Many of my friends studied there and late evening visits for attending a speech or being present at a counting session for university elections was part and parcel of my life.
Most of the really interesting stuff happened in university hostels after dinner – so it was never a surprise that a distant cause would attract hundreds of students – women and men – to a public meeting.
But that liberal image took a massive blow on July 31 when Akash, 23, battered co-student Roshni, 22, with an axe inside room number 213 of the school of languages on the campus.
Both Akash and Roshni were third-year students of Korean in JNU. While Roshni is battling for life after being battered with an axe, Akash died soon after consuming some poisonous substance.
He had come armed with a pistol that didn’t fire, as well as a knife. All the reports on the incident suggest that it was a pre-planned attack.
For the JNU community, which has rightly taken up societal causes beyond the campus like protesting the December 16th rape-and-murder, the July 31 attack has come as a shock.
To the credit of Vice-Chancellor S.K. Sopory, he took full responsibility for the incident at a time when passing the buck is the norm. “In a university, all blame must rest on the Vice-Chancellor, so I take complete responsibility for this incident,” he said.
Late night Friday, JNU students’ union president V. Lenin Kumar described the incident as a failure of everyone at the university, including every bit of the student community.
Economics professor Jayati Ghosh was quoted in The Times of India newspaper as saying that perhaps JNU was not very different from the rest of society.
“We should stop kidding ourselves that we are different... We have tried to gloss over some very disturbing subterranean realities and clear evidence of sexism. But pretending it’s not there is not going to make it go away,” Ghosh said.
It’s perhaps fitting that JNU as a community is willing to look inwards and outwards at the rest of society where blatantly sexist and unequal practices dominate.
Going by newspaper reports, it’s evident that the attack on Roshni was a direct consequence of Akash’s advances being spurned and his inability to accept “no” for an answer.
There are many Akashes out there, who suffer from the same problem and whose responses are as vicious.
In the past four years, as many as 500 women have been the victims of acid attacks because men could not accept their advances of marriage proposals being rejected.
Look beyond the statistics to the case of Sonali Mukherjee, an acid attack victim, who has had to undergo 25 surgeries in 10 years. She’s lost her eyesight, but is undeterred.
On July 31, the same day Roshni was brutally attacked in her own classroom, Lalita Devi died due to injuries suffered in an acid attack in Hazaribagh in Jharkhand state.
After the public pressure that built up across the country in December, the government under pressure from women’s groups, also made acid attacks a separate offence under the Indian Penal Code. The Supreme Court has now tried to regulate the sale of acid across the country.
The sad fact is that violence of all types against women continues to grow. We might be able to slow the sale of some acid, but what of students like Akash? They can always pick on a Roshni. With an axe, or a knife, or a pistol.
Massive sensitisation in homes, schools, colleges, offices, public transport, on the street – everywhere and anywhere – is perhaps our only hope against attacks on women.
Clearly, men in our society are still to understand the meaning of “no” when women use the word.
A no is a no.