KIIT tragedy: A clarion name for justice — and an indictment of campus values
Alas, Indian universities are more and more turning into surveillance states, silencing dissent with fascist ways. Protest is a basic proper, not a privilege granted by these in energy.
The tragedy at KIIT College isn’t an remoted occasion however a part of a sample the place college administrations, underneath political and company pressures, resort to draconian measures to suppress scholar voices. The very establishments that ought to nurture crucial pondering, debate and democratic participation are as an alternative reworking themselves into institutions of oppression.
College students who increase their voices in opposition to injustice, whether or not for higher infrastructure, tutorial reforms or social justice, are sometimes handled as criminals or ‘enemies of the state’, fairly than the torchbearers of change.
This pattern has historic echoes. All through India’s post-Independence historical past, universities have performed a crucial function in shaping political consciousness and democratic engagement. From the JP Motion of the Nineteen Seventies to the anti-CAA protests of 2019, campuses have typically been the epicentres of resistance in opposition to authoritarianism.
What we’re witnessing now’s a deliberate try to dismantle these areas of resistance, changing them with a local weather of worry, intimidation and conformity. This erosion of educational freedom is antithetical to the very concept of a college — an area the place numerous opinions conflict, the place dissent is revered and the place the youth be taught not solely technical expertise but additionally the values of empathy, justice and democracy.
Within the current occasion, the college’s preliminary response to the disaster was marked by insensitivity and a scarcity of accountability. Stories point out that Lamsal had approached the college’s Worldwide Relations Workplace (IRO) with complaints of harassment, however no formal motion was taken in opposition to the accused. As a substitute, a mere counselling session was performed and the matter was brushed apart. This negligence underscores a systemic failure to deal with critical grievances and guarantee a secure campus surroundings.
