WHOEVER has acquired power in Indian Kashmir has treated Kashmir University as a department of government. It has systematically flouted, at the instigation of the rulers of the day, students’ rights.

For five long years, student politics were banned at Kashmir University. Even the office of the Kashmir University Students’ Union was demolished. The minister of education Naeem Akhtar magnanimously offered on May 17 a “suggestion that the student union be given a green signal on the campus”. It was a grey signal of dubious worth. “Why can’t we trust them in running university matters like library, canteen, etc?”

Only a former civil servant would have spoken thus. It is not the right to manage such facilities that students demand but something vastly more precious — their fundamental rights as citizens to form associations, to assemble peacefully, and to freedom of speech and expression; all denied to them systematically as Naeem Akhtar doubtless knows. He timidly clarified “I have just made a suggestion. It has to be debated first.”

The vice chancellor Dr Khurshid Iqbal Andrabi rejected the idea. “Unionism feels good at a university like JNU [Jawaharlal Nehru University] at New Delhi which has made its mark, but not Kashmir University which is nowhere in the scene” — you are yet not fit for self-rule, the British would tell us.

Haroon Mirani reported in Greater Kashmir last month that the students were unmoved by Naeem Akhtar’s magnanimity. “We never accepted the ban and have been working at the campus for the last five years raising our voice on various issues.”

The Kashmir University must ensure that rights are respected.

The union member said that government has been unable to stop their activities completely. With membership running into hundreds of students, it works as a closely knit community without any formal structure. They have no chairman or president and everybody volunteers to work.

The union has managed various sit-ins and protests against human rights violations and other issues on the campus. They are also active on the social media and operate a blog highlighting their activities.

The union members often complain of harassment by university and police. “They are talking about free speech. In February, police was sent to the home of one of our student members because he had confronted the authorities on a genuine issue.” However, “the university has seen a resurgence of student activism despite various problems.”

The vice chancellor’s post is a gift in the bounty of the government in Indian Kashmir. The governor is the chancellor. In 2001, governor G.C. Saxena declared the campus out of bounds for journalists and instructed university teachers “to keep away from the press and” — note this — “avoid talking about politics”.

Journalists were banned from entering the campus except with “permission from the vice chancellor’s office”, The Times of India reported in October 2001. Around this time the Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah ‘mooted’ the establishment of an ‘intelligence wing’ to probe the activities of teachers and students and throw all such elements out of the university, an official who attended the meeting disclosed to Tariq Bhatt of The Indian Express. The vice chancellor then was one Jalees Ahmad Khan Tareen.

Popular awareness of one’s fundamental rights is not enough. In the sphere of civil liberties, knowledge is very much power. A high degree of legal literacy is required, especially on a new growing field like students’ rights.

For instance Section 43(1) of the British Education Act, 1986 says: “Every individual and body of persons concerned in the government of any establishment to which this section applies shall take such steps as are reasonably practicable to ensure that freedom of speech within the law is secured for member students and employees of the establishment and visiting speakers.”

The right to free speech thus belongs to all. Relying on this act, on May 25, 1990, Lord Justice Watkins and Justice Potts ruled that a university was only entitled to impose conditions on organisers of meetings on the campus which were in the interests of freedom of speech as well as good order — in which alone can one speak freely.

All this is a far cry from Naeem Akhtar’s running of libraries and canteens. It concerns inalienable fundamental rights which belong to students as well as teachers. It is the university’s duty to ensure that this right is respected.

As Prof Donald Alexander Downs writes in his work Restoring free speech and liberty on campus, “Universities must also promote tolerance of difference opinion including opinion that dissents from the university’s agenda”, or that of the state.

The government has yet to accept the fact that an autonomous university which respects the rights of students as well as teachers is an integral component of the entire democratic process.

The writer is an author and a lawyer based in Mumbai.

Published in Dawn, June 20th, 2015

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