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Resist JNU Administration's GRAND CONSPIRACIES to.

SCU I I LE RESERVATIONS for Teachers and Students ALIKEI .

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The Struggle For Implementing Reservations .

states that the recommendations are "statutory" in nature and.

In JNU: Contesting Myths, Upholding Facts .

flow from the Indian Constitution! .

In 1992, the Supreme Court ofIndia delivered a landmark judg-But instead of maintainl~g a legally and morally correct posi-.

ment in the case of Indira Sawhney vs. the Union of India. We .

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tion in favour ofreservations, theJNU administration used the.

know this as the matter ofthe Mandai Recommendations. In its views of these faculty members to halt the recruitment pro-.

judgement, the apex court emphasized the role of caste as an .

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cess. For reasons best known to itself, whether for students or.

institution in Indian society, its structural violence and discrimi-teachers, the JNU administration believes that reservations are.

natory character, and argued that in the struggle to overcome .

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'guidelines' that can be rejected or else implemented according.

caste special provisions like reservations had an important role to its whims and moods..

to play. .

The Myth of the 'stolen' oppurtunltles.

The passing ofa law favouring reservations was In itselfan out-.

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Opponents ofreservation repeatedly arguethat candidates fromcome of struggle. Butitwas in no way the end ofthe struggle. .

reserved categories 'take-away' seats that the general categoryIt took nearly twenty years before these provisions came to be would otherwise have acquired through 'merit'. But the fact is.

implemented in educational institutions. Even when OBC reser-.

thatnewseats forstudentsand newfacultY positions have been.

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vations for students was introduced by an act of Parliament in .

created for both general and reserved categories, entirely.

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2006, the casteist forces tried everything to impede their imple-mentation. But after a long legal battle, in 2008, the Apex Court because ofOBC reservation policy. When OBC reservation wasimplemented, thegovernment decided that itwould add enoughupheld reservations and the MHRD framed a circular for their .

seats to existing numbers to create 27% OBC reservation with-.

implementati9n. Yet even now and in our own university, the out reducing the general category in any way. So rather than.

casteist lobbies are so deeply entrenched that they are not leading to a reduction ofopportunities, in fact reservation led toready to give up their monopoly, the source of their domina-an exponential increase in both seats for thestudents and posts.

tion and power. for the faculty..

In the forthcoming AC meeting of 18 March, the administration But we are seeing how within our campus, the anti-is preparing a strategy to subvert all kinds of reservations -reservationists are misusing their administrative positions towhether for students or teachers. We know only too well that ensure thatthe expanded opportunities(forboth students and.

this administration has little concern for the law of the land. teachers) are usurped entirely by the already privileged and.

Over the last fewyears, ithas tampered and undermined all those .

students and teachers from backward classes and castes are I..

progressive measures and concerns for which JNU has been .

prevented from entering the university..

lauded over these years. False notions of 'excellence' and 'merit'.

are being peddled to unlawfully prevent the proper implemen-The Underhand Tricks Of The Anti-Reservationlsts .

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tation ofthe reservation laws. With regard to the implementation ofOBC reservations, the Apex .

Because the student community of JNU is a vigilant one, we have Court's directives and the MHRD circular stated that OBC candi-confronted the administration at every step. When the faulty dates would get ten marks relaxation below the cut -offfixed for criterion of "cut-off" w.as devised to deliberately exclude OBC the General category students. These prefixed cut-offs would .

students, JNUSU mobilized students and teachers repeatedly provide two separate pools for filling OBC and General category against the administration. Now, it is evident that the issue Is candidates, from which respective category seats could be filled not limited to students alone: even with regard to implement-based on the respective merit-lists. ing SC/ST reservations for faculty members, the casteist .

But the JNU administration mis-interpreted the directive to meanelements are tryingtoensure that even this provision thatflows that OBC students were to be admitted only within the" ten marksfrom the Constitution does not get implemented. Whether for .

below the mark obtained by the last candidate admitted in the.

students or teachers, the casteist logic of "merit" is repeatedly General category. By deliberately confusing the issue of 'cut-off'invoked, as if umerit11 is the monopoly only of the alre~dy .

marks and consciously violating the MHRD and Supreme Courtprivileged. directives, the university administration has done all in its power .

At the present juncture, we need tq stand united to ensure the to scuttle the process ofimplementing OBC reservation forthe correct implementation of reser~ations and to uphold the students. Because of this, seats meant to be reserved for OBC struggle for social justice. It is also ~mportant to clear the air of students are going unfulfilled in J~U or else being transferredall the misinformation that the casteist lobbies are spreading and to the General category. base our struggle on strong legal and political logic. .

We know that the. university was allowed to implement OBC res-.

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Reservations in Faculty Positions: A 'Guideline' ervations in a staggered manner over three years. Over "the lasttwo years, JNU's admission policy has led to the following figures:.

that Can Be Rejected? .

In 2009, JNU issued an advertisement for 149 faculty posts in In 2008, the very first year when the OBC ReservationAct came into force, JNU officially fixed OBG quota at.

keeping with MHRD g~idelines for implementing SC/ST reserva-12%. However, only 10% of the OBC quota was filled.

tions. Even as the recruitment process had begun, some profes-with as many as 54 out of the210 seats reserved for.

sors expressed their displeasure against reservations in the OBC car:-tdidates going unfulfilled..

associate professor and professor posts. They. argued, against alllogic, that reservations constitute only UGC 'guidelines' that are In 2009 (thesecond year ofimplementationofthedBC'not binding' upon JNU. This, when the UGC 'guideline' itself Reservation Act), while the stipulated Oac qupta was .

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A Party, Its Intellectuals, and The Ideological Quagmire .

"/am specially requesting them (Congress supporters) to support the Left for the sake ofpeace, orderand .

12.11.09 .

development 111 tl1e state. .. Democracy is under attack, peace is disturbed. We had restored peace and .

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democracy in 1977 with people·s support.... We had provided unconditional support to the Congress in the .

interest ofthe country and to fight communalism." .

Jyoti Basu, in an appetl to Congress supporters to vote for the Left in the recently held by-elections (see .

www.zeeii(."H's.com. CPI-M scd.s Jyoti Basu's services in countering Trinamool, Nov 1. 2009) .

On the eve ofthe assembly by-polls in W Bengal, CPI(M) made a last-ditch attempt to regain at least some ofits lost .

turf: it got an ailing J)oti Basu to issue a fervent appeal to Congress sympathisers to vote for the Left Front!However, this .

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desperate begging ofvotes from the Congress did not bail out the CPI(M), which suffered a rout in the by-elections. .

that tlu.· CPI(l\tl) did not consider correcting its course (the course of corporate land grab, .

It is notnhh.' .

nf'o-libentl policies and st~te repression, first independently and now in partnership with the Congress). .

Rather, it hoped to escape people's punishment in the elections by echoing Chidambaram in raising the .

'Maoist' bogey and appealing to the Congress to support the Left Front to counter the 'Maoist' threat! Jyoti Basu's letter refers. interestingly, to the "restoration of peace and democracy" in 1977 by the Government headed by him. The year is significant -it is the year in which the entire country defeated the infamous Emergency imposed by the Congress regime. Jyoti Babu actually appealed for the vote and support ofthe very forces ofthe Congress which brutally assaulted peace and democracy throughout the state-terror ofthe early 1970s leading up to the Emergency of 1974. Today the CPI(M) is shamefully partncring the Congress in once again assaulting democracy and imposing a virtual Emergc.tcy, raising the bogey of 'Maoism' to justify corporate land grab and all-out repres-.

sion on people's movements. To lend the 'appeal' a personal touch and 'above party' appearance, Jyoti Basu's statement was typed on blank paper .

rather than on the party letterhead. CPI (M) Politburo member and Rajya Sabha MP from Bengal Sitaram Yechuri endorsed the statement in the following words: "Jyoti Basu is a senior political father figure ... [he] has risen .

above parry politics. He is talking about the country, the country's future.... " .

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Will SFI and CPI(M) tell us -why do the great stalwarts of CPI(M)'s parliamentary practice-be it Jyoti .

Basu or Somnath Chatterjee -manage to rise 'above party politics' and closer to the Congress 'party'?! (ln the process, Somnath Chatterjee, of course, rose so much above the party that he actually preferred to quit the party rather than vote against the Congress-led UPA Government on the floor ofParliament-and often claimed the blessing of Jyoti Basu in so doing; the latter nev~r refuted this claim). .

Predictably, the Congress rudely rebuffed the proposal, and Jyoti Basu's appeal only invited personal humiliation l'or .

the party's senior-most lcatkr and c:-..puscd tltc cornplcte idcoll>gical bankrupt<.:y that the CPI(M) is displuying.Relian<.:e on .

the Congress (and the Congress' own pla11k of'saving the country from Maoism') did not save the CPICM) from suffering yet another drubbing in its former bastion ofWest Bengal. Meanwhile, intellectuals, who arc either card-holder members of CPI(M) or are close to the CPI(M), .

have issued a stat<'ment (Concer·ned Citizens on "Maoist" Violence) that yet again reveals the intellectual .

bankruptcy of the CPI(M). The statement begins with the line, "There has been a spate ofgrowing murder and violence in certain areas of .

Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and West Bengal by armed persons acting on behalfof .

'Maoist violence' the 'CPI (Maoist).,, Clearly the CPI(M) intellectuals share and echo the Indian State's own claim that .

is the central issue for the country -especially in the states named above. But for the people at large, it is clear that it is these very states that arc the main sites of corporate land grab, brutal eviction of adivasis and state .

repression in service of corporates. .

The statement then says, ..While every conscious citizen opposes acts ofoppression committed by members of .

the exploiting clusses or individuals in the state apparatus, the so-called "Maoists, " by their violent acts of .

vendetta, torture and gruesome killings, are gravely damaging the cause of the popular democratic movement. " .

Do these CPI(M) intellectuals want us to forgot the basic Marxist precepts about the State? Is oppression .

merely a set ofisolated 'acts' committed by individual 'members' of exploiting classes and state apparatuses? Isn't the State itselfan organ ofclass rule? Does the State not have an agenda of oppression and repression ofpopular democratic .

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movements? .

We too hold that the Maoist tactics are damaging the cause of popular democratic movements. But most of the .

CPI(M) intellectuals who are signatories to this statement must tell us: why did they not support the popular .

democratic movements at Siugur, Nandigram, Lalgarh? Why were they silent and supportive ofthe \Vest .

Bengal State Government when it unleashed brutal repression on those popular democratic movements? P:J:O. .

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