They set fire to our thoughts
Michel Foucault, the famous French philosopher, had great insights into the deployment of power in a society. He argued that, in the era we live in, power inheres in institutions such as universities, prisons and factories rather than in the bodies that make those institutions function. Now my university, Pondicherry Central, proves the truth of Foucault’s theory.
On the evening of 28th July, the Dean of Students’ Welfare, Prakash Babu, released Pondicherry Central University's Student Council magazine Widerstand in the presence of our Vice-Chancellor (in-charge) Anisa Basheer Khan, and Student Council members. Within no time, we got to know that our magazine is “anti-national” from our own fraternity. After three days, the university used its institutional power on us. The Student Council room where 4,000 copies of the magazine were stored, was locked and distribution stopped.
Last Monday, BJP supporters came to our university gates and protested, alleging that the magazine contains anti-national content. They burned copies of the magazine because it depicted Rohith Vemula’s suicide as an ‘institutional murder’. Students on campus who seemed to be supporters of the BJP’s student wing, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), also protested for the same reasons. Since then, the campus has seen a large number of debates on the issue.
History has seen a lot of destruction of knowledge and the creativity, mostly in the name of the integrity of the state. In 1258, the Mongols took the books and manuscripts from Baghdad’s libraries and threw them into the Tigris River which ran black with the ink from the books. In 1377, the English translator of the Bible, John Wycliffe, was targeted by the state for his writings. In India, in 1998, M.F. Husain's house was attacked by the Bajrang Dal and Shiv Sena and his art vandalised. There was the notorious 1989 fatwa against Salman Rushdie. Last year, our government directed YouTube to block India's Daughter, a documentary directed by Leslee Udwin.
And right now, my university is directed to explain why the students write against the government. News reports say that MHRD has issued a notice to the University asking for an explanation on the magazine issue.
Here, the freedom of expression dies from the institutionalised repressions of the state.
Our magazine ‘Widerstand’ focuses on recent events in the country, especially the turmoil on campuses. The foreword of the magazine reads “Widerstand means resistance in German. It was a magazine published from Berlin since 1926 to advocate National Bolshevism, under the editorship of Ernst Niekisch, a German politician and socialist. The magazine stood against the fascist Nazi rule and eventually shut down in 1934…..The students’ movements are the leading forces which fight against the fascism in India…..As Neruda sang, ‘come, see the blood in the streets’, we are taking about the students murdered by the institutions, jailed by government for sloganeering against the state, the people dying of poverty, people discriminated and lynched because of their religion, caste, gender and even for food habits”.
These are the words in the magazine that made the ruling party of this country protest. There are some other reasons too. The ABVP also found that the cover design of the magazine itself was a sign of terrorism on the campus. One such person updated his Facebook status with the cover picture of the magazine, asking: “Is it a bomb in her hand? Is it a threat? Is it an era of Burqa clan? Is it an era of loathing Indian Nationalism? Is ISIS ideology slowly creeping into PU? Shouldn’t a student magazine have a progressive cover?”
Actually the cover refers to a Palestinian woman who has ‘planted a garden full of flowers grown inside of spent tear-gas grenades collected from clashes between Israeli forces and Palestine protesters’, as the back cover of Widerstand explains.
The magazine consists of articles, poems and other write-ups. The basic theme is to demonstrate the oppression of the downtrodden, the voice of the oppressed. At the same time it fails to handle other issues. It is limited as a voice against the government. Though it is a voice against the government, nobody has the right to cut our buds.
The democracy we believe in gives us the right to think against the ruling party and the government. The oppression of the government towards those who are against vested interests demolishes the basic pillar of plurality. Dear government, you throw our country into barbarianism when you set fire to our thoughts.
Musthafa Mubashir is a Research Scholar, Department of Electronic Media and Mass Communication, Pondicherry University. E-mail: pmmubashir@gmail.com.