India’s JNU targets Bollywood movies and ‘patriotic nationalism’

An upcoming Bollywood film said to be based on India’s leading universities is set to challenge Hindu nationalists against dissidents after recent student elections intensified opposition to the country’s ruling party on campus. It has been criticized as the latest piece of “propaganda.”

Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), long known for its active student politics and liberal leanings, has become the focus of a right-wing nationalist fight for control of India’s institutions, with the university He is seen as the ideological opposite of the current government,” said Ajay Gudavarthy, associate professor at the JNU Center for Political Studies.

Weeks before the country goes to the polls in the world’s biggest democratic election, the Delhi-based university held its own elections for the first time since 2019. Left-leaning candidates won all the seats, and Dalit students secured the role of the next parliamentarian. President of the student council.

However, the new student leaders elected at the end of March are already at odds with university executives, accusing the authorities of a “dictatorial” act for excluding them from academic councils on student issues.

Tensions between student representatives and administrators at the university have been ongoing since 2016, when the then-student president was arrested during protests. The ensuing chilling effect and distance between university leaders “seems to have created a significant degree of unnecessary hostility,” said Rajarshi Dasgupta, assistant professor at the JNU Center for Political Studies. The university did not respond to requests for comment.

This hostility goes both ways.write to indian expressDhananjay, the new student body president and a doctoral student, called for an end to “politically motivated recruitment” of university faculty, calling for the “saffronization of higher education” (the growing influence of Hindu nationalists). It is part of a larger project. .

According to Professor Dasgupta, attacks on liberal universities have also played out in the field of popular culture, with the release of Bollywood films with titles such as: Jahangir National University It was originally scheduled to be released in April, but it was postponed.

The film, which has the tagline ‘Can one teaching university destroy a nation?’, is expected to follow in the footsteps of the following and criticize the actual left-wing culture in JNU . story of kerala, a 2023 Bollywood film promoted by some Bharatiya Janata Party politicians, depicting the downfall of a group of Hindu women who convert to Islam. The reason for the postponement of the release is unknown, but the movie’s trailer received criticism from some Indian social media and news outlets.

Professor Dasgupta said, “Films about JNU belong to the plethora of chauvinistic ‘nationalist’ films that have been made en masse over the past few years.” “These films found a niche by promoting conspiracy theories about ‘terrorists’ and internal enemies of the state.” He added that these target “spaces like JNU that appear to be challenging the ruling party’s narrative of victory and its concrete vision of nationalism.”

As a public university, JNU is also seen by its defenders as a victim of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attempt to sideline public education in favor of private universities. India’s ruling party “wants to undermine public education in general and promote private universities instead,” Professor Gudavarthy said. “There is an urgent need to privatize higher education in India, which is promoting an ultra-nationalist narrative that ends up being more propaganda than a genuine ideological struggle.”

Mr. Dhananjay also vowed to defend publicly funded education, saying that while universities are allowed greater autonomy, the establishment of foreign and private universities is also encouraged by Indian leaders, so students pay less for their tuition. He wrote that there is a possibility of facing “soaring prices”.public relationsProfessor Dasgupta said IVization will not “take off” unless “public universities lose their reputation as institutions of excellence” and motivate the Bharatiya Janata Party government and its supporters to “denigrate them”. he claimed.

helen.packer@timeshighereducation.com