Sinister but on expected lines- Media’s sullen silence and sudden outburst over JNU

Yesterday’s events that occurred at JNU have drawn strong condemnation from all quarters. The monstrous violence which was seen on a central university campus soon became the nation’s number 1 talking point, with ill-informed individuals, from woke millennials to the middle-aged gentry all blaming the ‘fascist’ Modi government for whatever transpired. This was followed by almost spontaneous protests in Mumbai’s Gateway of India, AMU and of course, the JNU environs. 

Credit where due – the Left’s message delivery was on point yesterday. It seemed that almost everyone was willing to blindly believe what the Left had to say. Their version was covered, without verification by the media, which in turn added its spice to ensure that they have sufficient primetime content for at least two weeks. 

In all this, the cause of this ruckus and hooliganism on campus has been forgotten. We have done a detailed report highlighting what the actual sequence of events were over the past week, as anyone who thinks that the violence of yesterday was a lone case of goondaism would be in for a big surprise. Post the fee-hike drama which rocked JNU recently, the JNUSU had boycotted the registration of the winter semesters which are due to begin this month. However, not everyone is a leftist, and by implication, not everyone is a fool at JNU. There were some genuine students who wanted to register, however, the Left-controlled JNUSU simply wouldn’t let any student do so, and would resort to violence against such students at the drop of a hat. 

As a consequence, the JNU administration had rolled out the facility of online registration. However, JNUSU, on the 3rd of January, deployed its foot soldiers with covered faces to vandalize the office of the Center for Information System. They switched off the power supply, forcibly evicted all technical staff and made servers dysfunctional with the intent to not allow online registrations to take place. Yesterday was supposedly the last day for registration, and many students had flocked in despite facing hostilities by left goons allegedly from SFI, AISA led by JNUSU itself. The security guards on campus also have stated that the violence began with JNUSU goons vandalizing the Periyar hostel and assaulting its hostelers. The same goons also assaulted the security personnel of JNU who sustained substantial injuries. 

In broad daylight yesterday, JNUSU students were seen assaulting ABVP students who were facilitating registration. This is what sparked the violence. Consequently, the JNUSU president who herself was injured, was earlier seen with a bunch of masked men in a video that surfaced today and was shared by a Republic TV journalist. This same woman claimed later to be assaulted by masked men. 

“Around four to five hundred members of the left wing gathered around the Periyar hostel, vandalised the hostel and forcibly entered the hostel to thrash the ABVP activists inside,” ABVP’s JNU unit Pres Durgesh told IANS before news of more violence broke out. Earliest reports spoke of violence against ABVP but there was no outrage until dark when the situation escalated and students from both ABVP and Left were thrashed by masked goons.

Testimonies of injured students and ABVP activists reveal how the masked goons selectively targeted ABVP activists. One of the injured students has revealed how the leftist goons went berserk beating up students and ABVP activists with sticks, stones and even iron rods. One of the girl students had revealed that the leftist goons went berserk and even hurled expletives at her. She revealed how a mob of 100-200 leftist goons went berserk at Periyar Hostel in JNU. They barged into the hostel rooms, where they started beating up students. In the ensuing violence, she sustained injuries, including a fracture in her hand. The JNU guards on duty have also revealed how the dominant leftist cabal in the University had resorted to violence against them. Such was the intensity of violence against the ABVP that 25 if its members got seriously injured, while 11 are missing.

It is clear that violence at the University was a result of the leftist diktat against registration. But when hundreds of students defied that diktat, the anti-registration lobby resorted to violence. 

While the media should have ideally reported all of the above information, and questioned days ago how a certain group of students can force a boycott of registrations, it decided not to and jumped straight to the part where Leftists were seen accusing the ABVP of violence. It conveniently ignored the woes of the apolitical and genuine students who were not being allowed to register for the upcoming semester by the goons of JNUSU. Further, the media completely blacked out attacks on ABVP students over the past week, and also attacks on other students.