JNY Mayhem: Dangerous Course

After crackdowns on anti-CAA protests at many places, rods and stones greet JNUites protesting fee hike

- Jyotika Sood

Even for a place so fabled for being a political laboratory, the first Sunday of 2020 would be remembered as a plot-turning chapter for Jawaharlal Nehru University. On January 5, a campus where student politics is mostly high-minded polemic, and slogans are the harshest weapons in view, was served with a more ominous version. A Bloody Sunday it was, as over 50 “unidentified goons” entered the campus and injured over three dozen people, including students and teachers, and vandalised varsity property. The proximate cause—a long-running agitation against a massive fee hike—may seem unconnected to other things, but in the backdrop of countrywide protests, including in other campuses, the episode bled into the larger anti-CAA story frame. The same protagonists and antagonists ranged against each other, just a new inflection point.

Eyewitnesses say it started between 5 and 5.30 pm, as the teachers association (JNUTA) was winding up its peace march around Sabarmati Hostel—this is placed north-central in the sprawling, 1,019-acre campus, supposed to be manned by a private security agency called Cyclops. That’s when, suddenly, everybody started hearing shouts and screams. A group of masked people went from hostel to hostel— reminiscent of Klanners in the grainy phone cam videos that emerged later (see pic)—attacking students with stones, rods, and sticks. The mob chased everyone who came en route. The rampage lasted over 3-4 hours. The precise details relating to the police are disputed. Some say they were called in only after substantial damage was done; others speak of knowing inaction and complicity, especially as videos purportedly showed them allowing the attackers to leave unharmed. The mob seemed to know its work—the injured were mostly those from the Left, including JNUSU president Aishe Ghosh, who had to be treated for a bleeding head wound and hand injuries at AIIMS.