[Reader-list] Jamia University's right to provide Legal aid:

[Tapas Ray]

apologies if someone else has already addressed this factor. i sent this 
message to a member offlist but then felt that it might be useful for 
others to consider the point too, for whatever it is worth.

i should mention that i have enormous regard for prof. hasan.

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apologies for writing offlist, which i am doing in order not to get 
drawn into a protracted debate.

i am not comfortable with the idea of the university qua university 
providing aid to the arrested students. this may set a precedent which 
students will cite to ask for their university's aid in other cases of 
legal difficulty, and not only in jamia. judging the merits of these 
claims will be difficult and, more likely than not, decisions will be 
controversial.

i think it would have been better if students, teachers, and other staff 
- not only in jamia but also in other institutions - were to set up an 
aid fund for the arrested students.

of course, this is my personal view. i may be wrong.
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Radhakrishnan wrote:
> On Communal profiling and Jamia University's right to provide Legal aid:
> 
> Mushir Ul Hasan has done what any responsible head of an institution would have done under similar circumstances, or is it that some of our sarai contributors are wiling to provide legal aid or that the state should come with a defense team. Perhaps we are indulging in a trial through Internet. 
> 
> Is he supposed to be a mute spectator and relinquish his role as a guardian of all students, and moreover why are we hell bent on arriving towards the conclusion even when the matter is subjudice, or is that someone among us is privy to the copy of final judgment convicting the two accused? 
> 
> Prof. Hasan has impeccable credentials and it’s rather very unjust to expect him to scream from rooftop about his unequivocal opposition to terrorism of all hue. 
> 
> Srirang jha states that since the University exists for education and nothing else and that our constitution provides for legal assistance to any one who cannot afford a lawyer. Hence arrested students of JMI who are arrested for their alleged role in the Blast may get legal assistance from the Legal Aid Cell and that intellectual like Mushirul Hasan need not indulge in such a pastime as this……. Calls for more sensitivity…..when the University is under scanner for wrong reasons and that too with the heightened fears about profiling on religious lines as has been the case in Manipal in Karnataka. The two accused have no history of crime. Should any institution simply disown its students after their arrest on similar grounds? Is it not a sign of democracy to even assure the accused of a fair trial!
> 
> Secondly arguments about seeking Jamia’s social intervention in its neighbourhood are rather a fashion statement and that too at an inopportune moment. Instead the government of the day could be requested for such interventions, universities certainly do their best in terms of field research, public policy analysis, health and educational campaigns but they don’t constitute its core activity…such examples are found in other places too, like JNU or Delhi University but to expect some comprehensive changes in places near the universities is something which falls in the socio-economic-political domain and a matter concerning day to day governance. 
> 
> Radhakrishnan