[Reader-list] Where is elsewhere? Fwd: account of the baroda bus

[sabitha t p]

This is a forwarded mail of an account of the bus
carrying artists and activists from Bombay. Can
nothing in Gujarat surprise us anymore? When democracy
becomes mobocracy, what legitimate means do we have to
counter it? What's frightening is that this is all in
keeping with what's happening elsewhere. Here in Delhi
there are a large number of colleges (this is from
first-hand experience, I've taught in all of them!)
which have been systematically suppressing
dissemination of fee thinking and persecuting teachers
(by petty means such as denying leave entitled,
surveillance, using their discretionary powers
arbitrarily to obstruct etc.) who do so. In one
college the pricipal once tried to stop Habib Tanvir
from staging a play on the grounds that he was a
Muslim who shouldn't be allowed to question the Hindu
caste system; Another, whenever asked for permission
to screen any film by the English department, asks
whether we're screening "obscene" films! We all know
the persecution suffered by Nandita Narain and Karen
Gabriel in Stephen's because they protested against
the elected sexual harassment committee being
disbanded arbitrarily by the principal. The elsewhere
is no longer out there, has never been; it is
happening right here in institutions where we spend
all our time and effort to bring up free-thinking
generations.
Sabitha.

> The local news channels and news papers had been
> announcing the arrival of
> our bus carrying supporters from Bombay. A VHP
> functionary had even gone as
> far as to demand (on one local TV channel) that the
> bus not be allowed to
> enter the city and if it did there would be rioting
> in the city! All the
> same the bus took an alternative route, bypassing
> Baroda and entering the
> city from the Ahmedabad Express highway. There were
> no checkpoints it
> transpired to stop our bus as the University
> officials had a different plan.
> Well they could make(or as we have already seen -
> break)fresh rules

> The VC had issued orders to allow entry only to
> students with bonafide
> i-cards.  The denial of entry to artists and alumni
> and other supporters
> into the Faculty was again a case in point of the
> high handedness of the VC
> and clearly a strategy for thwarting support by the
> larger art fraternity to
> the local students. It was a glaring instance the
> collusion of the
> University authorities with the VHP goons as just
> the previous day hordes of
> ABVP activists were allowed to enter the faculty.
> This rowdy mob was allowed
> to jeer, abuse and shout slogans at the students of
> the faculty who were
> sitting in a peaceful dharna.
> Repeated attempts were made by us to enter the
> faculty but we were
> restrained by police and 'security' (some of whom
> weren't even in uniform).
> We then decided that we should stage a sit in
> outside the gate of the
> Faculty. Just then a person who obviously didn't
> look like a student of the
> Fine Art faculty was allowed entry. Angered we
> stormed the gate demanding
> that either his i-card be produced or he be
> expelled. The police stalled and
> in about ten minutes our shouting was drowned by the
> slogans "Bharat Mata Ki
> Jai" (!) and slogans against the Dean Shivji Paniker
> and Chandra Mohan. A
> mob of right wing activists (read hooligans)
> descended on us shoving and
> pushing. Their slogans were interspersed with abuses
> and expletives of the
> worst kind.
> The supporters formed a silent chain and stood on
> the other side of the
> road, leaving the raving and ranting mob by the
> gate; hoping the press and
> police would realize the difference between a
> decorous and determined
> protest and lumpen, unthinking vandal demonstration
> of power and perversion.
> The mob even had the audacity to climb atop the
> police van (of course
> unchecked by the complicit police) and display their
> banners. After about a
> quarter of an hour unable to provoke the students in
> the faculty, they
> turned their attention on the protestors who had
> formed a human chain. Their
> blatant in- your- face aggression and swearing
> failed to rouse the silent
> protestors
 and even the silent police who chose to
> just watch on! Finally
> when the police did decide to act, they rounded off
> about twenty students
> and four goons detaining them for 2 hours.
> This ratio should perhaps make up happy
 for every
> four of them there are
> twenty of us!
>  Best,
> Tushar
> 



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