On Valentine’s Day this year, the media had more important news to cover than the expected moral policing by self-appointed guardians of Indian culture. Arvind Kejriwal was ta
The Chief information commissioner (CIC) of India will soon have a new office complex in New Delhi. The CIC has been allotted land for a building at the old JNU Campus. The building will be constru
Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), where I spent a decade studying and researching hi
Linguist and activist Noam Chomsky and novelist Orhan Pamuk are among a host of thinkers who have come out in support of the students and teachers of JNU who have been protesting the
On their way to independence, the Muhammad Ali Jinnah-led Muslim League chose to create a separate nation on the basis of religion. While Pakistan was conceived under the two-nation theory as a hom
2014 – ghar wapsi; 2015 – cow slaughtering; 2016 – anti-nationalism. This has been the year-wise growth in India under the slogan of ‘achche din’. With the trampling o
Kanhaiya Kumar has captured the imagination of many with his measured, calm and yet witty words during his speech Thursday night and the press conference on Friday. He was ‘trending’ on
Dear daughter, You asked me about the JNU episode the other day. For
Here is an anecdote of 2007 vintage. A well researched book on the history of Gujarat’s maritime trade with central Asia was being released. The small audience in the hall was largely made up
Though Jhandewalan sees a rat in this story, JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar has become a star of sorts overnight – or over 22 days. With the “freedom” speech on Thursday night, fo
T Mohandas Pai, a respectable corporate leader, represents a wider audience when he targets JNU students and their
Sheldon Pollock, a preeminent Indologist who has been facing criticism from Hindutva hardliners and right-leaning academics after he expressed solidarity with the JNU students and teachers facing a
Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) has always been a bastion of the left. Decades ago, people in power saw to it that JNU moved on the left beat. Recently, JNU students (and possibly some unidentifi
On March 2, the Delhi high court granted bail to Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union president Kanhaiya Kumar in a sedition case registered against him in connection with a function o
On the afternoon of February 25, outside the Allahabad district court, a mob of more than 200 people including men wearing black robes of the lawyer’s uniform attacked a peaceful dharna by th
In an attack on communists, BJP national vice president, Vinay Sahasrabuddhe called them self-proclaimed custodians of intellectualism, and said that we should feel proud to say ‘Bharat Mata
Of late, we’ve been hearing a lot about the charges of sedition, anti-nationalism, anti-democratic, being levelled against the students of JNU commemorating Afzal Guru and Yakub Memon. The qu
The Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill, 2016, which aims to stop commercial surrogacy, was approved by
Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi has been questioned by both the opposition and the judiciary for his alleged comments which accuse the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh for Mahatma Gandhi’
What do the income disclosure or amnesty schemes reflect on the government? What it suggests is that the government under the normal schemes is not able to take care
2016 was a year that kept India on the edge. The dramatic decision to scrap Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes was like a bolt from the blue, forcing people to stand in serpentine queues at banks a
Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student Najeeb Ahmed has been missing for 100 days now after an altercation with Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) activists and sleuths are still groping
Few knew who Kanhaiya Kumar was before February 9, 2016, a day that saw a protest at Jawaharlal Nehru University which spawned a tsunami which ruthlessly tried to flatten the ideals of tolerance an
“Initially, I found myself eagerly attending every post-dinner lecture in the mess by headline-makers of all political hues, the left, right and centre. Why I stopped going to the ABVP events
University of Hyderabad, Jawaharlal Nehru University and now University of Delhi…the free space for discourse is steadily being squeezed out of universities in India as the Rashtriya Swayams
Delhi University student Gurmehar Kaur, who spoke up against the ABVP on Twitter, has announced that she is withdrawing from `Save DU campaign` on Tuesday morning. The campaign was being held to pr
Ramjas College organised a seminar on ‘Culture of Protest’ in which JNU’s Umar Khalid and Shela Rashid were invited as speakers. ABVP le
As a seventh grader participating in a painting competition in his school in Noida, he had drawn two flags inside the triangular halves of a kite – the tricolor representing India and the gre
Media trials, under the guise of debates, have become the new normal today. These ‘media debates’, which seem more like screaming matches, completely overlook the nuances of the issue b
Dear “Professor” Vice Chancellor, When the clamour is made all around us, and rightly so, about the condition of growing degeneration of quality e
A proposal by JNU vice chancellor Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar to place a tank in the prestigious university has got mired in controversy, with liberals highlighting its pointlessness and neo-nationalis
At no other moment in the history of Indian national life after Independence the dalits are as oppressed as this moment: dalits are set ablaze, slaughtered like animals on the slaughtering bench of
As many as 167 centres for womens studies and 35 centres for social exclusion are facing an uncertain future as the University Grants Commission (UGC) has to take a call on whether to continu
The ministry of human resource development secretary, Amit Khare, on Wednesday met the Jawaharlal Nehru University vice-chancellor, Prof Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar, and advised him “to make all
Nobel laureate economist Abhijit Banerjee has sounded an alarm on the economic crisis and compared the present situation to the 1991 economic crisis, stressing that to revive the economy it is impo
JNU Stories: The First 50 years Edited by Neeladri Bhattacharya, Kunal Chakrabarti, S. Gunasekaran, Janaki Nair and Joy L. K. Pachuau Aelph / xl + 468