This story is from September 6, 2019

Kashmir to Assam to Amazon, JNU debates 'key' issues

From late night on Wednesday till early into Thursday, the sultry lawns outside Periyar Hostel in Jawaharlal Nehru University reverberated with noise and fury. The occasion was the presidential debate for the JNU Students' Union election, to be held on September 6. The unique face-to-face confrontation among the candidates has often swung crucial votes and is the highlight of the poll process.
Kashmir to Assam to Amazon, JNU debates 'key' issues
JNU presidential candidates (from L) Prashant Kumar, Priyanka Bharti, Manish Jangid, Raghavendra Mishra, Aishe Ghosh and Jitendra Suna took part in the debate in front of Periyar Hostel amid sloganeering
NEW DELHI: From late night on Wednesday till early into Thursday, the sultry lawns outside Periyar Hostel in Jawaharlal Nehru University reverberated with noise and fury. The occasion was the presidential debate for the JNU Students' Union election, to be held on September 6. The unique face-to-face confrontation among the candidates has often swung crucial votes and is the highlight of the poll process.

As usual, national, even international, topics relegated university issues to the margins. The six contenders for the top post took on everything, from Kashmir and the National Register of Citizens in Assam to the unchecked fire in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil and the ado over the university asking professor emerita Romila Thapar for her CV.
1

Manish Jangid of ABVP, against whose larger saffron setup most accusations were made, defended his organisation's "student-centric and solution-centric ideas" while attacking the leftist groups for creating a fear about ABVP.
"Whenever we have come to power, we have done a lot for the students," Jangid claimed, stating that it was the RSS-affiliated student body that, for instance, installed GSCASH, the much respected sexual harassment redress body, in 1996.
It was inevitable that the dilution of Article 370 in Kashmir would open up the festering debate over nationalism on the campus. Jangid insisted it was only ABVP which supported "Kashmir's inclusion in India". "Communists, urban naxals and the 'tukde tukde' gang have tainted JNU's name," he alleged.

In turn, NSUI's Prashant Kumar retorted that for ABVP Kashmir might have been freed recently, but for the rest of India, "Kashmir has been free since 1947".
He added, "Our economy is in a shambles. The leader of ABVP said he would provide two crore jobs, but the country is languishing with a 5% growth rate."
Referring to the raging forest fires in Brazil, the Congress-affiliated NSUI's candidate described it as the Brazilian government destroying tribal land in the same way as China was curbing the Hong Kong protests. His conclusion was that JNU was in an identical situation - facing suppression of free thought and deprivation of students' rights.
Jitendra Suna of the Birsa Ambedkar Phule Students' Association (BAPSA) spoke along similar lines. "There is an environment of fear in the country due to the government and on the campus due to ABVP," he said to cheers.
Saying that he was someone who had to work as a labourer to reach JNU, he saluted those similarly marginalised: "The Kashmiris who are fighting for their freedom, the Assamese fighting for their citizenship, the LGBQT community, the tribals fighting for land and Fatima Ammi and Radhika Amma (mothers of missing student Najeeb Ahmad and Rohit Vemula who killed himself)".
Left Unity - comprising SFI, AISA, AISF and Democratic Students' Federation - had been attacked for the left's "bloody history in West Bengal and Kerala", so the presidential candidate, Aishe Ghosh, went on the offensive with, "We see the capitalists burning the Amazon rainforest. We see them reviving fascism, whether through Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Boris Johnson in the UK, Donald Trump in the US or Modi in India."
She had to pause awhile when hooted, but shrilly told "the saffron flag holders that you cannot stop my voice". Ghosh then launched into an attack on the Centre for the "human rights violations in Kashmir and for removing Article 370 with deceit".
End of Article
FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA