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:

1. Immediate withdrawal of police from the campus.
2. Immediate release of, and withdrawal of all cases against, all arrested students and faculty.
3. Suspension of the Vice-Chancellor P. Appa Rao.
4. Judicial enquiry into the role of the HRD Ministry, the HRD Minister and Mr. Bandaru Dattatreya in inciting violence against Dalits on campus.
5. Independent enquiry into the incidents of violence on the campus including the role of the ABVP in vandalising the Vice-Chancellor’s office.
6. Action against police personnel named by students in their complaints.
7. Passage of the “Rohith Act” against caste discrimination in education.”

A partial list of the signatories is as follows:

1. Lawrence Cohen, Director, Institute for South Asia Studies, University of California, Berkeley
2. Navtej K Purewal Deputy Director, South Asia Institute SOAS University of London
3. Akhil Gupta, Director, Center for India and South Asia (CISA), UCLA
4. Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor & Professor of Linguistics (Emeritus), MIT
5. Michael Davis, Professor Emeritus, Department of Creative Writing, University of California Riverside
6. Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director, The Oakland Institute
7. Barbara Harriss-White, Oxford University
8. Kavita Krishnan, Secretary AIPWA
9. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, University Professor in the Humanities, Columbia University
10. G. Arunima, Professor and Chair, Centre for Women’s Studies, School of Social Sciences, JNU
11. Sandeep Pandey, former Visiting Faculty, IIT, BHU, Varanasi
12. Michael D. Yates, Professor Emeritus, University of Pittsburgh, United States
13. Abha Sur, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
14. Akeel Bilgrami, Sidney Morgenbesser Professor of Philosophy, Columbia University
15. Haroon Akram-Lodhi, Chair, Department of International Development Studies, Trent University, Canada
16. Apoorvanand, University of Delhi
17. Marjorie Griffin Cohen, Professor of Political Science and Chair of Women’s Studies Department, Simon Fraser University, Canada
18. Gerald Epstein, Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
19. Surinder S. Jodhka, Jawaharlal Nehru University
20. Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Syracuse University
21. Sangeeta Kamat, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
22. Dr. Shailaja Paik, University of Cincinnati
23. Kevin B. Anderson, Professor of Sociology, University of California Santa Barbara
24. Tithi Bhattacharya, Professor of History, Purdue University
25. Pranav Jani, The Ohio State University
26. Vinay Gidwani, University of Minnesota
27. Nivedita Menon, Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University
28. Alpa Shah, London School of Economics
29. Jayati Ghosh, Jawaharlal Nehru University
30. Srirupa Roy, University of Göttingen, Germany
31. Rahul Varman, IIT Kanpur
32. Ashwini Tambe, University of Maryland, College Park
33. Jens Lerche, SOAS, University of London
34. Gillian Hart, Professor, University of California, Berkeley
35. Adrian Wilson, Social Anthropology, London School of Economics
36. Ayesha Kidwai, Professor ,Jawaharlal Nehru University
37. Meher Engineer
38. Aishwary Kumar, School of Humanities & Sciences, Stanford University
39. Ajantha Subramanian, Professor of Anthropology and South Asian Studies, Harvard University
40. Jyoti Puri, Chair and Professor of Sociology, Simmons College
41. Abdul JanMohamed, Professor, University of California, Berkeley
42. Dr. Nathaniel Roberts, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Goettingen, Germany
43. Paula Chakravartty, New York University
44. Atul Sood, Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University
45. Prof. Mohan Rao, Jawaharlal Nehru University
46. Yasmin Saikia, Professor of History, Arizona State University
47. Nandini Chandra, Delhi University
48. Elisabeth Weber, Professor, University of California, Santa Barbara
49. C. P. Chandrasekhar, Jawaharlal Nehru University
50. Prof. Rupa Viswanath, University of Goettingen, Germany
51. Rama Baru, Jawaharlal Nehru University
52. Svati Shah, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
53. Immanuel Ness, Professor, City University of New York
54. Balmurli Natrajan, William Paterson University
55. Veena Hariharan, School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University
56. Rajat Datta, Professor, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University
57. Geraldine Forbes, Professor, State University of New York, Oswego
58. Joya Misra, Professor of Sociology and Public Policy, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
59. Richard Seymour, London School of Economics
60. Susan Visvanathan, Professor of Sociology, Jawaharlal Nehru University
61. Dr. Pérez de Mendiola, Richard Armour Professor of Modern Languages, Chair,
62. Dept. of Latin American, Caribbean and Spanish Literatures and Cultures & Humanities, Scripps College
63. Peter Spiegler, Asst. Prof., Dept. of Economics, UMass, Amherst
64. Swati Birla, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
65. Atreyi Dasgupta, Baylor College of Medicine
66. Kuver Sinha, Syracuse University
67. Sirisha Naidu, Wright State University
68. Siddhartha Mitra, Programmer, Rockefeller University
69. Samantha Agarwal, PhD Candidate, Johns Hopkins University
70. Anup Gampa, PhD Candidate, University of Virginia
71. Anu Mandavilli, Friends of South Asia
72. Deepankar Basu, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
73. Nandini Dhar, Assistant Professor, Florida International University
74. Michael Levien, Assistant Professor, Johns Hopkins University
75. Devika Dutt, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
76. Smita Ramnarain, Assistant Professor of Economics, Siena College
77. Taki Manolakos, Wright State University
78. Valentina Dallona, Johns Hopkins University
79. Iveta Jusova, Carleton College, USA
80. Aditi Chandra, University of California, Merced
81. Hee-Young Shin, Wright State University
82. Anjali Arondekar, UC Santa Cruz
83. Jinee Lokaneeta, Drew University
84. Ajay Chandra, University of Warwick
85. Xiao Yu, Peking University
86. Bettina Apthekar, UC Santa Cruz
87. Anirban Karak, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
88. Natasha S K, Syracuse University
89. Mitul Barua, Syracuse University
90. Simmy Makhijani, San Francisco State University
91. Sofia Gavtadze, Solidarity Network, Georgi
92. Avishek Konar, Alumnus, The Ohio State University
93. Robert Carley, Wright State University
94. Dia Da Costa, Associate Professor, University of Alberta
95. Ann Smock, University of California, Berkeley
96. Liz Mount, Syracuse University
97. Terese V Gagnon, Syracuse University
98. Giorgi Kobakhidze, Ilia State University, Tbilisi, Georgia
99. Levin Ahmed, Jawaharlal Nehru University
100. Christos Mais, Universiteit Leiden
101. Taveeshi Singh, Syracuse University
102. Aniruddha Das, Columbia University
103. Safar Safqat, St Mary’s College of Maryland
104. Ramaa Vasudevan, Colorado State University
105. Osman Keshawarz, doctoral student, University of Massachusetts at Amherst
106. Narendra Subramaniam, McGill University
107. Ammel Sharon, University of Pennsylvania
108. Gventa Gventsadze
109. Borisi Cirekidze
110. Minakshi Menon, Max Planck Institute, Berlin
111. Dmitri Khuskivadze
112. Salo Kaladze
113. Judith Rodenbeck, UC Riverside
114. Ashok Prasad, Colorado State University
115. Priyanka Srivastava, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
116. Arani Roy, Brandeis University
117. Dag Erik Berg, University of Gottingen, Germany
118. Rahul Nair, Antioch College, USA
119. Gajendran Ayyathurai, Goettingen University, Germany
120. Balaji Narasimhan, William Paterson University, United States
121. Ember Skye Kanelee, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
122. Jungyeon Suh, Independent Researcher, United States
123. Kannan Srinivasan
124. Roli Verma, University of New Mexico
125. Piya Chatterjee, Scripps College, US
126. Lalit Batra, University of Minnesota
127. Avanti Mukherjee, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
128. Tyler Hansen, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
129. Subho Basu, McGill University, Canada
130. Laurie Nisonoff, Hampshire College, United States
131. Satya Mohapatra, MIT
132. Julia Corwin, University of Minnesota
133. Parama Roy, UC Davis
134. Krishna Melnattur, Washington University School of Medicine
135. Rupal Oza, Hunter College, City University of New York
136. Noeleen McIlvenna, Wright State University
137. Daniel Thompson, Johns Hopkins University
138. Jesse Knutson, University of Hawaii, Manoa
139. Prashant Keshavmurthy, McGill University, Canada
140. Anasuya Sengupta, Berkeley, USA
141. Uditi Sen, Hampshire College
142. Zarrina Juraqulova, Denison University, USA
143. Kiran Asher, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
144. Prakash Kashwan, University of Connecticut, Storrs
145. Hamid Rezai, Pitzer College, USA
146. Anindya Dey, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
147. Lara Deeb, Scripps College, USA
148. Richa Nagar, University of Minnesota
149. Vatsal Naresh, Columbia University
150. Niharika Yadav, Princeton University
151. Bedatri Datta Choudhury, NYU
152. Sanjiv Gupta, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
153. Suvadip Sinha, University of Minnesota
154. Ipsita Mandal, Perimeter Institute, Canada
155. Poulomi Pal, Fulbright scholar
156. Asmita Rangari, Activist, New Delhi
157. Shipra Nigam, Activist, New Delhi
158. Srinivas Lankala, Independent media scholar, Hyderabad
159. Carolyn Elliott, University of Vermont
160. Aviroop Sengupta, Columbia University
161. Madhura Lohokare, Syracuse University
162. Arijit Sen, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
163. Suyapa Portillo Villeda, Pitzer College, USA
164. Oishik Sircar, University of Melbourne
165. Arjun Bagchi, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
166. Greg Anderson, Ohio State University
167. Prarit Agarwal, Seoul National University, Korea
168. Sayori Ghoshal, Columbia University
169. Uponita Mukherjee, Columbia University
170. Suyapa Portillo Villeda, Pitzer College
171. Patricia Morton, University of California, Riverside
172. Sofia Checa, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
173. Arpan Roy, John Hopkins University
174. Cynthia Correa, The University of Texas at Austin
175. Parvathy Binoy, Syracuse University, Syracuse
176. Jonathon Hurd, RN, Seattle
177. Varuni Bhatia, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
178. Erin McElroy, UCSC, Director, Anti-Eviction Mapping Project
179. Geert Dhondt, John Jay College, The City University of New York
180. Mithun Bhowmick, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign