De-registration of student activist sparks campus protests

The student registration of social activist Safoora Zargar was cancelled this week, leading to campus protests by supporters who say she is being targeted for being at the forefront of several protests against India’s contentious nationality law, the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), in 2020.

The sociology department at Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) university in New Delhi, where Zargar has been registered for the integrated MPhil-PhD programme since 2019, cancelled Zargar’s registration as an MPhil student on 29 August, ostensibly for not being able to complete work in time. She had been in police custody and dealing with charges during 2020.

“Let it be known, it breaks my heart but not my spirit,” Zargar tweeted. “The usually snail-paced Jamia admin moving at light speed to cancel my admission, foregoing all due process,” she added.

Both Zargar and the university insist they are following the regulations. Student protests against the JMI university administration broke out on 30 August motivated by perceptions that the university had targeted Zargar for her role in demonstrations against the CAA, a law passed by the Indian parliament on 11 December 2019, and widely seen as discriminatory towards minority Muslims. In 2020 the law sparked protests, which turned violent, in parts of the country.

Zargar was arrested and accused of being part of a “conspiracy” to cause riots and of delivering a provocative speech on 23 February 2020. She and other student leaders from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi were accused of being the masterminds behind the February 2020 Delhi violence which led to 50 deaths over 10 days.

Zargar, who was pregnant at the time, remained in custody from 10 April to 24 June 2020. Delhi Police said she was embroiled in a “sinister design” with the “objective of uprooting a democratically elected government”. The High Court of Delhi granted Zargar bail on 23 June 2020 and she was released the next day.

Responding to the cancellation of her student registration, Zargar told University World News: “I don’t know the reason behind this cancellation. Due process actually takes a lot of time, but the letter from the university came very suddenly. And it [came] in anticipation of the faculty committee meeting.”

“Even when the faculty committee met, they had already made up their mind(s) that my admission had to be cancelled. What I feel is that my rights have been violated,” she said.

The office of the dean, faculty of social sciences, in a notification dated 26 August, said Zargar did not submit her MPhil dissertation within the maximum stipulated time of five semesters.

The university additionally said she did not submit within five semesters plus an additional semester of extension granted to scholars by higher education regulator the University Grants Commission (UGC) in view of the COVID-19 pandemic situation. That extension ended on 6 February 2022, with no provision for any further COVID-related extensions as per the UGC notification.

Argument over processes

The cancellation was approved by the sociology department’s board of studies, the highest decision-making body of the department.

According to the JMI administration, Zargar had been given extensions several times over the years, and the university had tried its best to help her, but the administration maintained that her performance had not been satisfactory.

Zargar’s supervisor and the Research Advisory Committee recommended cancellation of her admission. The recommendation of the Research Advisory Committee was then approved by the Department Research Committee.

A senior faculty member at JMI, on condition of anonymity, said: “Whatever the university is saying and whatever they have done was as per the [JMI] ordinance. We have been doing everything as per the ordinance.”

The faculty member added: “The department has been extremely considerate of her circumstances. It is not as if she has not been given due regard for her situation. Everyone has actually gone out of the way to help her and support her. But if she is not able to complete her work in the stipulated timeframe, and neither is she applying for extension before the expiry of that time period, she cannot blame the department. We wished she could have completed it, but she did not.”

However, Zargar said: “I don’t need to apply for the extension. I should have been given the COVID-19 extension which was a blanket extension. But even then, I applied when my department asked me to apply. I applied as per the ordinance.

“When I applied, even then they sat [on it] for three months. Then in July they conducted the meeting and the university letter said that my application has been retrospectively cancelled. It also said that my application was cancelled on 7 February,” she said. “When it was cancelled in February, why did the meeting take place in July?”

Campus protests

Zargar joined the protests against cancellation of her MPhil admission on the JMI campus, together with members of various student organisations, including the Students Islamic Organisation of India (SIO), the Campus Front of India and the Fraternity Movement which is the student wing of the Welfare Party of India.

A leader of the Fraternity Movement, Afreen Fatima, who was also active in the CAA protests in June, highlighted what she called the politically motivated demolition of her family home.

SIO National Secretary Rameses EK said there was no reason not to give Zargar an extension and alleged the university had deliberately targeted Zargar, making it impossible for her to submit her MPhil thesis. He said it was “quite arbitrary” for the university to say that Zargar’s progress was not satisfactory.

The Scholars At Risk network has said that around a third of 130 instances it has documented in India – of violence, detention, prosecution and other legal action aimed at punishing or restricting the academic and expressive activity of scholars and students in India since May 2017 – have targeted students and scholars protesting against the CAA.

Several student activists at JNU who were pursuing PhDs were denied admission to continue the semester in 2022 after they put up posters on campus in 2019 (not linked to CAA). They included NS Balaji, former president of the JNU Students’ Union, who was fined and denied admission to his fourth year of doctoral studies.

In 2016, JNU blocked the re-registration of student activists Kanhaiya Kumar, then JNU Students’ Union president, as well as Umar Khalid and 19 others over protests on the JNU campus which led to sedition charges against Kumar and Khalid.