Leaked screenshots of the chats that occurred in WhatsApp groups created by RSS-ABVP activists to coordinate their “action” in JNU exposed the extent of planning that went into the violence they unleashed on campus. The numbers of the group members matched with publicly available numbers of well-known ABVP activists, and they were seen giving instructions to those from outside JNU regarding which gate to use to enter JNU to attack students.

Based on images of the same people gathering without masks before the attack, students have identified the assailants as members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP). The ABVP is the student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Volunteer Organisation) or RSS, a Hindu supremacist outfit and the world’s largest fascist organization. The Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian People’s Party) or BJP, India’s ruling party, is the political arm of the RSS.

Scores of students suffered serious injuries and were admitted to the hospital. Several teachers who were part of a demonstration for peace were also attacked and injured. Images of Professor Sucharita Sen, who suffered head injuries, similarly reached social media. The assailants put into action a well-planned operation in the cover of the night, with the seeming support of the JNU administration, the Delhi police (which is controlled by the central government), and the security personnel deployed on campus. Streetlights were switched off to allow the thugs to have a free run.

The students of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) have been agitating against unprecedented fee hikes for more than two and a half months, part of a growing popular resistance to the policies of the Modi government. That evening, in response, masked gangsters brutally assaulted students and teachers of the university. Aishe Ghosh, president of the JNU Students’ Union and a leader of the left-wing Students’ Federation of India (SFI), was among the injured. She received head injuries which required several stitches, and images of her profusely bleeding went viral, shaking the conscience of the country.

The violent attack unleashed by the extreme right on the students and teachers of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, on January 5 has brought the escalation of repression that is being deployed by India’s ruling party into sharp relief.

Why the Right Hates JNU

JNU, a university that was set up in 1969, is considered a stronghold of the Left, particularly when it comes to its student movement which has been a key part of the fight against neoliberal economic policies and religio-political sectarianism (termed “communalism” in India) in the country.

The JNU student movement, from its beginning in the early 1970s, has been a bulwark of resistance against right-wing economic policies. Led by the JNU Students’ Union (JNUSU), it has fought to ensure that students from all backgrounds, particularly those from socially marginalized and economically deprived backgrounds, are able to come and study at the university.

There have been mainly two ways which have been central in achieving this. First, the fees — both tuition fee and other fees such as hostel fees — have been kept low. And secondly, affirmative action — reservations and deprivation points, or extra marks in the entrance examinations — for students hailing from socially and economically deprived sections, and from poor regions, has been put in place. The Union has repeatedly fought off attempts to raise fees, so that even as most other educational institutions, including public educational institutions, have seen fees rise sharply, JNU has avoided such a fate so far.

Another important part of JNU’s renown is its academics, which are known both for high standards and for social commitment. By and large, the teachers of JNU, particularly those in the social sciences and humanities departments which account for the bulk of the students, maintain a progressive outlook. They uphold a commitment to reason, and to the principles of secularism and democracy which are among the foundational principles of India as a republic.

Many of them challenge the Washington Consensus and the communal politics of the family of organizations led by the RSS. JNU teachers and alumni have played, and continue to play, key roles in providing the intellectual arsenal to fight imperialism, neoliberal economic policies, and the Hindu supremacist politics (known as “Hindutva”) of the RSS-BJP.

The JNUSU is a body in which all JNU students are members by default, and it is led by representatives who are chosen in elections every year. The Union has been led by left-wing organizations during the vast majority of its forty-eight years of existence. It is the vision and organized action of these organzsations that lie behind the politics championed by the JNU student movement.

In the second half of the 1990s, when the BJP came to power for the first time in India, it had its impact in the JNU campus as well, with the ABVP indulging in violence against students and teachers. There was a rise in number of cases of women being sexually harassed and assaulted. Students responded by rising up in massive numbers against the hideous politics of the ABVP. They set up a committee to deal with cases of harassment and to sensitize students and others on gender issues. The campaign won with the setting up of the Gender Sensitisation Committee Against Sexual Harassment (GSCASH) in 1999 — the first time in India that such a body was set up in an educational institution.

During the tenure of the BJP-led government of 1999–2004, there were attempts to introduce obscurantism and pseudo-science to the curriculum. The students, led by their Union, fought and forced the administration to withdraw the move. There was a massive tide of protest from JNU when more than 2,000 Muslims were massacred in the state of Gujarat in the year 2002, with the full backing of the state government led by the BJP. Fact-finding teams of JNU students and teachers visited Gujarat, collected relief funds and material, and extended legal aid to the victims of the pogrom.

The determined opposition of the students of the university to Hindutva has made the JNU student movement a target of attack for the RSS and its affiliated organizations. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, various Hindutva leaders began demanding that the university be shut down, or converted into a management institute.

But such calls took a more concrete form when the BJP returned to power in 2014 with a majority of its own in the lower house of the Parliament. Narendra Modi, who was the chief minister of Gujarat when his state machinery presided over the Gujarat pogrom of 2002, became the prime minister.

In January 2016, M Jagadesh Kumar, a professor with RSS links, was appointed the vice-chancellor of JNU. His mandate was clear — destroy the student movement, and change the character of the university to suit the pro-corporate, pro-Hindutva politics of the RSS-BJP. The approach was to say if the very university was destroyed in this effort, so be it.

A full-blown assault on the university began the next month. Fake videos of students raising “anti-India,” “pro-Pakistan” slogans were aired on a pro-BJP television channel, and the president of the JNUSU and two other student activists were put in jail on the charge of sedition — a draconian, colonial law. The aim was to drum up jingoist hysteria, painting left activists as “anti-nationals” and to use the ABVP to take control of the university.

In response, the students and teachers of the university launched the largest movement that JNU had seen hitherto — the “Stand with JNU” movement. Thousands of students, teachers, alumni, and others took part in marches, convened mass gatherings, and held open-air lectures for more than a month in defense of the university’s democratic ethos. The jailed student activists were released after being forced to spend several weeks in prison. The ABVP ended up isolated. The attempt to rein in the student movement had failed.

In the subsequent months, the JNU administration adopted a more direct approach to change the character of the university. It was recognized that the basic “problem” was that students from all backgrounds were coming to the university, learning about the world and about the various approaches to understand society, and thus developing a staunchly critical attitude to right-wing politics. If students from socially and economically deprived backgrounds join the university, they are more likely to end up being critics of ruling-class policies. Hence, to curb the student movement, the attack has to be at the root of the problem itself.

The JNU administration cut places in the MPhil and PhD research programs of the university. More than a thousand places were cut in the first year in 2017. In addition, incompetent pro-RSS candidates were recruited to faculty positions, flouting norms and overlooking deserving candidates. With RSS acolytes who could remain university teachers for decades, the curriculum could be changed to reflect pro-market, pro-Hindutva politics, inflicting long-term damage on academic standards and the character of the university.

But the student agitation underway now in JNU is in response to the recent decision to hike hostel fees in the university. The fee hike would result in living expenses doubling, thus making education in the university inaccessible to the vast majority of students in a country where average monthly household income is less than 10,000 rupees (£108) for 85 percent of the population. It is also contrary to the principle of education as a right, which the JNU student movement has championed.

The BJP government, however, responded with brute force, with the police assaulting the students when they marched to parliament on November 18, 2019. The students remained unfazed, and public support to their cause increased. Therefore, further violence was required.