In the middle of December, Delhi police tried to shut down university protests against the religiously discriminatory Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) by caning Muslim students into submission. Police officers smashed their way into the library at Jamia Millia Islamia university (where I teach history), trashed bookcases and beat the students inside, badly damaging the eyesight of one in the process. They threw teargas grenades into the reading room to force students out. Their excuse was they were chasing violent demonstrators who had taken refuge in campus buildings.
Last week, Delhi police also assembled outside another educational establishment. This time the police remained decorously outside the gates of Jawaharlal Nehru University, India’s most well known, cordoning off the campus as masked goons armed with iron rods and improvised bludgeons ran riot inside. They broke into a hostel reserved for women students, inflicted head injuries on the president of JNU’s student union, who is a woman, and attacked faculty members who tried to protect them. Some 20 students and teachers were hospitalised. After three hours of thuggery the police entered the university at the vice-chancellor’s belated invitation but made no arrests because the criminals had mysteriously slipped away despite the police cordon.
The government was confident that making a violent example of a Muslim university would play well in public
Related: Students protest across India after attack at top Delhi university
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