Warwick students stand in solidarity with students attacked in India
Warwick staff and students took to campus streets last Wednesday to express their solidarity with students in India.
On 8 January outside the Oculus, the protestors stood in solidarity with the students and faculty members of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) who were attacked on their university campus and hostels by masked ‘goons’ on 5 January.
More than 30 students and staff were injured in the violence and one particular video shows JNU’s Students’ Union’s President, Aishe Ghosh, bleeding from her head and being “brutally attacked”, according to TIME.
Students have claim that the masked attackers are part of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), a student wing to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and supporters of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).
The CAA was passed by the government on 12 December and has since resulted in widespread protests across India and huge unrest in student communities in universities such as JNU, Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) and Aligarh Muslim University (AMU).
Rashmi Varma, one of the organisers of the protest described the attack as “shocking” and one which “violates the most basic of democratic norms” and encouraged “an inquiry into the brutal invasion of university campuses in Jamia and Aligarh” to take place.
She told The Boar: “I protested because most of my education, before my PhD, was in India.“I cannot imagine facing these kinds of assaults as a student. So I protested to express my solidarity.
“I think it is very important for the international community to protest as well because human rights are values of concern universally. There is a global attack on the idea of public education, so as students and teachers we share a common cause.”
One alumna from JNU, Bishnupriya Gupta, who also took part in the protest on campus, described being “close to tears” while watching the events fold out on news channels across India.
“I spent many years of my life there and it is a place which basically taught me a lot and made me the person I am today.“I have been in those places, done things, protests, debates, discussions, academic work and although there were times when police came on campus while I was there, there was never this kind of violence.
“People coming with iron rods and violating your space is something no university can allow to happen. Least of all, the government of the province or the government of the country should never allow this to happen”, she stated.
Ragini Puri, a third-year History and Politics student at Warwick who attended and also spoke at the protest on campus further said that she saw a student uprising while she was there over the winter break: “I saw my city and country erupt into flames at the hand of the ruling government. The resolve of the students protesting is inspiring”.
“Many students in Delhi are friends of mine and hence the situation hit extremely close to home. I believe all students must condemn the violence being inflicted upon the student protestors in India as they are being attacked on their own campuses.”
She added that she hopes “the protests in India achieve their parent goals of preventing the imposition of CAA and NRC” and that “it sends a message to the Modi regime that makes them take accountability for their action. The current regime must realise they are no longer free to do how they please and they must justify all their actions”.
A third-year Politics and International Studies student, Divya Batra, who also attended the protest hopes that “what this protest achieves is that everyone who has had the privilege of being apolitical decides to use this very privilege to speak up against the wrongs being committed.
“These acts by the government are going down in history as some of the worst crimes committed by a government towards its people” she added and encouraged fellow students to come forward in solidarity with their Indian counterparts.
“We as students in the UK have a moral duty to speak up for our fraternity especially because unlike us, they are under the constant fear that every time they leave their house to go and protest, there is a possibility they might not come back”.
Esha Volvoikar, a second year English student further added that she thinks “the current situation is utterly appalling and CAA goes against the very national fabric of India”.
She expressed the importance of there being “no safe space for citizens to voice out their opinions without being attacked, which is ironic because a democracy is meant to reflect the voice of the people and today their voices are being suppressed”.
Built with Shorthand