There is a Chinese curse I have had the displeasure of knowing: ‘May you live in interesting times.’ I, along with two other office bearers and 11 other students, was sent to Tihar for organising a peaceful march to the office of the Union Ministry of Education.

The moment we stepped out of Tihar Jail on February 28, Iran was attacked by the US and Israel. The world descended further into chaos. We also heard the distasteful news of the suspension of 21 security guards whose crime was that they could not “stop us” from raising our encampment site again on the night of March 8, International Working Women’s Day. 

The three days in prison seem distant now and yet, a lot transpired since this February. We started with a two-day strike in the School of Language, Literature, and Culture against the tie-up with Siddhanta Knowledge Foundation. This private entity aims to saffronise education and kill the idea of collective learning. It is a portal where students are supposed to take lessons from pre-recorded videos. There is no scope for dialogue and discussion. 

In these times when unions are being delegitimised and a narrative of ‘depoliticisation’ is pushed, students boycotted their classes for two days against the administration’s push towards privatisation. On February 2, just when the strike got over, we released a poster calling for a mass mobilisation in support of the UGC Equity Regulations, which will ensure a mechanism for students from Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Class communities to seek justice. I along with the three other office bearers and a former JNUSU president, were emailed our ‘rustication’ and ‘out of bounds’ order, ostensibly for protesting against the use of Facial Recognition Technology.  We did not budge and continued with the mobilisation for the implementation of the UGC Equity Regulations on the basis of the proposed Rohith Act. General body meetings were called in different schools, where a resolution for an indefinite strike was passed.

Amidst all of this, our Vice-Chancellor, said on a podcast that the UGC (Promotion of Equity in Higher Educational Institutions) Regulations, for which the youth of the whole country and her own students are mobilising, is unnecessary and irrational. She said, “Because an equity regulation cannot be inequitable. Because you cannot give powers to one group and deny the other group of all justice. This goes against the Constitution of India.” She also added, “You cannot progress by being permanently a victim or playing the victim card. This was done for the Blacks; the same thing was brought for Dalits here. By making somebody a devil, it is not easy to progress. It is a temporary type of drug.”

It was embarrassing and humiliating. 

On February 22, a large section of the university’s student population marched to her house to demand an apology, but received none. Nonetheless, we mobilised, protested, and escalated weeks of strike. We locked the gates of different schools, stood there all day, lest anyone open them for the administration. At night we slept in the encampment site that we had built in the SL-SIS lawn. We were manhandled by guards and also by a section of male professors who, it seemed to me, were competing to impress the V-C. But we were like seeds disrupting the cold winter land, heralding spring. On February 27, when we were marching to the Ministry of Education, the university was turned into a police cantonment. But our demands were simple; implementation of the UGC Equity Regulations and Rohith Act, resignation of the V-C who had made casteist remarks, and funds for our university. The gates were chained and locked, along with heavy police barricades, members of the RAF, and a bomb squad. Police unleashed violence on us. A portrait of Dr B.R. Ambedkar was broken. Police personnel in civil clothing dragged and hit us. Bus after bus was filled with students who were taken to different police stations. Fourteen students were sent to the Tihar Jail.  

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Entering Tihar reminded me of Mark Edelman Boren’s book Students’ Resistance: A History of the Unruly Subject. The unruly subjects that we are, we were sent to jail to be tamed. Stripped of our rights, every inch of our bodies and existence was scrutinised. We could not sit on a chair, we could not cross our arms while standing. Our bodies should be submissive, the system seemed to say, and so should our mind. This was tough, because JNU trains you differently. 

Entering the prison building, I saw numerous Black women. I asked the man guarding the door about why so many Black women had by jailed but my question was unanswered. Don’t ask questions, I was told.

Early in the morning, when we were woken up to carry around buckets of watery tea, the lady accompanying us told us, “No Hindu cleans the toilets here, it is cleaned by Blacks.” We could see the Black women cleaning the pathways early in the morning and shouting at people who would step on the wet grounds before they dried. This reminded me of the JNU V-C’s claim that Black and Dalit people are permanently drugged with victimhood. It is ironic that the struggle for the UGC equity regulations led us to Tihar, and Tihar itself turned out to be a microcosm of the racist-casteist order. 

A Nigerian woman told me that many Indians live in Nigeria. “No one lays a hand on them. In your country, the police stalk us, harass us, and inflict violence on us,” she said. I saw women with cuts in their arms, braiding each other’s hair.  For us, who got bail, there was hope of getting out the next day. But I could not imagine the suffering of women who could be picked and thrown inside jail, and without the relevant contacts or resources, would remain inside. In a global order, where most of us are condemned to social death, where disenfranchisement is just a special intensive revision or a National Register of Citizens away, people are easily stripped of recognition, protection, and belonging. I thought of Saidiya Hartman, whose book awaited me, half finished. Every life in the neo-liberal world is fungible. 

Our ordeal stands nowhere in front of Gulfisha Fatima, who was remembered fondly in ward number 8 as “that sharp girl,” or Umar Khalid or Sharjeel Imam. But the question remains, why were we sent to jail? What criminal act did we commit to end up there? What “drug” was it that the JNU V-C was talking about – when the jail also narrates the same story of brutal discrimination? 

The walls of the jail were painted with ugly murals of women, with names of NGOs or people who sponsored them, as if we were in an amusement park or a zoo. You cannot complain about the food in jail, you cannot resist, or protest. You will be immediately shown your place. They want our universities to be no different from such a prison. We were worried for the three days we were inside. What would JNU look like eventually – that university which dreamt of equality, liberty, and fraternity? 

That JNU is an ideological battleground for the Sangh is well known. If we were ‘lunatic fringe elements’ as our V-C describes us, the whole state machinery would not be after us. But they know very well that we are anything but fringe elements. They know our slogans reflect the lives of people; they know that we, in fact, are the people. Hence, they took it up as their project to delegitimise us, stigmatise and criminalise us. 

We fight for our fundamental rights when the government brings in policies like National Education Policy or Shramniti, when the idea of rights takes a backfoot.  The battle of the BJP-RSS’s fascist regime is with the classroom itself. The regime that is running bulldozers across the homes of people aspires to bulldoze our classrooms and sell the space to their corporate masters, who will offer skill development based on the demands of their manufacturing units.  The state is training us into being ‘subjects’ who fulfill a duty allotted by the dictates of the Manusmriti. Its aim is that women know their place, that Dalit people know their place, that minorities know their place, so that the neo-liberal-casteist economy continues to run as a unit of the global racist capitalist order. The Indian government will send manual labourers to Israel while Israel continues with genocide of Palestinians.

The students of JNU who are mocked for taking up global issues are unfortunately witnessing the long queues for gas cylinders and a silent government that cannot speak up against imperialism. Looking at the Vishwaguru today reminds me of Ghalib’s couplet: ‘Bharam khul jaaye zaalim tere qamat ki darazi ka, agar is turra-e-pur-pech-o-kham ka pech-o-kham nikale (The illusion of your tall stature would be exposed, cruel one, if the curls and twists of this tangled lock of hair were straightened out).’

The curse of interesting times is still looming. As students, then, should we give up on equality and justice just because those in power think they can rusticate us and send us to Tihar? Should we accept the social death that the global-casteist-racist patriarchal order imposes on us?  We see them, with the power of the entire machinery working for them. Against the ways of fascists, we have the dreams of Ambedkar and Bhagat Singh. We wait to see which is stronger. 

Aditi Mishra is the JNUSU president.

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