Public Statement in Support of Mr. Sanjay Kumar and the Mahatma Gandhi Central University Bihar Teachers Association

We, the undersigned academics and members of the public, condemn in the strongest possible terms the attempt to murder Sanjay Kumar of the Dept of Sociology, Mahatma Gandhi Central University in Motihari, Bihar. Mr. Kumar was attacked at his residence by a mob of persons that comprised several known elements, dragged out of his home, brutally beaten with lathis, and doused with petrol in order to be burnt alive. The intervention of a few persons with conscience and humanity saved his life, but the extent of the beating and the other trauma he has suffered has left him grievously injured. He is currently admitted in hospital, and is seriously ill. We demand that he be given the best of medical care that he may recover and he be guaranteed security both in the hospital and as long as the the threat to his life remains.

The pretext for the attack on Mr. Kumar has been cited as a Facebook post but as the MGCU Teachers Association has explained, the real reason for this attack is the sustained and fearless opposition that the teachers of MCGUB have shown to the corrupt and authoritarian conduct of the university’s Vice-Chancellor, Arvind Kumar Agarwal. Like many other teachers of the university, Mr. Kumar has been actively involved in the university community’s protests that have been held for nearly a year now. The MGCU Vice Chancellor has been charged with a range of wrongdoings — ranging from illegal termination of permanent faculty members, quid pro quo appointments, financial embezzlement and failure of the university to make regular payments to the New Pension Scheme, violation of reservation policy in recruitment of staff, implicating faculty and students in false cases, to partisan and authoritarian conduct that actively rouses public animus and hostility to the university teachers. No action has been taken against the VC on any of these issues, and now teachers like Sanjay Kumar have been brought to death’s door by forces whose interests are undoubtedly closely aligned with the VC.

We stand with Mr. Kumar and the MGCU Teachers Association and their fight for social justice, honesty and accountability by public officials, the autonomy and transparency of higher educational institutions, and the dignity and respect of teachers and students. We do so in part because these very issues are live ones for many Indian institutions, where Vice-Chancellors and other administrators have now come to be afforded complete impunity, in violation of all norms and rules, because of the immunity their status as political appointees afford them. All objections, and specially principled ones, are immediately obfuscated by the superimposition of a manufactured controversy whose only goal is deflection from the misconduct/illegality that was flagged. We appeal to the public not to be waylaid by the misdirections in this instance — the attempt on Sanjay Kumar is because he has, with the other teachers of the MGCUTA, exposed the misdeeds of the VC and fought bravely in defence of public education.

From the Bihar government, we demand instant steps to reverse the dilution of charges in the FIR and the immediate addition of the charge of attempt to murder (s. 307 IPC). The persons identified by Mr. Kumar in his complaint must be arrested forthwith. We also demand that a judicial inquiry be instituted to look into the running of the university and conduct of the MGCU Vice-Chancellor, including the MGCU Teachers' Association’s charges of criminal intimidation of the teachers of the university.

We are horrified by the manner in which the attack on Mr. Kumar was effected — through an invasion of his home by an abusive mob whose intent was to create a public spectacle of ‘punishment’. As in the public lynchings of Muslims and Dalits and others that we have been angry, sorrowing witnesses to in the past two years, the objective of these acts is to, through public humiliation and violence, demote some citizens to a subordinate and ‘second-class’ status, and to cast them as kill that can be put down at will. We reject the obscene message that is being sought to be sent to the teaching community in India by this attack on Dr. Kumar. We refuse to severe the chains of solidarity, mutual regard and faith in Constitutional values that link us all, and stand shoulder to shoulder with Mr. Kumar and the MGCU Teachers Association.