The academics have said that the action taken against the students and targeting of students politics in prominent campuses is giving a new lease of life to the sedition law, which was a draconian tool in the hands of the colonial state and has no place in a democracy. (source: Express file photo)
More than 360 scholars and academics from Oxford University, Cambridge University and London School of Economics have signed a letter titled “#standwith JNU” which blames and condemns the BJP government for the action against JNU students.
“We condemn the BJP government-sanctioned police action in the JNU campus and the illegal detention of the JNUSU President Kanhaiya Kumar. We strongly condemn the manner in which political dissent is being stifled, reducing academic spaces to fortresses. We also condemn the widespread witch-hunt of left-wing students and student groups that this police action has unleashed. There has been a constant non- observance and disregard of administrative and legal norms as well as a gross infringement of the democratic rights of the student community. These actions are embedded in a deeply chauvinistic cultural nationalism, which espouses a casteist and Brahmanical, homophobic, and patriarchal worldview.” the letter said.
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Those who signed the letter include Dr Sandipto Dasgupta, a prominent legal scholar from the Newton International Fellow of the Royal Society and the British Academy, Aditya Balasubramaniam from University of Cambridge, Jay Lingham from the University of London, Neha Vermani from Royal Holloway College, University of London, and Dr Mandy Turner of Middle East Centre of London School of Economics. Many of them are JNU alumni.
The academics have said that the action taken against the students and targeting of students politics in prominent campuses is giving a new lease of life to the sedition law, which was a draconian tool in the hands of the colonial state and has no place in a democracy.
The letter says, “It is our democratic right to dissent, disagree, organise and struggle against state, institutions or policies that transgress and suppress democratic and egalitarian values. Expression of dissent cannot and should not be equated with being ‘anti-national’ (or any other such constructed category) and is definitely not punishable under law especially if it is non-violent.”
