Author: Editorial
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: November 3, 2000
Students of Jawaharlal
Nehru University (JNU) who are also activists of the Students Federation
of India (SFI), showed themselves in poor light when they pushed, jostled
and abused a reporter of The Pioneer on Wednesday.
What triggered such disgraceful
behaviour on their part was his report in this paper about trouble in the
SFI and defections from it to the new organisation floated by Mr Saifuddin
Chaudhury, a leader who has been expelled from the Communist Party of India
(Marxist). The reporter's offer to publish a rejoinder by an SFI
leader who had described the report as false and in bad taste, fell on
deaf ears. A group of SFI activists surrounded him in the JNU campus
and repeatedly sought to coerce him into revealing the source of his report,
paying no attention to his plea that no journalist worth his salt could
ever agree to do such a thing. By their action, the SFI activists
only conveyed the impression that they, in fact, had no rejoinder to submit
and were only trying to intimidate the reporter into not reporting developments
unfavourable to them.
The action of the SFI
activists displayed an intolerance of the freedom of the Press which is
one of the pillars on which a modern democracy rests. Though regrettable,
it hardly came as a surprise. The SFI is the students front organisation
of the CPI(M) which, cast originally in the Stalinist mould, is now finding
it difficult to reconstruct itself in a less authoritarian form.
It is not celebrated for its respect either for a democratic order or the
freedom of the Press. Significantly, there have been in recent months
several attacks on media persons doing no more than their duty in West
Bengal where the Left Front Government, spearheaded by the CPI(M), is facing
a serious challenge from the Trinamool Congress led by Ms Mamata Banerji,
and its ally, the Bharatiya Janata Party. On one occasion, journalists
were assaulted by activists of the CPI (M)'s front organisation among West
Bengal Government employees inside Writers' Building the administrative
seat of the State Government, itself. Though the assailants were
named, an inquiry conducted by the Government came to the profound conclusion
that no action could be taken against the accused employees as they had
filed an FIR against the journalists! With such examples available to them,
SFI activists in JNU could hardly have been expected to behave otherwise
than they did on Wednesday.
Apart from its impact
on the their own and the SFI's image, their action tends to lend credence
to the reports that have been appearing in the media about student indiscipline
and hooliganism at JNU. The latter in turn have tended to conduce
to the impression that the JNU, meant to be a centre of superior research
and academic excellence, is sinking into low-intensity anarchy. SFI
activists involved in Wednesday's incidence have, therefore, done serious
damage to their university where a great deal of high quality academic
work and research continues to be done.
