of Jadavpur University in order to foment trouble. This shows that these products of Indian fascism are hell bent on capturing all the educational institutions. There are, however, other issues that go relatively unnoticed. For example, the verdict of the Supreme Court not to allow state-level joint entrance medical examinations is important. It is clear that the question types would benefit the examinees from central schools, which are much more expensive and where the only medium of instruction is English. This issue should be discussed threadbare and debated assiduously.

Meanwhile, cutting across the party line Lok Sabha Members on May 11, demanded that common entrance test i.e. National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) for medical admissions be conducted in regional languages, expressing their unhappiness over the Supreme Court order for a single common test from this year. It's a serious issue but students organisations irrespective of their political affiliation do hardly bother about though the fate of hundreds of thousands of aspiring students hangs in the balance.

Frontier
Vol. 48, No. 46, May 22 - 28, 2016