All go to The Universities - They all get put in Boxes
These are the famous lines from the popular Pete Seeger number which says “...And the people in the houses all go to the university / And they all get put in boxes, little boxes all the same / And there's doctors and there's lawyers / And business executives / And they're all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same / And they all play on the golf course and drink their martini dry / And they all have pretty children and the children go to school / And the children go to summer camp / And then to the university / And they all get put in boxes, and they all come out the same ?”. And that is how the ruling classes want the people, the young students and revolting academics to be. In the pursuit of the mission of imposing the so-called neo-liberal policies of globalisation and liberalisation for unhindered hegemony and profit –the big capitalists and imperialists world over have invented “War on Terror”, are keeping no stone unturned to suppress all revolts and voices of dissent of the workers, peasants and the masses. And now the students and the academic community have also been picked up within this country and abroad to more than unthinking, unsocial, pliable “little boxes” to ensure that they “come out the same” after their universities and colleges.
About a couple of years back the UPA govt formed the Lyngdoh Committee on the alibi of curbing muscle power and money power in students union elections. It has imposed numerous restrictions and model codes of conduct on students union elections. And now this March and the Jawaharlal Nehru University administration have gone further to clip the wings of students liberty by unilaterally declaring that the hostel residents seeking permission for any talk or meeting “which may be sensitive to national integration or national harmony and may have implication for national security will not be permitted.” These new rules say, if an individual wishes to hold a movie or documentary film show, talk or meeting or other cultural activities then in addition to regular details to be given in an intimation at least a week in advance, the organizer must mandatorily disclose whether the event will be followed by a talk or discussion. Even films without certificate of approval from the Central Board of Film Certification will not be allowed to be screened in the hostels, which implies films and documentaries of free-lance, independent film-makers cannot be shown.
The students of JNU are indignant about this. Earlier in 2008 the Supreme Court, citing contents of the recommendations of the Lyngdoh Committee, stayed the JNU students union elections on pleadings of the administration which is still continuing, stopping the annual elections held regularly there. And now comes this order from above. Out of so many universities only a handful of them hold regular students union elections. A student of JNU reacting to this says “This has never happened in JNU ?. We know what democracy is. The university is a place which must have a democratic exchange of ideas?. For decades we have held public meetings. Many public meetings are held at short notice, ?the day the Godhra riots happened, a protest march was taken out by JNU students. Now that the students union is not functional, the JNU administration is trying to act high-handed” (The Hindu, 4 April 2010).
Similar voices of protest is reverberating in the universities overseas –only a few months back a vow picked up over putting an end to “radicalization of students” by govt and university administration’s dictat. Allegations that the Christmas Day Detroit plane’s alleged bomber, the Nigerian youth Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is a product of the University College of London helped them bolster such ideas. Radicalisation, “Islamization” of British universities have been made to become a major political issue in recent years. Three months after the July 2005 London bombings, a professor with an obsessive interest in inventing terror and sources of terrorism in universities published a sensationalising report titled “When Students Turn to Terror” in which he named more than 300 universities where he claimed “extremist and/or terror groups” operated. Within months the British Govt. issued guide lines advising them to identify “potential jihadis” and report them to security agencies. But in the face of mounting protests from the academics that amounted to asking them to “spy” on their own students the govt was compelled to tone down its advice.
The recent arrest of alleged Christmas Day bomber Abdulmutallab once again provided the trigger for the rightist, anti-democratic forces to put pressure for strict “policing” of campuses and the state is ever willing to tread in that path. It is radical Islam that is haunting the universities in England.
Take another example. It is Greece at the middle of the year 2006. Protests of students along with supporting workers raged against the govt plans for neo-liberal reforms of higher education. Reports say, as many as hundred thousand students occupied over 350 university departments over 3 to 4 weeks and university teachers also held a series of walkouts. Since coming to power in 2004, the right wing New Democracy Govt of Greece sought to bring reforms in high education for :— creation of privately owned and managed universities, ending restrictions on entry of police in campuses of higher educational institutions, change management structure of existing institutions in line with private sector business model, delink students from decision making structures and move towards full-scale privatisation. Students revolts emerged out of this leading to police repressions that further escalated into strikes etc. Even in France and Germany the ruling class feared students actions building up and often tending to express solidarity with other social incidents, workers struggles. The violent students outbursts against the brutal killing of a student by police in Athens that turned different parts of Greece into flames is a notable incident.
It reminds us of the return of a persecuting state of another period –the days of McCarthyism during the cold war period of 1950s and 1960s. The renowned writer Howard Fast then penned down –Silas Timbermann –the saga of persecution of an upright, passionately freedom loving professor of American Literature. He stood up against the American State’s devilish methods of ‘ thought control’. He and his wife Myra became a target of persecution of the “democratic” U.S. state machinery –the police, the FBI and its in-camera secret courts. His crime was that during those period of Korean War and the tensions of imperialist and socialist camps he denied “volunteering” for the university’s alarm raising civil defence organisation that whipped up the American state’s imperial interests. Further he showed the guts along with some of his colleagues to sign a peace petition against war, raising voices against atomic warfare. All these were ‘ Un-American’ and punishable according to that country’s laws and so he was boycotted, humiliated, isolated, terrorised, sacked from his job and imprisoned for perjury on the basis of a testimony of an undercover informer of the state in a framed-up case in a secret court proceeding away from the eyes of the public, by the FBI.
But Silas Timbermanns are characters born out of real life. Repeated attempts to persecute and exorcise them cannot erase such protesting, freedom loving people for good.
Even in the row over rights of students and academics in the Universities of London and elsewhere in England the battleground for competing ideas and world views are not succumbing so easily. Even temporary defeats once again give place to newer voices of reflection and reaction to the society’s ills and injustices, generating conjectures of social revolution and the thirst for liberation of the human kind.
In the midst of hoarse cries for ‘ bans’, ‘ policings’ and ‘ spying’ on the opposing students and teachers, a professor of Modern English Literature of the same University College of London where Abdulmutallab had studied, John Sutherland, represented such sensible voices. He said in an article in The Times London that, important campaigns against fascism and war, for example, have come out of the tradition of free speech in university campuses. The question they [the authorities –Ed] must ask themselves he said was “At what point must institutional tolerances give way to heavy-handed control? And if you ban the Islamic Society, do you also ban the Jewish Society or the female students consciousness-raising groups? At what point does militancy –never in itself a bad thing in a young students –become signing up to terrorism?”
Similar voices remain muffled or drowned whether institutions throughout the globe amongst the din of authoritarian –rule –worshippers or sometimes are openly pouring out onto the streets as seen in France or Greece in recent times.
But one should keep one’s fingers crossed. Such voices do not act as a voice of conscience for the ruling class and their states. The ruling class and its states are out to aggressively hound out the challengers be it in the name of ‘ Islamic terrorism’ or ‘ radical politicisation’. The imperialists and their capitalist juniors are out to implement a well planned and framed up war to crush all opposing thoughts and ideas.
A report of the World Bank Task Force on Higher Education in Developing Countries, published in February 2000, of which Manmohan Singh was a member, states “Political activities means that students are spending a large proportion of their time on politics rather than education. There are situations ...where levels of activism can rise to the point where high-quality education becomes impossible. In situations ...where academic pursuits have been taken hostage, activism may need to be restricted.” What they need is just pliable, docile ‘ Little Bones’ out of universities as knowledge-workers to exploit the technological developments for super-profits from their businesses. The Indian govt obediently set up a Mukesh Ambani –Kumarmangalam Birla committee which prepared “A Policy Framework for Reforms in Education” in April 2000 that proposes privatisation of higher education, little regulation, more fees and ‘ banning any form of political activity in campuses of universities and educational institutions including union activities.’ The Lyngdoh Committee set up by the UPA regime in 2005 is a brain-child of this. In 2006 the Planning Commission Vice-Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said ‘ unionisation in higher education personnel is a major impediment. When you talk to students unions, I am not sure that they are arguing for the kind of things that are oriented towards education reforms. They are certainly interested in keeping fees low.’ The latest JNU administration’s dictates of stifling protest meetings or discussions on social issues is only a further extension of this very programme of the govt and the Indian ruling class. It leads only to further dividing the students and teaching community by promoting and building up reactionary rightist bases among them, who act as mere tools for implementing the programmes of the capitalists.
In fact without free discourses and interaction of different ideas the real roots behind the issues churning up the universities, be it students right to union elections or protest meetings on social issues or ‘ radical Islamisation’ seen overseas, cannot be exposed. The roots lay within society at large, within the present capitalist state and its mission. The university battlegrounds of ideas and interpretations must extend to study and integrate with the conditions of the masses and their struggles going on at present –workers’, peasants’, Adivasi struggles etc...to identify and expose these roots.
Let’s see the issue of radical Islamisation that precipitated with Abdulmutallab’s arrest and rocked the British universities. It is far from being just another highly educated, well-off youth getting involved in such a desperate act. It is more and more being revealed that it is linked to some sort of design of the American, Israeli and Dutch authorities. Before the December 2009 bombing attempt the CIA learnt about Abdulmutallab in August 2009 but failed surprisingly to prepare and inform about his profile for months. In November 19, 2009, Abdulmutallab’s father, a rich banker of Nigeria and running a national arms industry in partnership with Israel, particularly the infamous Israeli secret service the Mossael, informed the US Embassy in Nigeria of his son’s growing ties to extremists. Still Abdulmutallab’s visa to US was not withdrawn though he was on ‘ terrorist watch-list’. He flew from Nigeria, entered Netherlands without passing through customs something impossible in today’s situation. A man appearing to be Indian, accompanying him at the Amsterdam airport, claimed Abdulmutallab was a Sudanese refugee without any passport. The Dutch authorities later confirmed it although the US and Dutch shared the information that he was on terrorist watch-list. Interestingly, the airport security in Amsterdam is contracted to an Israeli company with sophisticated technologies. In spite of all these Abdulmutallab attempted on flight the Detroit airliner bombing! He was arrested and within hours the details of his history started pouring in the media from the American authorities.
A very similar repetition occurred in case of another attempted plane bombing by shoe-bomber Richard Rein while flying from Paris to Miami in December 2001.
Then there are news of two top level terrorists released without trial from Guantanamo to Saudi friends of Bush family on 2007 who have started insurgency in Yemen and with whom Abdulmutallab met. So the question of some well planned design of the CIA, Mossad, Saudi and Dutch authorities have come up behind the emergency arrest of Abdulmutallabs and Richard Reins. Are terrorists and attempted but failed terror incidents being staged to keep up the hype of terrorism? Who will answer the real truth? Have the Christmas Day bombing attempt specially been prepareded to divide further the American masses along religious lives? Do all these not have some uncanny similarities with the parliament attack on Indian Parliament several years back?
The students, the teachers, the critically searching intelligentsia must not question or build opinions about these. They must not question how the War on Terror is being framed up, how the neo-liberal policies are being forcibly imposed. They must be obedient, conforming ‘ Little boXes made of Ticky –Tacky / Little bones all the same.’ Otherwise the ruling classes fear that the students, the workers and toilers may come together to become a lethal force that can challenge this system.
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