(Audrey) It’s 11 a.m. Saturday morning, and I’m comfortably sitting in my flat in Delhi having my morning tea, slowly waking up after a Halloween party last night. A week ago, I thought I’d be in Aligarh at this moment, getting incredibly nervous for a lecture I was asked to give to the History Department at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) at high noon. But then some things happened.
I was set to go to Aligarh last Tuesday morning, figuring that while I’m headed out to give a talk anyways I might as well also avail myself of their vast manuscript resources for a few days beforehand. But then an AMU student was shot dead on Sunday night, off campus, by some goons. Fellow students were outraged naturally, and the police surprisingly actually apprehended a few suspects… problem at least on the way to being solved? Not so fast. Things turned ugly again on Tuesday when students began protesting/rioting (depends who you ask) on campus demanding, amongst other things, the resignation of the Vice-Chancellor (VC). Now if the chain of logic here from goons-shoot-student to students-protest-University seems not fully fleshed out to you, well, then welcome to the world of student protests.
The back story is that the Aligarh VC is a totally corrupt dude who’s taken a bunch of University money to pimp out his office (amongst other types of corruption) while doing nothing for students. As a result, he’s been long hated on campus. On a personal note, this VC is standing between me and permission to photograph the manuscripts at Aligarh, so I’m not necessarily opposed to seeing him out of office. Back to Tuesday—students protest on campus, a few begin an indefinite hunger strike while others shut down the library (and my access to the manuscript collection with it) and disrupt classes. My contacts in Aligarh tell me to postpone my trip a day. Wednesday comes and the University begins to arrest people. Meetings are held. Wednesday night my contacts in Aligarh tell me to forget the lecture altogether because of the situation. Things continue to get worse throughout Thursday and Friday, culminating in Friday evening when AMU made the drastic decision to shut down the University altogether and ship all students staying in hostels on campus back to their homes within 48 hours. Read about it here.
Now, I generally oppose student protests, particularly anything violent, illegal, and above all I despise hunger strikes (basic reasoning: virtually nothing in a University is worth dying over and you shouldn’t go on a hunger strike unless you’re willing to die for the cause, seriously). But I’m also accustomed to a bit more checks and balances on University power at home… not to mention a greater sense amongst faculty and the administration about the greater purposes of higher education and a lot less corruption. I also rarely support the insane liberal causes of student protests… but all that is a bit different in this situation. But before I get carried away in my own opinion, let us all hope that AMU deals with this situation peacefully and non-violently going forward… forcibly evacuating students from hostels sounds risky on that front to me.
Tags: Aligarh, Aligarh Muslim University, AMU, hunger strike, student protests
