St Stephen's Students Boycott Classes In "Very, Very Rare" Move, For JNU

By Dilip -
NB: Congratulations to SSC students for this display of solidarity. The college has an old tradition of participation in the outstanding political movements of the day. Susil Kumar Rudra, first Indian Principal (1906-1923) was a close friend and admirer of Mahatma Gandhi, as was Charles Freer Andrews, who joined the faculty in 1904. Gandhi used to stay with Rudra in the principal's house whenever he visited Delhi; this despite the English authorities' express disapproval. Gandhi said that his open letter to the Viceroy during the Khilafat agitation "was conceived and drafted under Principal Rudra's roof" 

More on St Stephens College and the Indian national movement may be read in Susan Vishvanathan; Friendship, Interiority and Mysticism: Essays in Dialogue, 2007; Chapter 6, Rudra, Andrews and Gandhi; and in Daniel O’Connor; A Clear Star: C. F. Andrews and India 1904-1914; 2005. The first author is an alumnus of JNU; and the second was Pastor in SSC in the 1960's and 70's; and friend to many of us in our time at SSC. He lives in retirement in Balmullo, Scotland. 

Meanwhile this essay, Rebellion to Reconciliation, appeared in B.G. Verghese (ed); 
Tomorrow’s India: Another Tryst with Destiny, SSC's commemoration volume in 2006. St Stephen's is my alma mater and I have never before placed this memoir on my blog. DS

Students of St Stephen's in Delhi boycotted classes and protested on the lawns today - in a gesture described as "very rare" for the college - to express solidarity with Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) students and teachers attacked by a masked mob on Sunday. The students gathered on the sprawling lawns of St Stephen's and read the preamble to the Constitution.

On the Twitter feed of a large alumni group of the prestigious college at Delhi University's North Campus, an eight-second video appeared that shows at least 100 students standing outside the college building, holding placards and shouting slogans in the biting cold. "At St Stephen's today. Students boycott classes (very, very rare) to read the Preamble to the Constitution and to support and say #WeStandWithJNU. And #NoCAANoNRC," the alumni group, Stephanians, tweeted.
JNU Students, Teachers Attacked By Masked Men
Prof Purushottam Agrawal addressing Shaheen Bagh Protest against CAA, NRC
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE CITIZENS OF INDIA by 106 senior retired government officers: INDIA DOES NOT NEED THE CAA-NPR-NRIC

 "We are here for rights, not riots," reads a placard held by a student. Another reads, "The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis." In the video, the students gathered on the lawns are heard shouting, "Kal bhi tum haare the, aaj bhi tum haaroge, kal bhi hum jitenge (You lost yesterday, you will lose today also. We will win again tomorrow)." The students were also heard shouting: "Is baar nahin hum chhodenge, itihas ki dhara modenge (we will not let go this time, we will change the direction of history)."

The group then marched a few hundred metres to the Faculty of Arts area on campus, a short distance from the college. Students of other nearby colleges on North Campus like Miranda House boycotted classes on a call given by St Stephen's students, news agency IANS reported. "Students from various colleges and alumni have gathered here in solidarity with whatever that is happening to students in different universities... The incident at JNU is what sparked this big strike," said a student from Delhi University, Faculty of Arts.

A massive masked mob attack at JNU on Sunday evening left over 30 injured, including five teachers. In mobile videos, the masked men are seen hitting students with sticks and sledgehammers and ransacking hostel rooms. The JNU Students' Union has accused the BJP-linked students' group ABVP for the mob attack. The ABVP claims students allied with the "Left" were responsible for the mayhem. The Delhi Police have said they are investigating the allegations from both groups.
https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/st-stephens-students-boycott-classes-in-very-very-rare-move-for-jnu-2160714?pfrom=home-topstories

see also
The real tukde-tukde gang
Jab Hindu Muslim raazi / to kya karega Nazi
The split wide open: India is at risk of alienating allies by citizenship programme
‘Am glad I went’: Ramachandra Guha explains why he joined CAA protests
Over 1000 Scientists, Academics Demand Withdrawal of Citizenship Bill // Citizenship Amendment Bill is a bid to fashion an ethnic democracy
Bengal Imam who lost son to communal clashes calls for peace // Students Across India Rise Up To Protest Citizenship Act And Police Brutality
Ayush Chaturvedi: Main Gandhi ke saath hun // Samar Halarnkar: In the time of Godse, a search for Hindus who will stand with Gandhi
Naxalites should lay down their arms and challenge the ruling class to abide by the Constitution
Decline, Debasement and Devastation in the All India Services. By P. S. Appu (IAS, Retd)
Dilip Simeon: Closing the Circle: On Revolution (Frontier, 2012)
Remembering Rabindra

Popular posts from this blog

Third degree torture used on Maruti workers: Rights body

By Dilip -
The People’s Union for Democratic Rights on Tuesday alleged that third degree torture methods were used by the Gurgaon Criminal Investigation Agency while interrogating workers of Maruti Suzuki India Limited’s Manesar plant who are accused of involvement in the killing of an HR manager and the violent attack at the plant on July 18. The PUDR alleged that the Gurgaon CIA investigation “did not seem” to be directed at solving the crime or probing the involvement of the arrested workers in the incidents and crimes recorded in the FIR but instead was based on their involvement in trade union activities. Grave doubts  “The use of third degree torture in police custody, and the securing of arrestees’ signatures on blank papers by the police, gives rise to grave doubts regarding the ability of such an investigation in effectively identifying or arresting those guilty. The police and the State seem keener to reassure Maruti Suzuki Ltd. and ensure that production continues,” the PUDR stat
Read more

Haruki Murakami: On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning

By Dilip -
According to Murakami, “1Q84” is just an amplification of one of his most popular short stories,   which (in its English version) is five pages long. “Basically, it’s the same,” he told me. “A boy meets a girl. They have separated and are looking for each other. It’s a simple story. I just made it long.” One beautiful April morning, on a narrow side street in Tokyo's fashionable Harujuku neighborhood, I walked past the 100% perfect girl. Tell you the truth, she's not that good-looking. She doesn't stand out in any way. Her clothes are nothing special. The back of her hair is still bent out of shape from sleep. She isn't young, either - must be near thirty, not even close to a "girl," properly speaking. But still, I know from fifty yards away: She's the 100% perfect girl for me. The moment I see her, there's a rumbling in my chest, and my mouth is as dry as a desert..." read the story: http://www.youmightfindyourself.com/post/22131227
Read more

The Almond Trees by Albert Camus (1940)

By Dilip -
Image
'Do you know', Napoleon once said to Fontanes, 'what astounds me most about the world?  The impotence of force to establish anything.  There are only two powers in the world: the sword and the mind.  In the end, the sword is always conquered by the mind' Conquerors, you see, are sometimes melancholy.  They have to pay some price for so much vainglory. But what a hundred years ago was true of the sword is no longer true today of the tank. Conquerors have made progress, and the dismal silence of places without intelligence has been established for years at a time in a lacerated Europe. At the time of the hideous wars of Flanders, Dutch painters could still perhaps paint the cockerels in their farmyards. The Hundred Years War has likewise been forgotten, and yet the prayers of Silesian mystics still linger in some hearts. But today, things have changed; the painter and the monk have been drafted - we are one with the world.  The mind has lost that regal certainty which a c
Read more

Rudyard Kipling: critical essay by George Orwell (1942)

By Dilip -
Mother of Cities to me, For I was born in her gate, Between the palms and the sea, Where the world-end steamers wait  Rudyard Kipling , To the City of Bombay "Few people who have criticized England from the inside have said bitterer things about her than this gutter patriot" : George Orwell IT WAS a pity that Mr. Eliot should be so much on the defensive in the long essay with which he prefaces this selection of Kipling's poetry, but it was not to be avoided, because before one can even speak about Kipling one has to clear away a legend that has been created by two sets of people who have not read his works. Kipling is in the peculiar position of having been a byword for fifty years. During five literary generations every enlightened person has despised him, and at the end of that time nine-tenths of those enlightened persons are forgotten and Kipling is in some sense still there. Mr. Eliot never satisfactorily explains this fact, because in answering the shal
Read more

Satyagraha - An answer to modern nihilism

By Dilip -
NB: This is the text of my address to the Eighth East-West Inter-cultural Relations Conference held at Ramjas College, the University of Delhi, on March 17.  The details of the conference may be read here . A pdf file of the address is downloadable here  -  DS Satyagraha - An answer to modern nihilism Dilip Simeon Keynote address to the Eighth East-West Inter-cultural Relations Conference Ramjas College, March 17-18 2016 Zilu stopped for the night at Stone Gate. The gatekeeper said, Where are you from? Zilu said, From the household of Confucius. The gatekeeper said, The one who knows there’s nothing that can be done but keeps on trying?  -  from the Analects of Confucius (14:40) What is truth? asked jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer – Francis Bacon In fact it is more correct to say Truth is God than to say God is Truth – Mohandas Gandhi Introduction: The human being is the speaking animal, the discerner of good and evil. This featur
Read more

Three Versions of Judas: Jorge Luis Borges

By Dilip -
Image
In  Asia Minor or in Alexandria, in the second century of our faith (when Basilides was announcing that the cosmos was a rash and malevolent improvisation engineered by defective angels), Nils Runeberg might have directed, with a singular intellectual passion, one of the Gnostic monasteries. Dante would have destined him, perhaps, for a fiery sepulcher; his name might have augmented the catalogues of heresiarchs, between Satornibus and Carpocrates; some fragment of his preaching, embellished with invective, might have been preserved in the apocryphal Liber adversus omnes haereses  or might have perished when the firing of a monastic library consumed the last example of the  Syntagma . Instead, God assigned him to the twentieth century, and to the university city of Lund. There, in 1904, he published the first edition of  Kristus och Judas ; there, in 1909, his masterpiece  Dem hemlige Frälsaren  appeared. (Of this last mentioned work there exists a German version,  Der heimliche Heilan
Read more

Goodbye Sadiq al-Azm, lone Syrian Marxist against the Assad regime

By Dilip -
NB:  An interesting obituary to a great intellectual. My knowledge of the situation is limited, but as regards this article,  I'm uncomfortable with the argument that there should be no objection to the participation  of communal parties  in a democratic alliance. My views on this are conditioned by the history of religion-based mobilisations in India, where the communist movement has from time to time allied with communal groups of all colours, with disastrous consequences. Some material on this theme may be read here .  Nor can I agree that Islamists, Hindutva groups or Khalistanis etc. can be described as 'religious parties'. I do not mean to justify alliances with 'secular' tyrants, but to remind anyone who cares to listen, that communalism is also an expression of tyranny.  Communalists proceed on the assumption that membership of a religious community automatically produces a political interest, and strive to create that interest. They enter democratic move
Read more