Dear Friends and Colleagues,

The statement that follows is being circulated in solidarity with the students and faculty of the Hyderabad Central University, presently under siege by the police and from the central government in India.  In the past three days police and paramilitary forces have been occupying the HCU campus–dozens of students were beaten and molested by police officers, and deprived of basic food and water supplies, electricity and the media.  Twenty-seven people, including two faculty members, were abducted and badly brutalized by police. Several of them remain in custody in different locations throughout the city. There has been a virtual media blackout. This is part of what is becoming a worrisome pattern of state violence on academic institutions across the country. A number of you signed solidarity statements after Jawaharlal Nehru University at Delhi came under attack last month.  As students, teachers and activists based, let us tell the Indian government that we will not be silent while academic freedom is beheaded.

Please send your endorsement along with university affiliation (if any) as soon as possible to justiceforhcu@gmail.com and do forward the link to this post as widely as possible.

Thank you for your support.

_________________________

Over 300 academicians, activists, artists and writers condemn the state violence and unlawful detention of faculty and student protesters of the University of Hyderabad.

We, academicians, activists, artists and writers, condemn the ongoing brutal attacks on and unlawful detention of peacefully protesting faculty and students at the University of Hyderabad by the University administration and the police. We also condemn the restriction of access to basic necessities such as water and food on campus.

The students and faculty members of the University of Hyderabad were protesting the reinstatement of Dr. Appa Rao Podile as the Vice-Chancellor despite the ongoing judicial enquiry against him related to the circumstances leading to the death of the dalit student Rohith Vemula on January 17^th, 2016. Students and faculty members of the university community are concerned that this may provide him the opportunity to tamper with evidence and to influence witnesses. Suicides by dalit students have been recurring in the University of Hyderabad and other campuses across the country.  The issue spiraled into a nationwide students’ protest with the death of the dalit scholar Rohith Vemula. The protests have pushed into the foreground public discussion and debate on the persistence of caste-based discrimination in educational institutions, and surveillance and suppression of dissent and intellectual debate in university spaces.

Since the morning of March 22 when Dr. Appa Rao returned to campus, the students and staff have been in a siege-like situation.  The peacefully protesting staff and students were brutally lathi-charged by the police, and 27 people were taken into custody. The 27 detainees were untraceable for 48 hours, brutally tortured, and denied legal access. In short, all legal procedures of detention have been suspended. After the incident, the university has been locked down with no access to food, water, electricity, and Internet connectivity.   Students were brutally assaulted when they opened community kitchens.  Lawyers and members of human rights organization as well the ordinary citizens of the city were denied access to students. University of Hyderabad is one of India’s biggest public universities.

We have followed, with deep concern, similar violent attacks and undemocratic crackdown on students on the campuses of Jawaharlal Nehru University, the Film and Television Institute of India, the University of Allahabad, Jadavpur University, Burdwan University, and others across the country. That the highest administrative authorities in the university have allowed the silencing of debate and dissent is unfortunate. We are disturbed by the pattern of growing nexus between student vigilante groups, youth wing of the ruling party, state and university authorities in colleges and university campuses across the country in order to mobilize the state machinery against vulnerable students. This has created a climate of fear and oppression in the country, and continually violates fundamental human and Constitutional rights of students.

We stand in support of the protesting students, staff and faculty of the University of Hyderabad and demand the following:

1. Immediate withdrawal of police from the campus.
2. Immediate release of, and withdrawal of all cases against, all arrested students and faculty.
3. Suspension of the Vice-Chancellor P. Appa Rao.
4. Judicial enquiry into the role of the HRD Ministry, the HRD Minister and Mr. Bandaru Dattatreya in inciting violence against Dalits on campus.
5. Independent enquiry into the incidents of violence on the campus including the role of the ABVP in vandalising the Vice-Chancellor’s office.
6. Action against police personnel named by students in their complaints.
7. Passage of the “Rohith Act” against caste discrimination in education.

Signatories

1. Lawrence Cohen, Director, Institute for South Asia Studies, University of California, Berkeley
2. Navtej K Purewal Deputy Director, South Asia Institute SOAS University of London
3. Akhil Gupta, Director, Center for India and South Asia (CISA), UCLA
4. Michael Davis, Professor Emeritus, Department of Creative Writing, University of California Riverside
5. Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director, The Oakland Institute
6. Barbara Harriss-White, Oxford University
7. Kavita Krishnan, Secretary AIPWA
8. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, University Professor in the Humanities, Columbia University
9. G. Arunima, Professor and Chair, Centre for Women’s Studies, School of Social Sciences, JNU
10. Sandeep Pandey, former Visiting Faculty, IIT, BHU, Varanasi
11. Michael D. Yates, Professor Emeritus, University of Pittsburgh, United States
12. Abha Sur, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
13. Akeel Bilgrami, Sidney Morgenbesser Professor of Philosophy, Columbia University
14. Haroon Akram-Lodhi, Chair, Department of International Development Studies, Trent University, Canada
15. Apoorvanand, University of Delhi
16. Marjorie Griffin Cohen, Professor of Political Science and Chair of Women’s Studies Department, Simon Fraser University, Canada
17. Gerald Epstein, Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
18. Surinder S. Jodhka, Jawaharlal Nehru University
19. Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Syracuse University
20. Sangeeta Kamat, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
21. Dr. Shailaja Paik, University of Cincinnati
22. Kevin B. Anderson, Professor of Sociology, University of California  Santa Barbara
23. Tithi Bhattacharya, Professor of History, Purdue University
24. Pranav Jani, The Ohio State University
25. Vinay Gidwani, University of Minnesota
26. Nivedita Menon, Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University
27. Alpa Shah, London School of Economics
28. Jayati Ghosh, Jawaharlal Nehru University
29. Srirupa Roy, University of Göttingen, Germany
30. Rahul Varman, IIT Kanpur
31. Ashwini Tambe, University of Maryland, College Park
32. Jens Lerche, SOAS, University of London
33. Gillian Hart, Professor, University of California, Berkeley
34. Adrian Wilson,  Social Anthropology, London School of Economics
35. Ayesha Kidwai, Professor ,Jawaharlal Nehru University
36. Meher Engineer
37. Aishwary Kumar, School of Humanities & Sciences, Stanford University
38. Ajantha Subramanian, Professor of Anthropology and South Asian Studies, Harvard University
39. Jyoti Puri, Chair and Professor of Sociology, Simmons College
40. Abdul JanMohamed, Professor, University of California, Berkeley
41. Dr. Nathaniel Roberts, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Goettingen, Germany
42. Paula Chakravartty, New York University
43. Atul Sood, Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University
44. Prof. Mohan Rao, Jawaharlal  Nehru University
45. Yasmin Saikia, Professor of History, Arizona State University
46. Nandini Chandra, Delhi University
47. Elisabeth Weber, Professor, University of California, Santa Barbara
48. C. P. Chandrasekhar, Jawaharlal Nehru University
49. Prof. Rupa Viswanath, University of Goettingen, Germany
50. Rama Baru, Jawaharlal Nehru University
51. Svati Shah, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
52. Immanuel Ness, Professor, City University of New York
53. Balmurli Natrajan, William Paterson University
54. Veena Hariharan, School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University
55. Rajat Datta, Professor, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University
56. Geraldine Forbes, Professor, State University of New York, Oswego
57. Joya Misra, Professor of Sociology and Public Policy, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
58. Richard Seymour, London School of Economics
59. Susan Visvanathan, Professor of Sociology, Jawaharlal Nehru University
60. Dr. Pérez de Mendiola, Richard Armour Professor of Modern Languages, Chair, Dept. of Latin American, Caribbean and Spanish Literatures and Cultures & Humanities, Scripps College
61. Peter Spiegler, Asst. Prof.,  Dept. of Economics, UMass, Amherst
62. Swati Birla, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
63. Atreyi Dasgupta, Baylor College of Medicine
64. Kuver Sinha, Syracuse University
65. Sirisha Naidu, Wright State University
66. Siddhartha Mitra, Programmer, Rockefeller University
67. Samantha Agarwal, PhD Candidate, Johns Hopkins University
68. Anup Gampa, PhD Candidate, University of Virginia
69. Anu Mandavilli, Friends of South Asia
70. Deepankar Basu, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
71. Nandini Dhar, Assistant Professor, Florida International University
72. Michael Levien, Assistant Professor, Johns Hopkins University
73. Devika Dutt, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
74. Smita Ramnarain, Assistant Professor of Economics, Siena College
75. Taki Manolakos, Wright State University
76. Valentina Dallona, Johns Hopkins University
77. Iveta Jusova, Carleton College, USA
78. Aditi Chandra, University of California, Merced
79. Hee-Young Shin, Wright State University
80. Anjali Arondekar, UC Santa Cruz
81. Jinee Lokaneeta, Drew University
82. Ajay Chandra, University of Warwick
83. Xiao Yu, Peking University
84. Bettina Apthekar, UC Santa Cruz
85. Anirban Karak, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
86. Natasha S K, Syracuse University
87. Mitul Barua, Syracuse University
88. Simmy Makhijani, San Francisco State University
89. Sofia Gavtadze, Solidarity Network, Georgi
90. Avishek Konar, Alumnus, The Ohio State University
91. Robert Carley, Wright State University
92. Dia Da Costa, Associate Professor, University of Alberta
93. Ann Smock, University of California, Berkeley
94. Liz Mount, Syracuse University
95. Terese V Gagnon, Syracuse University
96. Giorgi Kobakhidze, Ilia State University, Tbilisi, Georgia
97. Levin Ahmed, Jawaharlal Nehru University
98. Christos Mais, Universiteit Leiden
99. Taveeshi Singh, Syracuse University
100. Aniruddha Das, Columbia University
101. Safar Safqat, St Mary’s College of Maryland
102. Ramaa Vasudevan, Colorado State University
103. Osman Keshawarz, doctoral student, University of Massachusetts at Amherst
104. Narendra Subramaniam, McGill University
105. Ammel Sharon, University of Pennsylvania
106. Gventa Gventsadze
107. Borisi Cirekidze
108. Minakshi Menon, Max Planck Institute, Berlin
109. Dmitri Khuskivadze
110. Salo Kaladze
111. Judith Rodenbeck, UC Riverside
112. Ashok Prasad, Colorado State University
113. Priyanka Srivastava, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
114. Arani Roy, Brandeis University
115. Dag Erik Berg, University of Gottingen, Germany
116. Rahul Nair, Antioch College, USA
117. Gajendran Ayyathurai, Goettingen University, Germany
118. Balaji Narasimhan, William Paterson University, United States
119. Ember Skye Kanelee, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
120. Jungyeon Suh, Independent Researcher, United States
121. Kannan Srinivasan
122. Roli Verma, University of New Mexico
123. Piya Chatterjee, Scripps College, US
124. Lalit Batra, University of Minnesota
125. Avanti Mukherjee, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
126. Tyler Hansen, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
127. Subho Basu, McGill University, Canada
128. Laurie Nisonoff, Hampshire College, United States
129. Satya Mohapatra, MIT
130. Julia Corwin, University of Minnesota
131. Parama Roy, UC Davis
132. Noeleen McIlvenna, Wright State University
133. Daniel Thompson, Johns Hopkins University
134. Jesse Knutson, University of Hawaii, Manoa
135. Prashant Keshavmurthy, McGill University, Canada
136. Anasuya Sengupta, Berkeley, USA
137. Uditi Sen, Hampshire College
138. Zarrina Juraqulova, Denison University, USA
139. Kiran Asher, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
140. Prakash Kashwan, University of Connecticut, Storrs
141. Hamid Rezai, Pitzer College, USA
142. Anindya Dey, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
143. Lara Deeb, Scripps College, USA
144. Richa Nagar, University of Minnesota
145. Vatsal Naresh, Columbia University
146. Niharika Yadav, Princeton University
147. Bedatri Datta Choudhury, NYU
148. Sanjiv Gupta, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
149. Suvadip Sinha, University of Minnesota
150. Ipsita Mandal, Perimeter Institute, Canada
151. Poulomi Pal, Fulbright scholar
152. Asmita Rangari, Activist, New Delhi
153. Shipra Nigam, Activist, New Delhi
154. Srinivas Lankala, Independent media scholar, Hyderabad
155. Carolyn Elliott, University of Vermont
156. Aviroop Sengupta, Columbia University
157. Madhura Lohokare, Syracuse University
158. Arijit Sen, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
159. Suyapa Portillo Villeda, Pitzer College, USA
160. Oishik Sircar, University of Melbourne
161. Arjun Bagchi, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
162. Greg Anderson, Ohio State University
163. Prarit Agarwal, Seoul National University, Korea
164. Sayori Ghoshal, Columbia University
165. Uponita Mukherjee, Columbia University
166. Suyapa Portillo Villeda, Pitzer College
167. Patricia Morton, University of California, Riverside
168. Sofia Checa, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
169. Arpan Roy, John Hopkins University
170. Cynthia Correa, The University of Texas at Austin
171. Parvathy Binoy, Syracuse University, Syracuse
172. Jonathon Hurd, RN, Seattle
173. Varuni Bhatia, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
174. Erin McElroy, UCSC, Director, Anti-Eviction Mapping Project
175. Geert Dhondt, John Jay College, The City University of New York
176. Mithun Bhowmick, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
177. Alladi Sitaram, Retired Professor, Indian Statistical Institute
178. Dr. Kasturi Ray, San Francisco State University
179. Alicia Giron, National University of Mexico
180. Probal Dasgupta, Indian Statistical Institute
181. Larry Halpern, Wittenberg University
182. Suchitra Mathur, Faculty, IIT Kanpur, India
183. Aditi Saraf, Johns Hopkins University
184. Ketaki Jaywant, University of Minnesota
185. Nagesh Rao, Colgate University
186. Irfan Ahmad, ACU Melbourne, Australia
187. Suvrat Raju, TIFR
188. Saikat Ghosh, IIT Kanpur
189. Samyak Ghosh, Columbia University
190. Catherine Liu, UC Irvine
191. Francis Cody, University of Toronto
192. Bhavani Raman, University of Toronto
193. Erika Suderburg, University of California Riverside
194. Saptarshi Mandal, Assistant Professor, Jindal Global Law School, Sonipat
195. Anannya Bohidar, Graduate Student, South Asia Studies, UPenn
196. Rahul Pandey, visiting faculty, IIM Lucknow
197. Tania Bhattacharyya, Columbia University
198. Aditi Sarkar, Architect, Las Cruces, New Mexico
199. Shakti Sathish Nambiar, Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne
200. Krishna Melnattur, Washington University School of Medicine
201. Rupal Oza, Hunter College, City University of New York
202. Maroona Murmu, Assistant Professor, Jadavpur University
203. Gayatri Chatterjee, Symbiosis School of Liberal Art
204. Sipra Mukherjee, Professor, West Bengal State University
205. Raja Swamy, Asst. Prof., Dept. of Anthropology, University of Tennessee
206. Anandavardhanan, Department of Mathematics, IIT Bombay
207. Priyanka Bhattacharya, The Doon School, Dehradun
208. Anuradha Roy, Jadavpur University
209. Ramesh Sreekantan, Statistics and Mathematics Unit Indian Statistical Institute, Bangalore.
210. Srinath Jagannathan, Indian Institute of Management Indore
211. Tanima Sharma, PhD student, University of Chicago
212. Meena Alexander, City University of New York
213. Sharmila Sreekumar, IIT Bombay
214. Venkatesh K Subramanian, IIT Kanpur
215. Food Sovereignty Alliance, India
216. The Ghadar Alliance, US
217. Nandita Narain, St.Stephen’s College, Delhi University
218. Deepa Kurup, University of Oxford
219. Ramesh Bairy, IIT Bombay
220. Papori Bora, Jawaharlal Nehru University
221. Ritwik Balo
222. Ranjani Mazumdar, School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University
223. PK Vijayan
224. Dr. Papia Sengupta, CPS/SSS
225. Krishna V V, CSSP/SSS
226. A.K. Ramakrishnan, Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University
227. Arunima S Mukherjee
228. George Chkhaidze
229. Elizabeth Abel
230. Dr. Kochurani Abraham, Kerala
231. Saumyajit Bhattacharya
232. Pradip Datta, Jawaharlal Nehru University
233. Rohit Azad, Center for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University
234. Deepak K Mishra, Jawaharlal Nehru University
235. Tulay Atay–Avsar, Mustafa Kemal University, Turkey
236. Dr. Vikas Bajpai, Jawaharlal Nehru University
237. Saradindu Bhaduri, Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi and ISS, The Hague
238. Dr Erica Wald, Goldsmiths, University of London
239. Navaneetha Mokkil
240. Manidipa Sen, Jawaharlal Nehru University
241. Ameet Parameswaran, Jawaharlal Nehru University
242. K. B. Usha, Jawaharlal Nehru University
243. Gopinath Ravindran
244. Avinash Kumar, CISLS, SSS, Jawaharlal Nehru University
245. Puja Rani, University of Delhi
246. Ritoo Jerath, Jawaharlal Nehru University
247. Hannah Carlan, Department of Anthropology, UCLA
248. Ganga Bhavani Manthini
249. Sucharita Sen, Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University
250. Dr. Mallarika Sinha Roy, Centre for Women’s Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University
251. Archana Prasad, Jawaharlal Nehru University
252. Dinesh Abrol, Institute for Studies in Industrial Development.
253. Vikas Rawal, Professor, Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University
254. Sanjaya Kumar Bohidar, Shri Ram College of Commerce, Delhi University
255. Simona Sawhney, IIT Delhi
256. Dr Debjani Sengupta, Indraprastha College for Women, University of Delhi
257. Anirban Gupta-Nigam, University of California, Irvine
258. Nandita Badami, University of California, Irvine
259. Sneha Gaddam, PhD Candidate, University of Leicester
260. Prabhu Mohapatra Department of History Univ of Delhi
261. Farida Khan, Univ. of Wisconsin Parkside
262. Pankaj Mehta, Dept. of Physics, Boston University
263. Tista Bagchi, University of Delhi
264. Ra Ravishankar, Bangalore
265. Sambuddha Chaudhuri, University of Pennsylvania
266. Ani Maitra, Colgate University
267. Ethel Brooks, Assoc. Prof., Dept. of Women’s and Gender Studies and Sociology, Rutgers University
268. Abha Dev Habib, Miranda House, University of Delhi
269. Surajit Mazumdar, Center for Economic Studies and Planning, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University
270. Sonajharia Minz, Professor, School of Computer & Systems Sciences, JNU
271. Vinay Kumar Ambedkar
272. Naveen Gaur, Associate Professor, Dyal Singh College, University of Delhi
273. Margot Weiss, Wesleyan University
274. Vivekananda Mukherjee, Professor, Dept. of Economics, Jadavpur University
275. Dr Shakira Hussein, National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies, Asia Institute, University of Melbourne
276. Udaya Kumar, Professor, CES, School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, JNU
277. Kriti Budhiraja, Graduate Student, University of Minnesota
278. Radhika Balakrishnan, Rutgers University
279. Seema Saha Poddar
280. Poulomi Saha, Assistant Professor of English, UC Berkeley
281. Swapnil Deshmukh, Mumbai University
282. Dr Lata Singh
283. Tyler Feaver, Wright State University
284. Pavithra Vasudevan, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
285. Santosh Rohit Yerrabolu, Buffalo, NY
286. Professor V V Krishna, Centre for Studies in Science Policy, SSS, JNU
287. Amy E. Alterman, Graduate Student, University of California Los Angeles
288. Ian Duncan, Professor of English, University of California, Berkeley
289. Bir singh, Asstt. Professor, Dept. of Economics, University of Delhi
290. Amit Singh, Postdoctoral Fellow, Northwestern University
291. Poonam Srivastava, University of Chicago, Postdoc Researcher
292. Omnia El Shakry, University of California, Davis
293. Jhuma Sen, O.P. Jindal Global University, India
294. Corey Payne and Chase Alston, Co-Presidents of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Johns Hopkins University
295. Sankaran Krishna, Professor, Dept. of Political Science, University of Hawaii at Manoa
296. Mytheli Sreenivas, Ohio State University
297. Preeti Shekar, Asian College of Journalism
298. Susan Himmelweit, Emeritus Professor of Economics, Faculty of Social Sciences, Open University, Walton Hall, UK
299. Kalyani Monteiro Jayasankar, Graduate Student, Princeton University
300. Nicolau Dols, Universitat de les Illes Balears, Spain
301. Kartik Misra, Graduate Student, Dept. of Economics, UMass, Amherst
302. Dolly Daftary, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan
303. Sugata Ray, Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science
304. Martin Kich, Wright State University