On May 4th, a group of people belonging to ABVP violently disrupted a final theatre performance at the department of theatre arts GB hall, University of Hyderabad, leaving several students injured. The students were staging a play titled ‘Holi’. This play, written in the 1960s critiques the caste hierarchy and looks at how caste operates within educational institutions. ABVP members had objected to certain dialogues from the play referring to Brahmanism claiming that they hurt Hindu sentiments, and had earlier demanded the students to censor the play. When their demands were not met, the ABVP goons resorted to vandalism to violently disrupt the play. On WhatsApp, messages calling the “karyakartas” to mobilise against the play were being circulated, students and faculty seeing these messages sought out security protection from university administration. The situation escalated when members of ABVP along with Student’s Union members arrived outside the hall, they attacked security members and students with broken beer bottles, vandalised property – destroyed lights, windows and vehicles and also threw stones at students, chanting slogans like “Desh ke gaddaron ko, goli maro saalon ko”. The university administration failed to ensure the safety of students despite prior warnings of threats. Why did the administration not respond adequately? Did the devastating consequences of their complicity not teach them anything?
The attack on democratic spaces and academic freedom, especially within universities, has only increased. The attack on the students of JNU during the student union elections, the attack on the students of APU to disrupt a discussion on the state violence in Kunan-Poshpora in Jammu & Kashmir, campus democracy is being threatened again and again. And it is no surprise, we have seen in the past as well that fascism has subtly expressed itself through a clamp down on education and educational institutions. India under fascist RSS-BJP is not proving to be different. These are deliberate attacks against the culture of debate, dissent and discussion on campus spaces. University administrations have been repeatedly failing to protect their students, or even being openly hostile towards their students, from these clampdowns. Discussions and critical discourse is being treated as criminal activity, spaces for inquiry are being shut down and instead being turned into apolitical and ideologically conforming spaces. We students must unite against this sustained violence and reclaim these spaces!
