Did Dhrupadi Ghosh’s art get her ousted from Jamia?

“I don’t know the reason for the decision. But, it cannot be because of her activism. There are hundreds of students who protest against the administration. Why would she be singled out?” The Indian Express quoted Jamia Millia Islamia media coordinator Saima Saeed in its report on the cancellation of the PhD registration of a Jamia student on September 16. Dhrupadi Ghosh, who was pursuing PhD in Sociology, was ousted on Friday without any explanation.

What Saeed said can convince many students in Jamia as many of them are active participants in protests and gatherings, and have not been targeted like this. Ghosh was just one among hundreds of students who were at the forefront of agitations. Then why? Has she been targeted for her activism as she claims? Then what is so special about her activism?

An artist, Ghosh’s pictures and posters speak a thousand words. Ghosh and I are members of the student group, Dayar-I-Shauq Students’ Charter (DISSC), which is a left-oriented political organisation. The group was formed one-and-a-half years ago intending to revive the culture of debate and dissent on campus, raise students’ issues and reclaim the university as the students’ space. Since its inception, Ghosh was the main source of every art work attached to the organisation.

Each and every pamphlet of Ghosh is a piece of art. It takes team effort to research, write, edit, design and put up the pamphlets and posters. We know the posters will be torn down mercilessly as soon as a university guard sees them, yet sometimes the posters survived in unlikely places for days. Even when they were taken down, the bits that refuse to get off the walls remained. Sometimes they survive harsh weather. It often happens that months later, when we pass by an old poster that has somehow managed to survive, it always brings back memories.

Ghosh never gets a day off. With all the pressure of her research and political work, she always manages to come up with amazing designs. Even when she leaves for home, we keep pestering her to design for every protest and event.

The left-leaning groups on campus usually sit on the round table near the photocopy shop in canteen lawn. We fondly call this spot our ‘Laal chowk’. The round table is called Rizwan table, named after a comrade from another organization. When we sing songs and have tea, Dhrupadi used to sit and make posters, stick them there and make graffiti in the vicinity. The posters pasted in this area usually survive for days.

The poster of the event ‘Laal Tarana’ pasted near the ‘Laal Chowk’ survived several days after the programme got over. This event was vandalised by university guards and later four of the students were given show-cause notices for organising the event.

All her work is done with love and patience. Most of the time, the event that we plan doesn’t go the way we expected though. The poster of a public meeting “Shrinking Democratic Spaces in Universities” was designed with so much effort. We planned the event, talked to the speakers, made the arrangements, but the programme was cancelled at the eleventh hour due to permission issues. Hence, the poster Ghosh designed, with so much effort, for the event never got pasted.

With students’ programme, there is always a lot of uncertainty in terms of permission and arrangements. We are always anxious whether anyone will even turn up to attend it. At the end of the day, you can always expect a lot of surprises in student activism.

Ghosh’s posters talk about a large array of issues. She believes that the students must engage with the issues of farmers’ suicide, minimum wages, labour laws, Kashmir, Bastar, issues faced by Dalits, women and minorities as much as they engage with fee hike, privatisation of education, scrapping of scholarship and student union. True learning takes place when you practice what you learn. If the theories that we study in textbooks does not reflect in what we do, we probably are doing something wrong. We believe that all these issues must be freely discussed by the students in a university and different perspectives should be brought to the table. Debate and dissent are the very essence of a university.

Democratic activism in Jamia isn’t easy. The administration is hell-bent on keeping the campus inert and docile. Being sensitive to the injustices around us is fraught with peril- as Dhrupadi just found out. We are continuously threatened, implicitly or explicitly by the administration and people close to them. There is a very high degree of surveillance by the private guards. The university has also let it slip that they regularly monitor our social media posts – evidently, the right to privacy or the freedom of expression and assembly doesn’t apply inside Jamia. Even holding a simple cultural programme or a discussion meeting with eminent professors from other universities is very difficult as the administration invariably tries to scuttle it by denying or delaying permission or stipulating unreasonable conditions. However, despite the efforts of the administration, the campus community refuse to be silenced. The attack on Dhrupadi is part of the administration’s new muzzling tactic.

These two were made in July this year in the backdrop of chaos in the examination system in the university. Students protested against delayed results, innumerable errors, outsourcing the examination and admissions to private players and scrapping of hard copy mark-sheets in the name of digitisation. It was after the students’ struggle, the administration withdrew its decision and promised that hard copies of the mark-sheets of all semesters will be continued.

This one was designed during the Central Canteen Workers’ struggle in May this year. They had not been given wages for months. The contractor ran away without paying them. Jamia administration failed to take any action against the contractor or to make arrangements to pay the workers till date. Contractual workers work under extremely exploitative conditions in Jamia.

We believe that the values and social theories that we study in the classroom must inspire what we do, how we choose to live. We believe that all these issues must be freely discussed by the students in a university and different perspectives should be brought to the table. Debate and dissent are the very essence of a university. That is why we stand with Dhrupadi today, because she represents the voice of courage and sanity in a world where these values are constantly under attack.