Under the benevolent eye of political masters of the day, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) is continuing to have a field day across university campuses. With no one in position of authority inclined to rein them in, the ABVP is unleashing violence with impunity, attacking those whose views are ideologically inimical to theirs. They are ratcheting up their fake and virulent slander campaigns against professors and students alike, on university campuses.

The deepening culture of intimidation, of spreading lies and roughing up ideological opponents, honed in Hyderabad Central University (HCU) and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) last year, now seems to be a thriving pan-Indian phenomenon. On university campuses, the space for academic debate and political engagement is shrinking with such alarming rapidity that the day when classrooms will start to resemble army barracks doesn’t seem too far away. The new normal on campus is an atmosphere of fear coupled by the threat of violence from foot soldiers of those in power.  

This Wednesday, Delhi University’s Ramjas College became the ABVP’s hunting ground. Sticking to its usual modus operandi, the activists attacked Left-wing students and professors, hurling stones and thrashing them, dragging women by their hair. The provocation, as testified by ABVP leaders and seconded by BJP spokespersons on national television, was the invitation Ramjas College made to Umar Khalid, a PhD student in JNU currently facing charges of sedition following an incident of “seditious” slogan shouting on campus last year.

Ramjas College invited Khalid to speak in a seminar on the condition of tribals – a subject that Khalid is researching for his doctoral thesis. Faced with the threat of violence from the ABVP, the college decided to call off the seminar. That, however, did not deter the ABVP from launching into violence and beating up Left-wing students and professors. The display of assault right under the nose of the Delhi police recalled to mind scenes of similar kinds of violence witnessed on the premises of Delhi’s Tis Hazari court last year in the aftermath of the events in JNU. A video from The Quint now shows how some cops in Delhi Police in fact participated in the violence and beat up women protestors at Ramjas.

The ABVP has always lacked credentials as a serious students’ organisation – indeed they have made more healdines for starting campaigns against so-called love jihad and live-in realtionships than raising any real students issues. But now it has firmly set itself on a warpath, moving from one site of rampage to another.

The speed and the determination with which the organisation is striking at the very foundation of academic freedom, should cause concern among all who are interested in the future of critical thinking in Indian educational institutions. There is no doubt that this is a critical moment in the life of Indian higher education, and the academic fraternity as a whole. It is also a moment to reflect on the role the AVBP plays on university campuses around the country.

The reality is that the ABVP has successfully acquired a distinctive brand of notoriety, in unleashing aggressive, if not outright violent, campaigns to promote the ideology of Hindutva. Except in name, the ABVP can lay no legitimate claim to representing the interests of the student community. On the other hand, it has always vigorously represented – and now more than ever before – the ideological interests of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

To put the discussion in perspective: the methods of violent bullying and disruption have always been primary to the AVBP’s political agenda. Way back in 2008, its activists ransacked the office of SZH Jafri, then Head of Delhi University’s Department of History. The vandals were protesting the inclusion of “Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation,” an essay authored by the renowned scholar, translator, and thinker AK Ramanujan, in the History Honours syllabus. According to the ABVP, the essay contained “objectionable” references to Hindu gods.

This is what a report in The Hindu had to say about the incident: “The activists allegedly manhandled Prof. Jafri and hurled abuses at him before vandalising the office. They also allegedly threw stones into classrooms and broke doors, windows and furniture of the Department on the North Campus.”

Such tactics have gained more and more momentum since 2014, after the BJP came to power at the Centre with an overwhelming majority of seats in Lok Sabha. The list of the ABVP’s acts of vandalism and violent attacks has been lengthening by the day. From disrupting seminars, subverting curricula, to muzzling all forms of dissent – academic and non-academic alike – the ABVP has become adept at using university campuses as sites for pushing a divisive, communal agenda.

In October 2016, ABVP activists, according to a report on The Wire, physically assaulted some Delhi University students, participating in a public meeting to discuss ‘The idea of a university’: “Many student activists from different groups sustained minor injuries in the attack, which was allegedly led by Delhi University Students Union (DUSU) president Amit Tanwar.” The objective of the meeting was to present a critique of the shrinking of autonomy in university spaces under the Modi government.

Dubbing all dissenting opinions “anti-national,” ABVP functionaries across universities, have made filing charges against authors or speakers with whom they disagree, their favourite sport. In some cases, university authorities, in collusion with organisations like the ABVP, are relentlessly targeting academics and students who subscribe to any view other than those propagated by the Sangh Parivar. Consider the latest instances of such harassment. Dr Rajashree Ranawat, Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the Jai Narain Vyas University, Jodhpur, was recently suspended by the university for having supposedly “disobeyed” the orders of the university. “The suspension letter does not mention which orders she has not obeyed.” Ranawat told Scroll.in that she was asked by University authroities to explain why she had invited Professor Nivedita Menon as a speaker in an academic conference.

Soon after the conference ended, a false slander campaign was launched by a section of the media that Dr Ranawat, as an organiser, had provided a platform to a “controversial” person like Prof Menon, who supposedly used the occasion to question the accession of Kashmir to India – something she has already denied on the record. Mention may be made in this context of how, not so long ago, ABVP targetted teacher and students in Haryana Central University merely for staging a play.
Like the RSS and the BJP, the ABVP, too, is determined to brandish a narrow and authoritarian version of nationalism as a weapon against the academic community. The very idea of university as a space of freedom and debate is alien – if not repugnant – to the powers currently presiding over us. As long as the BJP continues to shower its blessings on the ABVP, such incidents of bullying and violence will not end and universities will not be able to perform their basic functions.