New Delhi— Delhi University (DU) has come under fire for its decision to prevent two students from appearing for exams for a year since they are suspected of being involved in an attempt to organize a screening of the controversial BBC documentary on the 2002 Gujarat riots in January.
Since January, DU has witnessed several student-led protests, demanding the administration revoke its decision to bar two students from taking exams for a year. Along with these two students, six others have allegedly been involved in organizing a screening of the controversial BBC documentary on the 2002 Gujarat riots, leading to disciplinary action. However, the six students have been asked to present an apology letter to the administration as punishment.
Following the debarment of two students at the University, a persistent struggle has ensued with frequent protests. On Wednesday afternoon, members of the Bhagat Singh Chatra Ekta Manch and All India Students Association (AISA) protested outside the university's Faculty of Arts, urging the administration to withdraw its decision.
Several student organizations, including AISA, BASF, DSU, Fraternity Movement, SIO, and Collective, participated in a public meeting on Wednesday afternoon to protest against the arbitrary action taken on students.
The meeting featured two professors, Nandini Sundar and Vikas Gupta, who addressed the attendees. Nandini Sundar spoke about academic freedom and criticized the university's illegal debarring of students.
Vikas Gupta highlighted that censorship is inherently against democratic principles. Both professors also touched upon the issue of saffronization within the university. During the public meeting, Delhi University shut down the entire art faculty and reinforced the campus with CRPF personnel, guards, and the Delhi police.
Students from various public and private colleges across the country screened the controversial BBC documentary 'India: The Modi Question' in January as a protest against censorship.
However, the Union government had exercised its emergency powers to ban the documentary, prompting widespread outrage among students.
At Delhi University, for instance, NSUI and other student organizations had planned to screen the documentary on January 27. But section 144 was imposed on the campus and Delhi Police detained 24 students who attempted to organize the screening. This was in response to altercations and police action over screenings at other universities.
After the incident, a seven-person committee comprising professors and university administrators was formed to investigate the matter. The committee's recommendations led to the punitive action taken against the two students.
The two students who have been barred by the University administration are Ravinder, a law graduate and a student of philosophy and Lokesh Chugh, a Ph.D. scholar in the Department of Anthropology, who is also the National Secretary for the National Students’ Union of India (NSUI).
"On the basis of the recommendations of the seven-member committee the disciplinary authority taking cognizance of the above indiscipline exhibited by Shri Lokesh Chugh, decided to impose the penalty of debarring him from taking any university, college, or departmental examination or examinations for one year," reads a memorandum on the action against Chugh dated 10 March.
Speaking to The Mooknayak, Lokesh claimed that his main purpose in being near the protest location was to speak to the media, he described the university's move as arbitrary and unfair.
“I was not there at the protest site, neither was detained by Delhi police nor have been named in any FIR registered. I was near the protest site in a debate where I was addressing the media on the part of NSUI,” said Lokesh Chugh.
When The Mooknayak asked Lokesh about the debarment by the University, he said, he had submitted his Ph.D. thesis on March 4th and paid the fees on March 9th, following which he was served with a debarment notice on March 10th. The department rejected his thesis and asked him to resubmit it a year later based on an alleged incident in which he was not even present. Lokesh has repeatedly requested that the debarment be canceled and that the administration verify whether he was involved in the BBC documentary screening process or not. He further stated that if the administration does not listen to their grievances, they will have to seek justice through legal means.
The debarment of these students poses a serious threat to their academic careers. Ravinder, who is the second student to be debarred, is studying law at Delhi University and is also a member of the Bhagat Singh Chatra Ekta Manch student organization. According to reports, the debarment notice that was served to Ravinder is the first such notice he has ever received, and he is concerned as exams are approaching. The Mooknayak attempted to reach Ravinder for comment, but he was unavailable.
The Modi administration ordered YouTube and Twitter to erase video links after the documentary's January airing. Yet, despite authorities' refusal to grant them permission, student activists screened the documentary at various colleges.
The DU students' attempt to exhibit the documentary in January was one of several attempts at campuses around the nation.
Up to 13 Jamia Millia Islamia students were jailed after they attempted to show the documentary, and there were altercations between competing student organizations at Jawaharlal Nehru University.
At the University of Hyderabad, there was also an exciting screening war. The BBC documentary was shown by the Students' Federation of India (SFI), the student branch of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). On the contrary, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), which is linked with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh started screening The Kashmir Files.
The screening at Jadavpur University in Kolkata was conducted without trouble. However, the Pondicherry University campus's electricity and Wi-Fi were shut down that day, students were forced to watch the video on their phones and computers.
India: the Modi Question, a two-part documentary series that was broadcasted in the UK in January, examines the escalating hostilities between the Indian prime minister and the nation's Muslim minority.
After Modi's election in 2014, his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) administration has allegedly pursued Hindu-centric policies that target and discriminate against India's 200 million Muslims as part of a right-wing religious nationalist agenda that is eroding India's secular roots.
The documentary's first episode revisits accusations from Modi's time as Gujarat's chief minister, 20 years ago. During this time, a train carriage containing 60 Hindu pilgrims was set ablaze, resulting in their deaths.
Although the source of the fire was contested, Muslims were held responsible, which sparked a wave of brutal revenge violence that saw Hindu mobs target Muslim homes throughout the state. In the riots, almost a thousand people died, the majority of them Muslims.
Following the incident, it was claimed that Modi's state government encouraged the Hindu mobs and instructed the police to remain silent as Muslim homes were attacked. Modi has been hounded by accusations of his involvement in the communal unrest for years, and as a result of "extremely severe" concerns about his role, he was expelled from the US.
A Special Investigation Team (SIT) formed by the Indian Supreme Court exonerated Modi of involvement in the violence in 2012 because they were unable to assemble sufficient evidence, and their decision was later upheld in 2022. Modi's ban on receiving a US visa was overturned when he was chosen as prime minister in 2014.
The documentary was able to uncover a previously unreleased, secret UK government assessment that was written after the riots and found Modi to be the perpetrator of the violence and that the riots had "all the markings of ethnic cleansing." A devastating interview with Jack Straw, the UK's foreign secretary at the time, was also included in the documentary.
In the documentary, Jack Straw is quoted saying, “According to these extremely severe allegations, Mr. Modi actively participated in the reduction of police presence and the covert support of Hindu fanatics, according to Straw. That was a particularly severe instance of political interference to stop police from protecting Muslims and Hindus as per their duty.”
The Modi administration swiftly and unequivocally condemned the action. The BBC is allegedly pushing an anti-government agenda, according to a representative for the foreign ministry who claimed that the BBC's "bias, lack of objectivity, and basically continued colonial attitude are obviously visible."
An even harsher censure was given by Kanchan Gupta, an adviser to the ministry of communication and broadcasting, who referred to it as "propaganda and anti-India rubbish, disguised as a documentary."
Shortly after, the authorities used emergency legislation to prohibit the online distribution of links and video samples of the documentary, and Twitter and YouTube cooperated with the order. Throughout the past year, the law has been used to prohibit internet content that is critical of the government, but this is the most prominent instance.
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