Following two university-wide memoranda prohibiting protests and slogans on campus, Jamia Milia Islamia, one of the country’s most prominent minority institutions, which played a crucial role in mobilising agitations against the Citizenship Amendment Act in 2020, has become, yet again, a hotbed of State repression. Amidst students being detained and served with show-cause notices, groups have called for a university-wide boycott of classes.
As tensions flare up, police patrol has rapidly increased, strict identification checks have been put in place, and altercations have left students navigating an atmosphere of uncertainty.
For many, memories of the forceful entry of and brutal crackdown by Delhi police on the campus following a confrontation with student protestors in December 2019, remain raw.
Legally curbing expressions of protest
For many, memories of the forceful entry of and brutal crackdown by Delhi police on the campus following a confrontation with student protestors in December 2019, remain raw. In August 2022, a university-wide memorandum was issued, noting that some students with “political agendas” were holding “protests, dharnas and boycott campaigns on the campus for their malafide and political interests” disturbing the “peaceful academic environment” of the university. More than two years later, in November 2024, a second memorandum was released, allegedly in response to student protests against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which prohibited protests and slogans on campus without the administration’s permission. It noted that students had also protested against “other law enforcement agencies of the country on the issues which are not related to the academia as well as to the University.”
These office memoranda, by threatening hefty penalties such as expulsion, fines, and rustication have created an atmosphere of suppression where students risk serious consequences for dissent. Wrapped in the clothing of disciplinary measures, their implications on free speech and political engagements on campus are grave.
This story was originally published in newsclick.in. Read the full story here.
