In what could flare up the JNU controversy further, some teachers of the university, believed to be Right Wing sympathisers, have released a report describing the university as a ‘den of organised sex racket.’
The 200-page dossier, prepared in 2015 by eleven teachers, was recently released to a few journalists. The dossier has been submitted to the JNU administration, according to a news report.
"Over one thousand boys and girls students have been fined from Rs 2,000 to Rs 5,000 for consuming alcohol, for indulging in immoral activities in their hostels. At a casual glance at the gates of the hostel one can see hundreds of empty alcohol bottles. Sex workers have been openly employed in hostel messes, where they not only lure JNU girls into their organized racket but also pollute the boys,” Amita Singh, professor at the Centre for Law and Governance said.
The document, titled ‘Jawaharlal Nehru University: The Den of Secessionism and Terrorism, talks about how a few teachers encourage a decadent culture in JNU and are legitimising separatist movements in India.
"How come big and high brand cars are moving around the hostels particularly in the night hours. Some security staff is also involved in this racket. Money, sex, drugs and alcohol are tools through which freshers are being lured into this ring," she added.
"It is a matter of serious concern that some JNU academics, masquerading as liberals and feminists, have been engaged in nefarious and anti-national activities of maligning India publically through their statements, lectures, publications and extra-academic activities of their NGOs which receive liberal funding from foreign hostile agencies," the document states.
Assistant professor in the Special Centre for Sanskrit Studies, Hari Ram Mishra, who was part of the group which prepared the dossier, told The Wire that they want to safeguard JNU from more trouble.
"Our point is that students should be apolitical. If you want to enter politics, there is a huge field outside. But JNU Students' Union should be limited to campus work only. But unfortunately, here communists are preferred over meritorious students," Mishra said.
On Monday, the internal high level inquiry committee, set up to look into the February incident where anti-national slogans were raised by a group of Afzal Guru supporters, found a few students to be guilty and recommended penalties on some and suspended others.
For their involvement in the event, while research scholars Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya were rusticated, students’ union leader Kanhaiya Kumar was fined Rs 10,000.
ABVP leader Saurabh Sharma, who had complained against Kanhaiya and his comrades for their allegedly "anti-national" activities, has also been fined Rs 10,000 for the row.
Reacting to the committee’s recommendations, Kanhaiya Kumar threatened to burn the report and go on an indefinite hunger strike while the ABVP alleged that the committee has failed to distinguish between nationalists and anti-nationals while deciding the punishment to students and of having ‘criminalised’ patriotism.
Several students and teachers of the university held that the allegations made in the dossier were baseless and the only proof cited to back the anti-national accusation was a few pamphlets.
Many students told The Wire that pamphlets are a part of JNU’s tradition of discussion and debate.
“How can the pamphlets be seen as evidence for anti-national activities in the campus? All political organisations, including the ABVP, bring out pamphlets to let the students know of their political standpoints,” said Om Prasad, a research scholar associated with All India Students’ Association (AISA).
According to Nivedita Menon, professor in the Centre for Comparative Politics & Political Theory, the “dossier painstakingly puts together, as if secretly gathered through underground means, ‘evidence’ of ‘anti national activity’ – and what is this evidence? Copies of posters advertising events that have been publicly pasted all over campus – in the names of organisations, not anonymously; leaflets publicly distributed and fact-finding reports released at press conferences!”
Contact HuffPost India
Also See On HuffPost:
