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IMAGE STORY: Campus Outrage Spreads, January 27, 2016
  • Text of the Note of the Joint Action Committee, New Delhi that has organised the protest in solidarity:

    "These ideas destabilized the Brahmanical-Hindutva fascist sangh’s vision of a ‘Hindu nation’, and therefore all of them – from ABVP, BJP ministers, the casteist VC and the MHRD - colluded to crack down on him and his comrades resulting ultimately in his institutional murder. But as Neruda puts it, you can destroy all the flowers, but you cannot stop the spring from coming! And ideas cannot be killed...continued"
     
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  • Thousands of students braved Delhi's cold again and protested for over four hours today before they were hauled off by the police. Students protests all over the Country are proving to be a huge embarassment to the Narendra Modi regime
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  • CALL FOR NATIONWIDE PROTEST
    Observe Complete University Strike on 27th January
    At the call of Joint Action Committee for Social Justice
    Join Protest March to MHRD
    January 2016, Wednesday, from Mandi House, 1 pm
    Buses will leave from Ganga Dhaba (sharp at 12 noon)

    In Delhi, over 100 protesters were detained while marching near Shastri Bhawan in the heart of the capital, and were moved away in buses. They covered a distance of 2 km by foot from Mandi House to Shastri Bhawan. There were students from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Delhi University and Jamia in it. They were seeking the resignations Ms Irani's, Hyderabad University Vice Chancellor Appa Rao and Mr Dattatreya's resignation.

    Campus Outrage: Student organisations from across the country have called for a strike in all universities to protest against the death of Rohith Vemula, 26, who committed suicide at the Hyderabad Central University 10 days ago. 200 student associations have set up a national joint action committee, which plans to mark Rohith's birthday on Saturday, January 30, with a Chalo Delhi (Let's march to Delhi) protest. Rohith would have turned 27.
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  • At Hyderabad Central University, students have been on a relay hunger strike in protest against Rohith's death and the punishment that led to it. One of seven fasting students was shifted to the university's health centre on Tuesday, and is now said to be in stable condition. Three students from JNU are also on indefinite hunger strike in solidarity with Hyderabad university student protestors. The university's interim Vice Chancellor Vipin Srivastava has made multiple appeals in the two days since his appointment, to students to call off their protests.
    Mr Srivastava took interim charge after the university's Vice Chancellor Professor Appa Rao Podile went on indefinite leave on Sunday. Student protesters accuse Prof Podile of punishing Rohith and the other Dalit students under political pressure.
    The students and SC/ST faculty and officers forums have objected to the choice of Srivastava to perform the duties of the VC alleging that he headed the Executive Council Sub-Committee "which has been responsible for the death of Rohith" and was one of the "accused" in the suicide of another Dalit student Senthil Kumar in 2008.
     
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  • As the indefinite fast launched by a fresh batch of seven students over suicide of Rohith entered the second day, hundreds of students from institutions like Pondicherry University, Andhra University, IIT Bombay, Osmania University, Maulana Azad National Urdu University and Tata Institute of Social Sciences converged on the campus pledging support.
    The hunger fast was resumed on the campus on January 24, 2016 after the previous batch of seven fasting students were shifted to the hospital on Saturday after their health deteriorated.  The HCU chief security officer TV Rao has told media personnel that over a thousand students and others have come in from different parts of the country. They have marched from HCU shopping complex area, the hub of the protest, to the main gate and administrative building and back.
     
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  • Text of the Note of the Joint Action Committee, New Delhi that has organised the protest in solidarity:

    "Our history textbooks in school always used to refer to some immediate causes and certain long-term causes behind any historical event. In time, we learnt to walk past the immediacies, and focus more on the long term. Rohith Vemula’s suicide, or rather his institutional murder in the University of Hyderabad (UoH) is also a historic event. And if we walk past certain immediacies, the lies, and the jugglery of words by the MHRD, RSS, ABVP and BJP, then we would find that several different pathways, several different streams of events converged to culminate into this murder. On first glance these different pathways may seem disjointed to our naked eyes, but when looked through the prism of history one cannot miss the interconnections.
    On July 20, 2015, Yakub Memon was hanged by the Indian state in yet another display of travesty of justice at the altar of “war on terror”. Unable to get Tiger Memon or Dawood Ibrahim, showing the worst kind of vendetta, the state chose to hang Yakub who was not part of the conspiracy and in fact had completely co-operated with the entire investigation. Rohith Vemula in UoH was among the several democratic voices across the country who protested against the judicial murder of Yakub.....continued

     
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  • Text of the Note of the Joint Action Committee, New Delhi that has organised the protest in solidarity:

    "In September 2013, a meticulously orchestrated assault in collusion with the state machinery took the lives of around 150 Muslims in Muzaffarnagar while more than a lakh were displaced and forced to leave their villages. The screening of a documentary made by Nakul Sawhney titled “Muzaffarnagar Baaqi Hai” that unravels the blood lust of the Hindutva forces was disrupted physically and vandalized by the ABVP goons in Delhi University in August 2015. In protest, Rohith along with his comrades in ASA organized a protest screening of the same in UoH. Be it protesting against Yakub Memon’s hanging or by screening the anti-sangh documentary, Rohith and his friends raised their voices against the violence perpetrated by the state. They fought to stand by truth and justice and most importantly refused to be a part of the cannibal “collective conscience” that justifies state sponsored violence, legitimnises murders and atrocities and keep this brahminical status quo intact......  continued...
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  • Text of the Note of the Joint Action Committee, New Delhi that has organised the protest in solidarity:

    "In September 2015, just a month later, Appa Rao, a loyal lapdog of the brahmanical hindutva fascist sangh was appointed as Vice Chancellor in HCU.
    The ruling BJP – its MPs and even the MHRD – ordered the puppet VC to take strictest and exemplary action against the Dalit students for their above “anti-national” activities to which the VC complied flouting all previous institutional decisions. The punishment that was meted out to the 5 Ambedkarite activists of restricting their access to libraries, cafeteria, administrative building and restricting their fellowship, amounts to nothing less than a social boycott." ...continued
     
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  • Text of the Note of the Joint Action Committee, New Delhi that has organised the protest in solidarity:

    "Protests started in UoH against this unjust administrative action at the behest of the current dispensation at the Centre. But as the UoH administration looked the other way even after almost two weeks into the protest, Rohith was forced to end his life. So, many paths converged to lead to Rohith’s murder on January 17, 2016. On final count it is the tightening noose of the anti-Dalit, anti-Muslim, anti-student, anti-people, brahmanical-hindutva fascism that took Rohith’s life...continued.."
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  • Text of the Note of the Joint Action Committee, New Delhi that has organised the protest in solidarity:

    "The All-Pervasive Monster of Caste: Amidst the initial shameful defence to now the pathetic attempts at cover up and crocodile tears by the sangh, BJP & PM Modi, a desperate attempt to deny that caste and caste discrimination had a role to play in Rohith’s death has remained unchanged. Anyone familiar with Rohith’s politics and activism would not be surprised by this denial. At one level, Rohith’s suicide can be seen in continuation with the spate of several other suicides of dalit students across the country in the face of harassment, caste discrimination and abuse (In UoH alone 8 dalit students have committed suicide over the last less than a decade)....continued.." 
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  • Text of the Note of the Joint Action Committee, New Delhi that has organised the protest in solidarity:

    "But, at another level, it is also different. Rohith was not just an ordinary student, he was an Ambedkarite who through his activism roused people to educate, agitate and organise......continued"
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  • Text of the Note of the Joint Action Committee, New Delhi that has organised the protest in solidarity:

    " He and his comrades, through their activism made visible what the Hindutva brigade tries to invisibilise in its attempts to forge a “Hindu” unity, i.e, the all-pervasive monster of caste and the deeply graded inequalities within what is called as Hinduism. His “crime” became greater when he reached out to the “evil other” – the Muslims and spoke of their oppression vis-à-vis whom the Hindutva brigade tries forge this bogey of “Hindu unity”....continued 
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  • Text of the Note of the Joint Action Committee, New Delhi that has organised the protest in solidarity:

    "His “crime” became too much to tolerate for sangh when by opposing the medieval practice of capital punishment and unjust hanging of Yakub Memon, Rohith and his comrades questioned the deeply masculinist, militarized, security centric and Brahmanical Indian state. ..continued"
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  • Text of the Note of the Joint Action Committee, New Delhi that has organised the protest in solidarity:

    "In his life as well as in his death, Rohith did not only destabilize the RSS’s vision of a ‘Hindu nation’, He also destabilizes those who swear by the rule of law, or the constitution or by this farce of a democracy and who believe that caste is merely a vestige of the past. Rohith’s murder, like that of the suicides of innumerable other Dalit students, their institutionalized discrimination, the oppression and persecution, the dalit massacres and subsequent acquittals of their murderers – all point towards the fact that far from the constitution, it is the writ of Manu in tandem with that of the market that runs in the name of democracy....continued.."
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  • Text of the Note of the Joint Action Committee, New Delhi that has organised the protest in solidarity:

    "And with the tightening of the brahmanical hindutva fascist tentacles, today, we see voices of reason, democracy and protest across the country being brutally silenced. ..continued"
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  • Text of the Note of the Joint Action Committee, New Delhi that has organised the protest in solidarity:

    ". This undeclared emergency has also reached the universities. We have seen it in the ban on the Ambedkar-Periyar Study Circle in IIT-Madras, to the saffron appointments in FTII to the almost regular attacks by ABVP on those who stand up against their Brahmanical-fascist agenda. ..continued"
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  • Text of the Note of the Joint Action Committee, New Delhi that has organised the protest in solidarity:

    "As they try to turn our universities into prison houses, it is our responsibility rise up in rage collectively against Brahmanism, hindutva fascism and for annihilation of caste. Rohith has been martyred at a cross-road of history while fighting these tightening tentacles. It is onto us to prove that he was more than one and that we are more than not just five but in fact more than a million...continued"
     
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  • Thousands of students braved Delhi's cold again and protested for over four hours today before they were hauled off by the police. Students protests all over the Country are proving to be a huge embarassment to the Narendra Modi regime
    Photo Credits:
  • Thousands of students braved Delhi's cold again and protested for over four hours today before they were hauled off by the police. Students protests all over the Country are proving to be a huge embarassment to the Narendra Modi regime
    Photo Credits:
  • Hundreds of students from institutions like Pondicherry University, Andhra University, IIT Bombay, Osmania University, Maulana Azad National Urdu University and Tata Institute of Social Sciences converged on the campus of the Hyderabad Central University pledging support to the mass students struggle against a repressive regime
    Photo Credits:
  • Thousands of students braved Delhi's cold again and protested for over four hours today before they were hauled off by the police. Students protests all over the Country are proving to be a huge embarassment to the Narendra Modi regime
    Photo Credits:
  • Thousands of students braved Delhi's cold again and protested for over four hours today before they were hauled off by the police. Students protests all over the Country are proving to be a huge embarassment to the Narendra Modi regime
    Photo Credits:
  • Thousands of students braved Delhi's cold again and protested for over four hours today before they were hauled off by the police. Students protests all over the Country are proving to be a huge embarassment to the Narendra Modi regime
    Photo Credits:
  • Thousands of students braved Delhi's cold again and protested for over four hours today before they were hauled off by the police. Students protests all over the Country are proving to be a huge embarassment to the Narendra Modi regime
    Photo Credits:
  • Thousands of students braved Delhi's cold again and protested for over four hours today before they were hauled off by the police. Students protests all over the Country are proving to be a huge embarassment to the Narendra Modi regime
    Photo Credits:
  • Thousands of students braved Delhi's cold again and protested for over four hours today before they were hauled off by the police. Students protests all over the Country are proving to be a huge embarassment to the Narendra Modi regime
    Photo Credits:

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