coll. - What the Nation Really Needs to Know: The JNU Nationalism Lectures

What the Nation Really
Needs to Know

The JNU Nationalism Lectures

Edited by
Rohit Azad, Janaki Nair, Mohinder Singh, Mallarika Sinha Roy

on behalf of
Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers Association

HarperCollins Publishers India

Contents

Introduction: A Teach-in for
a JNU Spring

I N FEBRUARY 2016, ONE OF INDIAS foremost public universities, Jawaharlal Nehru University, became the site of a series of events which posed a serious challenge to collective institutional life as we had known it. It also led to a most impressive and sustained period of studentteacher solidarity in defence of the public research university as a crucial space of dissent and debate.

Many signs of a concerted attack on public educational institutions were blowing in the wind from all corners of the country for at least six months previously: from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Chennai; Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune; Jadavpur University, Kolkata; Allahabad University, Uttar Pradesh; and in the sudden end to non-NET fellowships by the University Grants Commission (UGC). Spirited and creative responses and protests followed: the Occupy UGC! movement and the 139-day strike at FTII met with partial success. A most chilling tragedy that occurred at Hyderabad Central University on 17 January 2016 became the tipping point: Rohith Vemulas desperate suicide brought to the forefront the contradictory achievements of the public university in ensuring the politics of presence, in this case, of Dalit students. It also shone the light on the massive failures of higher educational institutions in making provisions to enable and sustain first-generation, seriously underprivileged, students. But the heart-breaking eloquence of the suicide note stunned India into a recognition of injustice, and rallied them to the demand for equality.

On 12 February 2016, Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU) president, Kanhaiya Kumar, was arrested under Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code on charges of sedition, and similar charges were imposed on other JNU students for their organization of, and participation in, an evening of poetry, speeches, talks and song on campus on 9 February 2016 related to the execution of Afzal Guru in 2013. The event, for which permission was withdrawn at the last minute, became contentious due to allegations as yet unattributed to the specific students concerned of two controversial slogans that were raised at the meeting. The quick and inflammatory role of the televisual and social media, the significantly mendacious political interventions, and the disproportionate energies expended in Parliament, soon called the loyalties of the entire teaching and student body at JNU into question. Indeed, there was an unprovoked physical attack by some lawyers on JNU teachers who were present in the courtroom at Patiala House where Kanhaiya Kumar was to be produced for his first hearing on 15 February 2016, and highly publicized physical attacks by some lawyers on Kanhaiya Kumar himself within the court premises followed.

The JNU Teachers Association (JNUTA) took a principled position against the violence that was unleashed, and what they believed was an unfair, unprecedented and unduly harsh treatment of student activists, by the state, by many sections of the media, and by the JNU administration.

Why a Teach-In?

Who or what is anti-national?

Soon after 9 February 2016, the country was turned into a choric chamber in which the accusation of anti-nationalism was repeatedly echoed, a pejorative attribute which attached itself to the whole JNU community. It produced great political and intellectual disquiet among the JNU community of students and teachers. But an extraordinarily creative repertoire of protests talks, music, theatre, artwork, photographs, cartoons organized by the JNUSU, swiftly followed. They transformed the grand steps and adjoining spaces in front of JNUs Administrative Block into a Freedom Square. The JNUTAs decision to stand with the cause of democratic thinking and justice added to the energetic creativity that was already on display.

The JNUTA began a dignified answer to the shrill public campaign by turning the accusation into a question to be seriously addressed. The teach-in, entitled What the Nation Really Needs to Know: India, the Nation and Nationalism, was conceived. The lectures, which began on 17 February 2016, were focused on the meanings, histories and experience of nationalism, and its unresolved dilemmas, both within and beyond India. The teach-in was initially to last a week; the response was so enthusiastic that it was extended to two weeks, and finally ended only a month later on 17 March 2016. For two more weeks, an equally riveting series on Azadi Many Meanings of Freedom was organized at the same site.

The teach-in lectures, which usually began at 5 p.m., were originally intended for members of the JNU community, and were to be delivered principally by JNU teachers. In the end, many other teachers and public intellectuals from across Delhi and other parts of the country participated in and delivered lectures in the series. The series soon gained unanticipated audiences across India and in international forums. Reports and translations of the lectures in many Indian languages, the live-streaming of some of the teach-ins, and the discussions and collective viewings of the teach-ins in other parts of the country and the world made for a reach that echoed well beyond the Freedom Square in JNU, the space of this intellectual and political occupation.

Twenty-four lectures were delivered in this series, which was attended by hundreds of JNU teachers and students as well as a large section of the general public. It was entirely appropriate that some of the lectures were in Hindi, the language best understood locally. The lectures were not only a public demonstration of what JNU teachers did best, i.e., lecture, but also decisively proved that the potentially most dangerous activity that happens at public universities like JNU is thinking. The JNUSU and the JNUTA collectively demonstrated a commitment to a culture of learning and intellectual engagement. On display to the people of this nation, and the world at large, was not just the historic unity of teachers and students. The lectures also became an important demonstration of the crucial role played by the university in helping people to connect data, rethink information, and indeed, respond to misinformation in this age of digital information glut. Above all, the teach-in demonstrated that we at JNU value debate, discussion and dissent, in the best spirit of the freedom of speech, while equally demonstrating the importance of cordial, civil and respectful ways of listening, as part of our commitment to the right to be heard.

In spite of the politically charged atmosphere, and the frequent public rallies in which JNU teachers and students participated, there was the committed return of a steady audience to the Freedom Square for each lecture. Also, the format itself allowed for a brief question-answer session, in which members of the audience engaged with speakers.

Although courses and lectures on nationalism, both Indian and non-Indian, have been taught in many departments of JNU over the last forty years, the nationalism lectures pioneered not only new ways of thinking about anti-colonial and postcolonial nationalisms, but about the possible future of nationalisms as well. We realized that we needed a thick, not a thin, description of nationalisms; a complex and unruly, not a simple, history; and a robustly academic, not a politically facile, definition of the term that was haunting our public life.