Gurmehar Kaur and Ramjas College row: Hooliganism murders the spirit of debate in academia

It is not just what has happened at the Ramjas College last week that has brought the ABVP into the public discourse rather there is certain linearity to it. Time and again the members of ABVP have been creating one or the other controversies in university campuses around the country. What is marshaled as their self-proclaimed ‘nationalism’ is actually a euphemism that instrumentally counters political dissidents. The members of ABVP were not comfortable with the idea of Umar Khalid, a JNU research scholar and activist, speaking in the seminar ‘Cultures of protest’ being organised at the college campus. Therefore, they felt it important to oppose and approached the Ramjas administration asking them to get the event cancelled. Being apprehensive of this move the organizers preferred to ask Umar Khalid to not come. [caption id=“attachment_3302024” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Violence at Ramjas College. Image Courtesy: Facebook/Comrade Sunil[/caption] Even after the said speaker was dropped from the list of speakers the event was disrupted by the members of ABVP by pelting stones at the conference room and roughing up the common students who had assembled for the seminar. The students who were present in the seminar recall with great sense of awe and surprise the loud music being played just outside the seminar hall by members of ABVP and then a sudden attack. It didn’t end just with the disruption of the seminar rather as if it all began then. This throws an important question to us. If one speaker was the cause of ABVP’s trouble with the entire event then what was the rationale behind disrupting it even after the said speaker had been dropped from the list of speakers? However, let us not delve into it right now. The very next day students, teachers and organisers of the seminar who had assembled to peacefully march against the hooliganism of the ABVP members were badly attacked and beaten-up. Stones were pelted at the peaceful protestors and they were badly attacked and not surprisingly in the presence of police that remained a meek spectator while the entire episode. Many students had to be hospitalised and a professor is severely injured. Not only this but to great dismay the celebration of this hooliganism among the members, sympathisers and associates of ABVP is appalling. The political symbolism of this disruption and attack is that those who disagree with the brand of ABVP’s politics will not be allowed to speak, think, express, discuss and debate freely. Every university campus has students who are politically active and the presence of and political organisations are something which is not anti-thetical to the existence of a university space. On the contrary these are the markers of a healthy democratic society. There are political differences and it is quite natural to have but to resort to such forms of hooliganism is highly condemnable. The raison d’être of a university is to inculcate the art of reasoning among its pupil. Resorting to such hooliganism and will only be detrimental to the academic spaces.