Noam Chomsky and Over 300 Academics Condemn State Violence on HCU Students
NEW DELHI: Academics, Artists, Writers, Activists across the world have come together to issue a strong statement against the police action on students at the Hyderabad Central University and the “siege like situation” created within. The statement notes that the detained students were “untraceable for 48 hours, brutally tortured, and denied legal access. In short, all legal procedures of detention have been suspended.” It points to the the “brutal assault” of students when they opened community kitchens in the campus and the denial of access to lawyers and others to the students in the university.
The full text of the statement signed by reputed scholars including Noam Chomsky reads:
“We, academicians, activists, artists and writers, condemn the ongoing brutal attacks on and unlawful detention of peacefully protesting faculty and students at the University of Hyderabad by the University administration and the police.
We also condemn the restriction of access to basic necessities such as water and food on campus. The students and faculty members of the University of Hyderabad were protesting the reinstatement of Dr. Appa Rao Podile as the Vice-Chancellor despite the ongoing judicial enquiry against him related to the circumstances leading to the death of the dalit student Rohith Vemula on January 17th, 2016.
Students and faculty members of the university community are concerned that this may provide him the opportunity to tamper with evidence and to influence witnesses. Suicides by dalit students have been recurring in the University of Hyderabad and other campuses across the country. The issue spiraled into a nationwide students’ protest with the death of the dalit scholar Rohith Vemula. The protests have pushed into the foreground public discussion and debate on the persistence of caste-based discrimination in educational institutions, and surveillance and suppression of dissent and intellectual debate in university spaces.
Since the morning of March 22 when Dr. Appa Rao returned to campus, the students and staff have been in a siege-like situation. The peacefully protesting staff and students were brutally lathi-charged by the police, and 27 people were taken into custody.
The 27 detainees were untraceable for 48 hours, brutally tortured, and denied legal access. In short, all legal procedures of detention have been suspended. After the incident, the university has been locked down with no access to food, water, electricity, and Internet connectivity. Students were brutally assaulted when they opened community kitchens. Lawyers and members of human rights organization as well the ordinary citizens of the city were denied access to students. University of Hyderabad is one of India’s biggest public universities.
We have followed, with deep concern, similar violent attacks and undemocratic crackdown on students on the campuses of Jawaharlal Nehru University, the Film and Television Institute of India, the University of Allahabad, Jadavpur University, Burdwan University, and others across the country. That the highest administrative authorities in the university have allowed the silencing of debate and dissent is unfortunate.
We are disturbed by the pattern of growing nexus between student vigilante groups, youth wing of the ruling party, state and university authorities in colleges and university campuses across the country in order to mobilize the state machinery against vulnerable students. This has created a climate of fear and oppression in the country, and continually violates fundamental human and Constitutional rights of students.
We stand in support of the protesting students, staff and faculty of the University of Hyderabad and demand the following:
- Immediate withdrawal of police from the campus.
- Immediate release of, and withdrawal of all cases against, all arrested students and faculty.
- Suspension of the Vice-Chancellor P. Appa Rao.
- Judicial enquiry into the role of the HRD Ministry, the HRD Minister and Mr. Bandaru Dattatreya in inciting violence against Dalits on campus.
- Independent enquiry into the incidents of violence on the campus including the role of the ABVP in vandalising the Vice-Chancellor's office.
- Action against police personnel named by students in their complaints.
- Passage of the “Rohith Act” against caste discrimination in education.”
A partial list of the signatories is as follows:
- Lawrence Cohen, Director, Institute for South Asia Studies, University of California, Berkeley
- Navtej K Purewal Deputy Director, South Asia Institute SOAS University of London
- Akhil Gupta, Director, Center for India and South Asia (CISA), UCLA
- Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor & Professor of Linguistics (Emeritus), MIT
- Michael Davis, Professor Emeritus, Department of Creative Writing, University of California Riverside
- Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director, The Oakland Institute
- Barbara Harriss-White, Oxford University
- Kavita Krishnan, Secretary AIPWA
- Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, University Professor in the Humanities, Columbia University
- G. Arunima, Professor and Chair, Centre for Women's Studies, School of Social Sciences, JNU
- Sandeep Pandey, former Visiting Faculty, IIT, BHU, Varanasi
- Michael D. Yates, Professor Emeritus, University of Pittsburgh, United States
- Abha Sur, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Akeel Bilgrami, Sidney Morgenbesser Professor of Philosophy, Columbia University
- Haroon Akram-Lodhi, Chair, Department of International Development Studies, Trent University, Canada
- Apoorvanand, University of Delhi
- Marjorie Griffin Cohen, Professor of Political Science and Chair of Women’s Studies Department, Simon Fraser University, Canada
- Gerald Epstein, Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- Surinder S. Jodhka, Jawaharlal Nehru University
- Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Syracuse University
- Sangeeta Kamat, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- Dr. Shailaja Paik, University of Cincinnati
- Kevin B. Anderson, Professor of Sociology, University of California Santa Barbara
- Tithi Bhattacharya, Professor of History, Purdue University
- Pranav Jani, The Ohio State University
- Vinay Gidwani, University of Minnesota
- Nivedita Menon, Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University
- Alpa Shah, London School of Economics
- Jayati Ghosh, Jawaharlal Nehru University
- Srirupa Roy, University of Göttingen, Germany
- Rahul Varman, IIT Kanpur
- Ashwini Tambe, University of Maryland, College Park
- Jens Lerche, SOAS, University of London
- Gillian Hart, Professor, University of California, Berkeley
- Adrian Wilson, Social Anthropology, London School of Economics
- Ayesha Kidwai, Professor ,Jawaharlal Nehru University
- Meher Engineer
- Aishwary Kumar, School of Humanities & Sciences, Stanford University
- Ajantha Subramanian, Professor of Anthropology and South Asian Studies, Harvard University
- Jyoti Puri, Chair and Professor of Sociology, Simmons College
- Abdul JanMohamed, Professor, University of California, Berkeley
- Dr. Nathaniel Roberts, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Goettingen, Germany
- Paula Chakravartty, New York University
- Atul Sood, Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University
- Prof. Mohan Rao, Jawaharlal Nehru University
- Yasmin Saikia, Professor of History, Arizona State University
- Nandini Chandra, Delhi University
- Elisabeth Weber, Professor, University of California, Santa Barbara
- C. P. Chandrasekhar, Jawaharlal Nehru University
- Prof. Rupa Viswanath, University of Goettingen, Germany
- Rama Baru, Jawaharlal Nehru University
- Svati Shah, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- Immanuel Ness, Professor, City University of New York
- Balmurli Natrajan, William Paterson University
- Veena Hariharan, School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University
- Rajat Datta, Professor, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University
- Geraldine Forbes, Professor, State University of New York, Oswego
- Joya Misra, Professor of Sociology and Public Policy, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- Richard Seymour, London School of Economics
- Susan Visvanathan, Professor of Sociology, Jawaharlal Nehru University
- Dr. Pérez de Mendiola, Richard Armour Professor of Modern Languages, Chair,
- Dept. of Latin American, Caribbean and Spanish Literatures and Cultures & Humanities, Scripps College
- Peter Spiegler, Asst. Prof., Dept. of Economics, UMass, Amherst
- Swati Birla, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- Atreyi Dasgupta, Baylor College of Medicine
- Kuver Sinha, Syracuse University
- Sirisha Naidu, Wright State University
- Siddhartha Mitra, Programmer, Rockefeller University
- Samantha Agarwal, PhD Candidate, Johns Hopkins University
- Anup Gampa, PhD Candidate, University of Virginia
- Anu Mandavilli, Friends of South Asia
- Deepankar Basu, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- Nandini Dhar, Assistant Professor, Florida International University
- Michael Levien, Assistant Professor, Johns Hopkins University
- Devika Dutt, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- Smita Ramnarain, Assistant Professor of Economics, Siena College
- Taki Manolakos, Wright State University
- Valentina Dallona, Johns Hopkins University
- Iveta Jusova, Carleton College, USA
- Aditi Chandra, University of California, Merced
- Hee-Young Shin, Wright State University
- Anjali Arondekar, UC Santa Cruz
- Jinee Lokaneeta, Drew University
- Ajay Chandra, University of Warwick
- Xiao Yu, Peking University
- Bettina Apthekar, UC Santa Cruz
- Anirban Karak, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- Natasha S K, Syracuse University
- Mitul Barua, Syracuse University
- Simmy Makhijani, San Francisco State University
- Sofia Gavtadze, Solidarity Network, Georgi
- Avishek Konar, Alumnus, The Ohio State University
- Robert Carley, Wright State University
- Dia Da Costa, Associate Professor, University of Alberta
- Ann Smock, University of California, Berkeley
- Liz Mount, Syracuse University
- Terese V Gagnon, Syracuse University
- Giorgi Kobakhidze, Ilia State University, Tbilisi, Georgia
- Levin Ahmed, Jawaharlal Nehru University
- Christos Mais, Universiteit Leiden
- Taveeshi Singh, Syracuse University
- Aniruddha Das, Columbia University
- Safar Safqat, St Mary’s College of Maryland
- Ramaa Vasudevan, Colorado State University
- Osman Keshawarz, doctoral student, University of Massachusetts at Amherst
- Narendra Subramaniam, McGill University
- Ammel Sharon, University of Pennsylvania
- Gventa Gventsadze
- Borisi Cirekidze
- Minakshi Menon, Max Planck Institute, Berlin
- Dmitri Khuskivadze
- Salo Kaladze
- Judith Rodenbeck, UC Riverside
- Ashok Prasad, Colorado State University
- Priyanka Srivastava, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- Arani Roy, Brandeis University
- Dag Erik Berg, University of Gottingen, Germany
- Rahul Nair, Antioch College, USA
- Gajendran Ayyathurai, Goettingen University, Germany
- Balaji Narasimhan, William Paterson University, United States
- Ember Skye Kanelee, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- Jungyeon Suh, Independent Researcher, United States
- Kannan Srinivasan
- Roli Verma, University of New Mexico
- Piya Chatterjee, Scripps College, US
- Lalit Batra, University of Minnesota
- Avanti Mukherjee, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- Tyler Hansen, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- Subho Basu, McGill University, Canada
- Laurie Nisonoff, Hampshire College, United States
- Satya Mohapatra, MIT
- Julia Corwin, University of Minnesota
- Parama Roy, UC Davis
- Krishna Melnattur, Washington University School of Medicine
- Rupal Oza, Hunter College, City University of New York
- Noeleen McIlvenna, Wright State University
- Daniel Thompson, Johns Hopkins University
- Jesse Knutson, University of Hawaii, Manoa
- Prashant Keshavmurthy, McGill University, Canada
- Anasuya Sengupta, Berkeley, USA
- Uditi Sen, Hampshire College
- Zarrina Juraqulova, Denison University, USA
- Kiran Asher, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- Prakash Kashwan, University of Connecticut, Storrs
- Hamid Rezai, Pitzer College, USA
- Anindya Dey, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
- Lara Deeb, Scripps College, USA
- Richa Nagar, University of Minnesota
- Vatsal Naresh, Columbia University
- Niharika Yadav, Princeton University
- Bedatri Datta Choudhury, NYU
- Sanjiv Gupta, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- Suvadip Sinha, University of Minnesota
- Ipsita Mandal, Perimeter Institute, Canada
- Poulomi Pal, Fulbright scholar
- Asmita Rangari, Activist, New Delhi
- Shipra Nigam, Activist, New Delhi
- Srinivas Lankala, Independent media scholar, Hyderabad
- Carolyn Elliott, University of Vermont
- Aviroop Sengupta, Columbia University
- Madhura Lohokare, Syracuse University
- Arijit Sen, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
- Suyapa Portillo Villeda, Pitzer College, USA
- Oishik Sircar, University of Melbourne
- Arjun Bagchi, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Greg Anderson, Ohio State University
- Prarit Agarwal, Seoul National University, Korea
- Sayori Ghoshal, Columbia University
- Uponita Mukherjee, Columbia University
- Suyapa Portillo Villeda, Pitzer College
- Patricia Morton, University of California, Riverside
- Sofia Checa, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- Arpan Roy, John Hopkins University
- Cynthia Correa, The University of Texas at Austin
- Parvathy Binoy, Syracuse University, Syracuse
- Jonathon Hurd, RN, Seattle
- Varuni Bhatia, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
- Erin McElroy, UCSC, Director, Anti-Eviction Mapping Project
- Geert Dhondt, John Jay College, The City University of New York
- Mithun Bhowmick, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign