Ram Kumar / ArtKonsult
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:
- Immediate withdrawal of police from the campus.
- Immediate release of, and withdrawal of all cases against, all arrested students and faculty.
- Suspension of the Vice-Chancellor P. Appa Rao.
- Judicial enquiry into the role of the HRD Ministry, the HRD Minister and Mr. Bandaru Dattatreya in inciting violence against Dalits on campus.
- Independent enquiry into the incidents of violence on the campus including the role of the ABVP in vandalising the Vice-Chancellor’s office.
- Action against police personnel named by students in their complaints.
-
Passage of the “Rohith Act” against caste discrimination in education.
Signatories:
- Lawrence Cohen, Director, Institute for South Asia Studies, University of California, Berkeley
- Navtej K Purewal Deputy Director, South Asia Institute SOAS University of London
- Akhil Gupta, Director, Center for India and South Asia (CISA), UCLA
- Michael Davis, Professor Emeritus, Department of Creative Writing, University of California Riverside
- Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director, The Oakland Institute
- Barbara Harriss-White, Oxford University
- Kavita Krishnan, Secretary AIPWA
- Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, University Professor in the Humanities, Columbia University
- G. Arunima, Professor and Chair, Centre for Women’s Studies, School of Social Sciences, JNU
- Sandeep Pandey, former Visiting Faculty, IIT, BHU, Varanasi
- Michael D. Yates, Professor Emeritus, University of Pittsburgh, United States
- Abha Sur, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Akeel Bilgrami, Sidney Morgenbesser Professor of Philosophy, Columbia University
- Haroon Akram-Lodhi, Chair, Department of International Development Studies, Trent University, Canada
- Apoorvanand, University of Delhi
- Marjorie Griffin Cohen, Professor of Political Science and Chair of Women’s Studies Department, Simon Fraser University, Canada
- Gerald Epstein, Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- Surinder S. Jodhka, Jawaharlal Nehru University
- Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Syracuse University
- Sangeeta Kamat, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- Dr. Shailaja Paik, University of Cincinnati
- Kevin B. Anderson, Professor of Sociology, University of California Santa Barbara
- Tithi Bhattacharya, Professor of History, Purdue University
- Pranav Jani, The Ohio State University
- Vinay Gidwani, University of Minnesota
- Nivedita Menon, Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University
- Alpa Shah, London School of Economics
- Jayati Ghosh, Jawaharlal Nehru University
- Srirupa Roy, University of Göttingen, Germany
- Rahul Varman, IIT Kanpur
- Ashwini Tambe, University of Maryland, College Park
- Jens Lerche, SOAS, University of London
- Gillian Hart, Professor, University of California, Berkeley
- Adrian Wilson, Social Anthropology, London School of Economics
- Ayesha Kidwai, Professor ,Jawaharlal Nehru University
- Meher Engineer
- Aishwary Kumar, School of Humanities & Sciences, Stanford University
- Ajantha Subramanian, Professor of Anthropology and South Asian Studies, Harvard University
- Jyoti Puri, Chair and Professor of Sociology, Simmons College
- Abdul JanMohamed, Professor, University of California, Berkeley
- Dr. Nathaniel Roberts, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Goettingen, Germany
- Paula Chakravartty, New York University
- Atul Sood, Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University
- Prof. Mohan Rao, Jawaharlal Nehru University
- Yasmin Saikia, Professor of History, Arizona State University
- Nandini Chandra, Delhi University
- Elisabeth Weber, Professor, University of California, Santa Barbara
- C. P. Chandrasekhar, Jawaharlal Nehru University
- Prof. Rupa Viswanath, University of Goettingen, Germany
- Rama Baru, Jawaharlal Nehru University
- Svati Shah, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- Immanuel Ness, Professor, City University of New York
- Balmurli Natrajan, William Paterson University
- Veena Hariharan, School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University
- Rajat Datta, Professor, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University
- Geraldine Forbes, Professor, State University of New York, Oswego
- Joya Misra, Professor of Sociology and Public Policy, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- Richard Seymour, London School of Economics
- Susan Visvanathan, Professor of Sociology, Jawaharlal Nehru University
- Dr. Pérez de Mendiola, Richard Armour Professor of Modern Languages, Chair, Dept. of Latin American, Caribbean and Spanish Literatures and Cultures & Humanities, Scripps College
- Peter Spiegler, Asst. Prof., Dept. of Economics, UMass, Amherst
- Swati Birla, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- Atreyi Dasgupta, Baylor College of Medicine
- Kuver Sinha, Syracuse University
- Sirisha Naidu, Wright State University
- Siddhartha Mitra, Programmer, Rockefeller University
- Samantha Agarwal, PhD Candidate, Johns Hopkins University
- Anup Gampa, PhD Candidate, University of Virginia
- Anu Mandavilli, Friends of South Asia
- Deepankar Basu, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- Nandini Dhar, Assistant Professor, Florida International University
- Michael Levien, Assistant Professor, Johns Hopkins University
- Devika Dutt, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- Smita Ramnarain, Assistant Professor of Economics, Siena College
- Taki Manolakos, Wright State University
- Valentina Dallona, Johns Hopkins University
- Iveta Jusova, Carleton College, USA
- Aditi Chandra, University of California, Merced
- Hee-Young Shin, Wright State University
- Anjali Arondekar, UC Santa Cruz
- Jinee Lokaneeta, Drew University
- Ajay Chandra, University of Warwick
- Xiao Yu, Peking University
- Bettina Apthekar, UC Santa Cruz
- Anirban Karak, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- Natasha S K, Syracuse University
- Mitul Barua, Syracuse University
- Simmy Makhijani, San Francisco State University
- Sofia Gavtadze, Solidarity Network, Georgi
- Avishek Konar, Alumnus, The Ohio State University
- Robert Carley, Wright State University
- Dia Da Costa, Associate Professor, University of Alberta
- Ann Smock, University of California, Berkeley
- Liz Mount, Syracuse University
- Terese V Gagnon, Syracuse University
- Giorgi Kobakhidze, Ilia State University, Tbilisi, Georgia
- Levin Ahmed, Jawaharlal Nehru University
- Christos Mais, Universiteit Leiden
- Taveeshi Singh, Syracuse University
- Aniruddha Das, Columbia University
- Safar Safqat, St Mary’s College of Maryland
- Ramaa Vasudevan, Colorado State University
- Osman Keshawarz, doctoral student, University of Massachusetts at Amherst
- Narendra Subramaniam, McGill University
- Ammel Sharon, University of Pennsylvania
- Gventa Gventsadze
- Borisi Cirekidze
- Minakshi Menon, Max Planck Institute, Berlin
- Dmitri Khuskivadze
- Salo Kaladze
- Judith Rodenbeck, UC Riverside
- Ashok Prasad, Colorado State University
- Priyanka Srivastava, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- Arani Roy, Brandeis University
- Dag Erik Berg, University of Gottingen, Germany
- Rahul Nair, Antioch College, USA
- Gajendran Ayyathurai, Goettingen University, Germany
- Balaji Narasimhan, William Paterson University, United States
- Ember Skye Kanelee, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- Jungyeon Suh, Independent Researcher, United States
- Kannan Srinivasan
- Roli Verma, University of New Mexico
- Piya Chatterjee, Scripps College, US
- Lalit Batra, University of Minnesota
- Avanti Mukherjee, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- Tyler Hansen, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- Subho Basu, McGill University, Canada
- Laurie Nisonoff, Hampshire College, United States
- Satya Mohapatra, MIT
- Julia Corwin, University of Minnesota
- Parama Roy, UC Davis
- Noeleen McIlvenna, Wright State University
- Daniel Thompson, Johns Hopkins University
- Jesse Knutson, University of Hawaii, Manoa
- Prashant Keshavmurthy, McGill University, Canada
- Anasuya Sengupta, Berkeley, USA
- Uditi Sen, Hampshire College
- Zarrina Juraqulova, Denison University, USA
- Kiran Asher, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- Prakash Kashwan, University of Connecticut, Storrs
- Hamid Rezai, Pitzer College, USA
- Anindya Dey, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
- Lara Deeb, Scripps College, USA
- Richa Nagar, University of Minnesota
- Vatsal Naresh, Columbia University
- Niharika Yadav, Princeton University
- Bedatri Datta Choudhury, NYU
- Sanjiv Gupta, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- Suvadip Sinha, University of Minnesota
- Ipsita Mandal, Perimeter Institute, Canada
- Poulomi Pal, Fulbright scholar
- Asmita Rangari, Activist, New Delhi
- Shipra Nigam, Activist, New Delhi
- Srinivas Lankala, Independent media scholar, Hyderabad
- Carolyn Elliott, University of Vermont
- Aviroop Sengupta, Columbia University
- Madhura Lohokare, Syracuse University
- Arijit Sen, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
- Suyapa Portillo Villeda, Pitzer College, USA
- Oishik Sircar, University of Melbourne
- Arjun Bagchi, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Greg Anderson, Ohio State University
- Prarit Agarwal, Seoul National University, Korea
- Sayori Ghoshal, Columbia University
- Uponita Mukherjee, Columbia University
- Suyapa Portillo Villeda, Pitzer College
- Patricia Morton, University of California, Riverside
- Sofia Checa, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- Arpan Roy, John Hopkins University
- Cynthia Correa, The University of Texas at Austin
- Parvathy Binoy, Syracuse University, Syracuse
- Jonathon Hurd, RN, Seattle
- Varuni Bhatia, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
- Erin McElroy, UCSC, Director, Anti-Eviction Mapping Project
- Geert Dhondt, John Jay College, The City University of New York
- Mithun Bhowmick, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Alladi Sitaram, Retired Professor, Indian Statistical Institute
- Dr Kasturi Ray, San Francisco State University
- Alicia Giron, National University of Mexico
- Probal Dasgupta, Indian Statistical Institute
- Larry Halpern, Wittenberg University
- Suchitra Mathur, Faculty, IIT Kanpur, India
- Aditi Saraf, Johns Hopkins University
- Ketaki Jaywant, University of Minnesota
- Nagesh Rao, Colgate University
- Irfan Ahmad, ACU Melbourne, Australia
- Suvrat Raju, TIFR
- Saikat Ghosh, IIT Kanpur
- Samyak Ghosh, Columbia University
- Catherine Liu, UC Irvine
- Francis Cody, University of Toronto
- Bhavani Raman, University of Toronto
- Erika Suderburg, University of California Riverside
- Saptarshi Mandal, Assistant Professor, Jindal Global Law School, Sonipat
- Anannya Bohidar, Graduate Student, South Asia Studies, UPenn
- Rahul Pandey, visiting faculty, IIM Lucknow
- Tania Bhattacharyya, Columbia University
- Aditi Sarkar, Architect, Las Cruces, New Mexico
- Shakti Sathish Nambiar, Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne
- Krishna Melnattur, Washington University School of Medicine
- Rupal Oza, Hunter College, City University of New York
- Maroona Murmu, Assistant Professor, Jadavpur University
- Gayatri Chatterjee, Symbiosis School of Liberal Art
- Sipra Mukherjee, Professor, West Bengal State University
- Raja Swamy, Asst. Prof., Dept. of Anthropology, University of Tennessee
- Anandavardhanan, Department of Mathematics, IIT Bombay
- Priyanka Bhattacharya, The Doon School, Dehradun
- Anuradha Roy, Jadavpur University
- Ramesh Sreekantan, Statistics and Mathematics Unit Indian Statistical Institute, Bangalore.
- Srinath Jagannathan, Indian Institute of Management Indore
- Tanima Sharma, PhD student, University of Chicago
- Meena Alexander, City University of New York
- Sharmila Sreekumar, IIT Bombay
- Venkatesh K Subramanian, IIT Kanpur
- Food Sovereignty Alliance, India
- The Ghadar Alliance, US
- Nandita Narain, St.Stephen’s College, Delhi University
- Deepa Kurup, University of Oxford
- Ramesh Bairy, IIT Bombay
- Papori Bora, Jawaharlal Nehru University
- Ritwik Balo
- Ranjani Mazumdar, School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University
- PK Vijayan
- Dr. Papia Sengupta, CPS/SSS
- Krishna V V, CSSP/SSS
- A.K. Ramakrishnan, Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University
- Arunima S Mukherjee
- George Chkhaidze
- Elizabeth Abel
- Dr. Kochurani Abraham, Kerala
- Saumyajit Bhattacharya
- Pradip Datta, Jawaharlal Nehru University
- Rohit Azad, Center for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University
- Deepak K Mishra, Jawaharlal Nehru University
- Tulay Atay–Avsar, Mustafa Kemal University, Turkey
- Dr. Vikas Bajpai, Jawaharlal Nehru University
- Saradindu Bhaduri, Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi and ISS, The Hague
- Dr Erica Wald, Goldsmiths, University of London
- Navaneetha Mokkil
- Manidipa Sen, Jawaharlal Nehru University
- Ameet Parameswaran, Jawaharlal Nehru University
- K. B. Usha, Jawaharlal Nehru University
- Gopinath Ravindran
- Avinash Kumar, CISLS, SSS, Jawaharlal Nehru University
- Puja Rani, University of Delhi
- Ritoo Jerath, Jawaharlal Nehru University
- Hannah Carlan, Department of Anthropology, UCLA
- Ganga Bhavani Manthini
- Sucharita Sen, Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University
- Dr. Mallarika Sinha Roy, Centre for Women’s Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University
- Archana Prasad, Jawaharlal Nehru University
- Dinesh Abrol, Institute for Studies in Industrial Development.
- Vikas Rawal, Professor, Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University
- Sanjaya Kumar Bohidar, Shri Ram College of Commerce, Delhi University
- Simona Sawhney, IIT Delhi
- Dr Debjani Sengupta, Indraprastha College for Women, University of Delhi
- Anirban Gupta-Nigam, University of California, Irvine
- Nandita Badami, University of California, Irvine
- Sneha Gaddam, PhD Candidate, University of Leicester
- Prabhu Mohapatra Department of History Univ of Delhi
- Farida Khan, Univ. of Wisconsin Parkside
- Pankaj Mehta, Dept. of Physics, Boston University
- Tista Bagchi, University of Delhi
- Ra Ravishankar, Bangalore
- Sambuddha Chaudhuri, University of Pennsylvania
- Ani Maitra, Colgate University
- Ethel Brooks, Assoc. Prof., Dept. of Women’s and Gender Studies and Sociology, Rutgers University
- Abha Dev Habib, Miranda House, University of Delhi
- Surajit Mazumdar, Center for Economic Studies and Planning, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University
- Sonajharia Minz, Professor, School of Computer & Systems Sciences, JNU
- Vinay Kumar Ambedkar
- Naveen Gaur, Associate Professor, Dyal Singh College, University of Delhi
- Margot Weiss, Wesleyan University
- Vivekananda Mukherjee, Professor, Dept. of Economics, Jadavpur University
- Dr Shakira Hussein, National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies, Asia Institute, University of Melbourne
- Udaya Kumar, Professor, CES, School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, JNU
- Kriti Budhiraja, Graduate Student, University of Minnesota
- Radhika Balakrishnan, Rutgers University
- Seema Saha Poddar
- Poulomi Saha, Assistant Professor of English, UC Berkeley
- Swapnil Deshmukh, Mumbai University
- Dr Lata Singh
- Tyler Feaver, Wright State University
- Pavithra Vasudevan, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
- Santosh Rohit Yerrabolu, Buffalo, NY
- Professor V V Krishna, Centre for Studies in Science Policy, SSS, JNU
- Amy E. Alterman, Graduate Student, University of California Los Angeles
- Ian Duncan, Professor of English, University of California, Berkeley
- Bir singh, Asstt. Professor, Dept. of Economics, University of Delhi
- Amit Singh, Postdoctoral Fellow, Northwestern University
- Poonam Srivastava, University of Chicago, Postdoc Researcher
- Omnia El Shakry, University of California, Davis
- Jhuma Sen, O.P. Jindal Global University, India
- Corey Payne and Chase Alston, Co-Presidents of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Johns Hopkins University
- Sankaran Krishna, Professor, Dept. of Political Science, University of Hawaii at Manoa
- Mytheli Sreenivas, Professor, Ohio State University
- Preeti Shekar, Asian College of Journalism
- Susan Himmelweit, Emeritus Professor of Economics, Faculty of Social Sciences, Open University, Walton Hall, UK
- Kalyani Monteiro Jayasankar, Graduate Student, Princeton University
- Nicolau Dols, Universitat de les Illes Balears, Spain
- Kartik Misra, Graduate Student, Dept. of Economics, UMass, Amherst
- Dolly Daftary, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan
- Sugata Ray, Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science
- Kunal Chattopadhyay, Professor of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University
- Soma Marik, Associate Professor of History, RKSM Vivekananda Vidyabhavan
- Pratiksha Baxi, Assoc. Prof., Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, JNU
Via Kafila (the list of signatories will be updated there).
