New Delhi: Support is pouring in for JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar, who is facing charges of sedition for his alleged involvement in anti-national sloganeering during a controversial event for Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru, from universities all over the world.
Over 400 academicians from international education institutions have joined in support of JNU students' agitation against a row over an event on the campus involving anti-national sloganeering.
The likes of Oxford, Yale, Cambridge, Columbia, Harvard University amongst others have signed a joint statement stating that "JNU stands for a vital imagination of the space of the university — an imagination that embraces critical thinking, democratic dissent, student activism, and the plurality of political beliefs. It is this critical imagination that the current establishment seeks to destroy. And we know that this is not a problem for India alone".
UK's Warwick University, too, put out a statement on their website stating that –
“We, the undersigned, wish to express our solidarity with the ongoing student struggle at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, India. In doing so, we wholeheartedly condemn the extra-constitutional detention of the JNU Students' Union leader Kanhaiya Kumar and seven other students on February 9, 2016. Universities should be places of academic freedom where dissent and critical thinking must not only be tolerated but should be actively encouraged. The students who have been charged with sedition (a colonial-era relic that the Supreme Court of India itself has attempted to weaken) for questioning the Indian state's controversial execution of Afzal Guru, the man accused in the attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001, breached no law, and are being illegally detained.”
Also Read: JNU row: Sedition charges against Kanhaiya Kumar may have to be dropped, says MHA
Kumar's recent arrest has triggered wide spread crusading from student all over India, with teachers joining in and boycotting classes, too. Yesterday, violence again broke out in Delhi's Patiala court complex where Kumar was attacked twice at a Delhi court. He identified his attacker who was sitting in court but the police allegedly let him go.
