TO our readers, this caption may appear as something alien – foreign. But those who frequent the social media – this insignia has become familiar over the last week or more. This is the sign post of a massive student movement that started in Jadavpur University (JU); but has subsequently spilled over across West Bengal and beyond. The measure of resonance of the movement can be understood from the fact that on September 25, there will be a protest across hundred cities of the world, going beyond geographic frontiers of the country. In recent times, there has been really no parallel to this in breadth and sweep of student movement which has come to impact, not just students but the whole society. It is, therefore, necessary to study the dynamics of this movement to grasp its implications. HOW DID IT ALL START? On August 28, a second year student of history in the Arts Faculty of the University was allegedly harassed and ill treated by a group of students. The boys manhandled her male companion and dragged both of them to a hostel room where her modesty was said to have been outraged. The authorities came to know of this immediately. But, unfortunately, the administration did not initiate any enquiry forthwith. Subsequently, when the victim’s father came over to the university to meet the vice chancellor over this outrageous incident, the VC showing rare insensitivity asked him to come back after a couple of days. Obviously, this enraged the students and the faculty students union led by the SFI and other students took up the issue and lodged a formal complaint and asked for speedy and impartial enquiry. Despite the ongoing protest and sit-ins till September 15, the enquiry report was not forthcoming. A word about the composition of the enquiry committee needs mention. After the historic Visakha judgment and the subsequent national law on harassment of women, such a committee ought to have been headed by a woman (with more than half of the members also being women). The enquiry committee had to also mandatorily include independent outsiders. This is to ensure that justice over sexual harassment is not only done, but appears to have been done. But the enquiry committee in Jadavpur did not comply with these stipulations. With the enquiry procedure initiated, two members of the committee allegedly visited the victim asking her indecent questions; in fact the victim’s father had to file an FIR against the enquiry committee members themselves. Obviously, the enquiry procedure came under cloud and the only student representative, the general secretary of the faculty students union – an SFI activist resigned from the committee questioning credibility of its procedure. With media reporting on the progress of the case, the temperature rose and agitation with the single demand of a fair enquiry gathered steam. In between the VC or the authority was not prepared to discuss the issue with the students. There was an impression that in the next executive council meeting on September 16, the VC would come up with a formal response to the demand of the students. However, this did not happen. The students stayed back in a sit-in in the administrative building, while the VC refused to talk to them. The teachers association – JUTA – also sought to intervene and facilitate an interaction between the students and the authorities. That effort also failed due to the adamant attitude of the VC. While the media provided wide coverage of the agitation and clearly established that the students were peaceful, the VC insisted that his life was under threat and was attempting to call the police in to rescue him. As has become apparent subsequently, this calling in of the police inside the university campus was the VC’s sole decision and without any reference to the executive council. The police came in, in the dead of the night and beat up the students mercilessly. The VC was taken out without any resistance from the students. The inhumanity of the VC was so glaring, with lights switched off by the university staff possibly at his behest to effectively sabotage media coverage. The police forces entered the campus – some of them armed and they were both in their uniforms as well as without. The police have subsequently claimed that these plainclothes men and women were the commandos who are usually deployed to deal with goondas. There are credible allegations about women students being molested. More than a dozen students were hospitalised and almost three dozens of them arrested. The brutality was unprecedented. The university had never seen anything of this kind in the past. The VC tried to justify alleging outsiders were fomenting trouble and the students were armed. However, there was not a single outsider amongst those who were arrested; neither could the police recover any arms from the students. That the VC was lying through his teeth was apparent! Obviously, this had to act as a powerful trigger and so it did. The Backdrop The intensity of aggression by the VC is, however, not accidental. He happens to be very close to the TMC and the state government. He has been appointed earlier in positions in academic bodies of the state. He has been an acting VC in JU itself for a short stint and as vice chairman of the State Higher Education Council. Despite state government’s insistence, his name for appointment as the regular vice chancellor had been twice turned down by the former chancellor. This time around he is merely acting in the interim. One of the first legislative initiatives of the state government since the TMC was sworn into office has been to amend all the University Acts in the state. The crux of these amendments was to make appointment of the VC exclusively at the mercy of the state government – completely eliminating the role of elected student, teachers and non-teaching employee representatives. Ironically, this was the justification for cleansing university administration of political partisanship! The amendments also managed to concentrate all powers of internal governance of the university with the VC. VC’s complete capitulation before the state government with complete erosion of university autonomy and his autocracy is an inevitable outcome. Conversely, the immediate former VC of JU had to leave unceremoniously because he failed to bear the pressure of the government. But the current incumbent showed no such desire. On the contrary, he was going overboard to please the powers that be. Since the chief minister has in the past shown her inclination to respond to incidents of sexual harassment and rape in a denial mode, the VC tried his level best to hush up the allegation by the hapless victim. But, that an anti-democratic law, cannot by itself, appropriately address the challenges of running a university has become apparent with the events unfolding in JU. The police brutality ,and more importantly ,the singular role played by the VC to facilitate it has provoked widespread consternation and protest; so much so that a second crucial demand along with that of an impartial enquiry has strongly come to the fore. The VC is being supported to the hilt by the police and the state government. Unprecedentedly, the commissioner of Kolkata police addressed a press conference to bail out the VC corroborating his blatant lies. But he made it clear that the police came inside the campus on the written request by the VC. But the attempt at whitewashing the role of the VC went to ridiculous length of claiming that the police did not carry any lathis and their response was ‘indulgent’. The higher education minister also backed the VC and urged the students to desist from protesting. THE DEPTH & SWEEP OF THE MOVEMENT In order to understand the unprecedented depth and sweep of the movement, a comprehension of combination of factors is necessary. These include the history of the university, the political culture and the prevailing situation in the state. JU has a rich legacy with the Jadavpur Engineering College coming up in 1906 as part of the National Council of Education set up by likes of Tagore and Aurobindo who envisaged the setting up of an engineering college indigenously and under the control of patriots as a crucial element in the struggle for freedom. Subsequently, in 1956 when the university came into being along with the faculty of engineering and technology as its mainstay, faculties of arts and science were also created. It was a unitary university which in no time emerged as a premier institution not only in Bengal but in the country. Graduates, post graduates, researchers have come to occupy positions of eminence in academics and professional life globally. Extremely eminent teachers and academicians have shaped the institution. The university has a democratic ethos with a liberal academic environment. The university’s political landscape has always remained decidedly Left. With various shades of Left clashing over ideas, the campus remained vibrant. The fact that not for once since 1977, the SFI has been able to win the students union elections in the most influential faculty of engineering and technology has shown that outside political influence has never been sought to be forcefully enforced in the campus as is so commonplace in today’s Bengal. Teachers and vice chancellors regardless of their opinion have always made it a point to keep the police outside the campus. In early seventies, VC Gopal Chandra Sen was gunned down by naxalites inside the campus. Despite a specific threat perception to his life, he refused to allow police inside the campus claiming that his students are his greatest security. Therefore, the trigger had to provoke the sense of outrage that it did. For the first time different shades of political opinion galvanised and decided on a common course of action after the police brutality. This rare show of unity cemented the broad unity drawing in those sections of the students who do not have any specific political affiliation. The teachers have also joined in with absolute unanimity in supporting the two demands. The incident on midnight and early hours of the 17th saw the sharpest response from the student movement outside the campus. The SFI along with all the other Left student organisations demonstrated and called for state wide student strike on the 18th. Because of the extreme anarchy, lawlessness and terror unleashed by the ruling dispensation in the last three and a half years of TMC rule, students, teachers and other democratic sections of the society were seething with anger. With this rare show of unity and democratic response, it immediately resonated in solidarity. It was in a way a part of fighting their own battle in their specific circumstances for restoration of democracy. NEW FEATURES The insignia itself gives an idea about the new features of this movement. The hash tag implies the twitter and the cyber space as an important component; while the two juxtaposed Bengali words ‘hok’ and ‘kolorab’ are imported from the lyrics of a very popular Bengali song penned by a Bangladeshi poet singer and is extremely popular among the youth. The two words mean “keep up the din”. The ‘din’ against the injustice embraces different voices. Obviously the social media has been a major component of the movement. In that sense it has striking resemblance with the Shahbagh movement in Bangladesh last year. The fact that the Jadavpur alumni diaspora is global, the live communication between the real and the virtual became instantaneous. The demands and their evolution captures all that has gone rotten in West Bengal under the Mamata Banerjee dispensation and the brazen behaviour of the VC and his close proximity to the state administration. It has brought about a rare unity of purpose and action despite diverse political inclinations. Therefore, contrary to claims by a section of the corporate media, this movement is not apolitical. Similarly, references to earlier confrontation between students and the authority are equally misplaced, given the unprecedented scale and broadbased nature of the struggle. Solidarity committees with the JU movement are spawning by the day in the remotest corners of the state. #Hokkolorob has come to be the rallying point for the struggle against the politics of terror, autocracy and lawlessness and for realising the yearnings for restoring a vibrant, healthy academic atmosphere in the state. Despite its total isolation, the state government and the TMC is showing desperate signs not to give up. So, the struggle has to carry on. In some time, this phase of the struggle may be over; but the spirit that it has kindled will stay on radicalising a very broadbased public opinion. The lesson is very clear. Liberals and democrats may have mutual difference of opinion but the reality of an authoritarian onslaught has to be faced unitedly postponing the contentious debate. Diversity of thought and unity in action is the key. The struggle for democracy of a particular section of the society cannot sustain without the active solidarity of other sections who strive for similar goals.