MOHAMMAD ARSALAN
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At this juncture there is a stir around the country,
heckled with arguments and confrontation that has occupied a foul space in the
democracy. After the 2014 election victory of BJP at the Centre, many of the
issues have come up that has occupied a major space in primetime debates,
managing to suppress issues which are lethal and felicitous. Issues facing,
farmers, the poor, Dalits, Muslims, Christians, students, tribals and so on.
Recently there have been gross human rights violation in
Kashmir, where lethal guns were used against the country’s own civilians. In
2015, Akhalaq of Dadri, UP was lynched by a mob in accusation of
possessing beef. On May 19, 2015, Muhammad Majloom and a minor Azad Khan,
a 15-year-old-boy, were hanged from a tree by Gau Raksha Dal in Latehar
district in Jharkhand. In September this year, four tribals were killed and
more than 40 were injured by the state police atrocity in Hazaribag, Jharkhand
when they were protesting against the land accusation by NTPC done with the
consent of the BJP-ruled government.
Lakhs of farmers have committed suicide in the last two
decades. Rohit Vemula, a research scholar of Hyderabad Central University
became victim of campus discrimination leading to his institutional murder.
Students of JNU were arbitrary detained earlier this year because of a
so-called ‘anti-national’ slogans that was chanted inside campus. A student of
JNU, Najeeb Ahmad has been missing for more than a month. The controversy of
Najeeb’s missing broke out after a fiery talk with some right-wing groups at
the hostel mess.
Likewise, there have been numerous incidents of
repression, suppression, human rights violations, discrimination and so on that
have occupied a big space in the country’s discourse.
Now when we see this happening, it’s highly important to
understand the role of activists, students and other intellectual sections of
the society. We have seen people like Irom Sharmila who was on hunger strike
for more than 16 years against the draconian AFSPA Act. Teesta Setalvad has been
fighting for the justice of the 2002 Gujarat riot victims in which Congress MP
Ehsan Jaffery was also lynched. Arundhati Roy has been speaking and writing
against the violation of human rights in Kashmir. A renowned investigative
journalist Rana Ayyub has exposed many inside stories of Gujarat in her book
“Gujrat Files”. And likewise there are many others who are fighting for
different causes and barbarism prevailing inside the country. Almost all of
them are facing different charges, trials and have threats to their lives.
At this point of time, it’s highly important for the
students of different universities to join hands with all those who have been
victimised and repressed in the country. History gives testimony to the fact
that students have played a pivotal role in the freedom struggle of India. When
Bengal was partitioned by Lord Curzon in 1905, students agitated against it in
large numbers. In Gandhiji’s struggle against the Rowlatt Act of 1919, students
embedded the crowd in huge numbers. In 1936, a students’ political party, All
India Students’ Federation (AISF) was formed to support the INC. Even in recent
days we have seen students of AMU, HCU, JNU, AU, Jadhavpur University etc.
agitating in scads against the students and human rights violations in the
country.
In today’s context, collective activism is the need of the
hour. Identities of suppressed and repressed communities should be taken up
with a humanitarian approach. It’s highly important for the students of
different universities and colleges to come out on the streets and use their
constitutional and democratic rights of dissent and protest.
Also, there is an immense need to stand in solidarity and
support the activists who are fighting for legitimate and genuine causes in the
country against the fascist tendencies and the ruling dispensation that are
trying to break the secular and pluralistic character of the country. We had
torch-bearers like Gandhi, Bhagat Singh, Maulana Azad, B. R. Ambedkar and
countless others who propounded the idea of India. India, being the country of
youth, embeds the responsibility to hold back the legacy of the makers of free
India. If we go on this way, today’s youth shall be the makers of peaceful,
buoyant, powerful and developed India with its rich diversity and culture, that
makes it distinct in the world.
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