Policing, Violence and Contemporary Students’ Movements – Azad
Mukto sinta/XI/III
Let us hark back to a tragic incident of custodial torture and death in 2019, that of father and son, Jeyaraj and Bennix. On June 19, 2020, Jeyaraj, the owner of a small mobile shop in Sathankulam town, Tamil Nadu, was arrested over charges of violating COVID-19 protocols. Same day Bennix, his son, too was apprehended by the Sathankulam police on the grounds of misbehaving with the police (in reality, however, Bennix went to the police station just to ask why his father was arrested). A few days later, the newspapers reported the tragic deaths of Jeyaraj amd Bennix, resulting from the severe wounds they incurred while in custody. This is not the solitary incident of custodial torture and death in recent years. Just a year after the Sathankulam deaths, Faizan, a twenty-three-years old youth, was brutally assaulted by uniformed cops during north-east Delhi riots. Faizan had been forced to sing the national anthem (a Hindutva tactic often used by the police, especially when it comes to the Muslims), with a baton being pushed into his throat, and days thereafter, Faizan died. Died not because he committed any crime, but he, like so many others, unfortunately fell prey to the police brutality and violence which has become a commonplace in the country’s law and order system, with the boost it received since 2014 (the year marking BJP’s return into power at the centre).
So, how does these instances of custodial torture and death relate to the broader students’ movements and community? Looking at in isolation, these incidents do not seem to provoke any serious concern inasmuch as the campus life within our universities and colleges is concerned. But seeing from a more microscopic and general angle, the everyday reports of police violence and torture are deeply concerning; concerning to the extent it affects the democratic and critical values and spirit of our campuses. To be fair, such sorts of incident are no longer confined to the social and political sphere outside the academic campus. In the recent years, police violence and brutality have been largely weaponized against the peaceful students’ movements and protests. Protests against fee hike, demanding hostel allotment, and so on, which, at a first glance, do not in any way fall under the jurisdiction of police authority. One of such horrific cases was the 15th December, 2019 attack on students from two of the top universities of the country, Aligarh Muslim University and Jamia Millia Islamia. Then there is the more of a recent police deployment within the campuses of universities like Jadavpur University and Aligarh Muslim University among others. Examples abound to show how the police not only intimidate the students, but physically assault them, communally abuse, and preventively arrest and detain without any arrest warrant for indefinite time. This weaponization of police force against the students functions in different forms. Apart from beatings, verbal abuse and physical torture, it has increasingly resorted to put false charges on democratically protesting students and detain them without trial for long. A few days ago, the Phd scholar from JNU Umar Khalid has completed his fifth birthday behind the bars. Umar’s case aptly represents the ruling regime’s outlook towards critique, reason and democratic values which are what builds a healthy and democratic campus life, and the policing plays a crucial role in this game. When the academic campus life is being talked about, the faculty, who stand in solidarity with the students’ cause, speak out for those from oppressed backgrounds, and who dare to question the looming threat over democratic rights, economic, social and gender equality, are also not spared. Prof. Hany Babu from Delhi University, Prof. Shoma Sen, the Head of the English Department, Pune University, and Prof. Anand Teltumbde, teaching at the Goa Institute of Management before he was arrested, have all been incarcerated since 2018 over draconian charges. To mention but a few names.
So, the question arises – is the strict policing and its brute force against popular and democratic movements a new phenomenon, emerging out of a political crisis within the status quo? It has to be critically conceded that the police and its brute force forms a fundamental apparatus of the state, often deployed to exert its authority, and that too in conformity with its ideology and vested interests. The Indian police force was born out of the colonial state’s demands and interests to keep the regime intact and guarded against any sort of threat. More often than not, this task of consolidation and safeguarding was sought to be based on brute force, since the colonial state, in its very essence, founded itself on brute force over a people whose consent never formed a part of the colonial state-building process. And the colonial police force has to be seen in this very particular context. Though India gained independence in 1947, the post-colonial state retained the police department without much alterations to fit into an independent democratic political setup which the Consitituion promised. Carrying over the colonial laws regulating policing such IPC, CrPC, and IEA, the police department remained the same with visible colonial legacies. One of the major implications of this colonial baggage has been that even the post-colonial state has been using its police force to maintain socio-economic hierarchies and inequality, to crush peasants and workers’ demands, to deny its citizens’ rights, and to quell popular movements rather than to protect and uphold the socialist, secular and democratic setup, just as much in the similar ways as did the police force in its colonial colours. Though the current ruling regime has replaced the colonial IPC, CrPC and IEA with Bharatiya Nyaya Samhita (BNS), Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Samhita (BNSS), and Bharatiya Saksha Adhiniyam (BSA), the purported decolonizing claims smack of nothing substantial but of even more empowerment of police authority, which in other words only strengthen and perpetuate the colonial legacies. As the journalist Praveen Swami puts it, the Indian police, even in its so-called decolonized state, are the children of their colonial predecessors, but it has to be noted, with more overarching authority over against the citizens.
Coming to the context of students’ movements and academic campus, who are those who have fallen prey to the police torture and brutality? Why have they been incarcerated over draconian charges? The police intimidation and brutality, it seems, has been selectively targeted at those who are demanding a better public education system; protesting against the ongoing privatization of public institutions; clamouring for the rights of the oppressed and minorities within and beyond the campus; resisting the onslaught on the secular, democratic and socialist setup of the country; standing up for inclusivity and equality across caste, class and gender barriers; and speaking up for a just, harmonious and equal society at large. Metaphorically, the police force has been directed against those ideals that, somehow or the other, threaten and challenge the ruling regime’s communal, divisive, and pro-monopoly fascistic ideology. In the face of this menace, it should be asked – what is to be done? Should the students’ movement and its cause be confined to itself, or join other pro-people movements, workers and peasants’ struggles which have also bore the brunt of the regime’s police repression in their fight for their own rights? Or, more fundamentally, should it be acquiescent with the status quo?
