Things fall apart

Every morning, Hasan (name changed) leaves his five-room house at Badgaon in Srinagar and sets out to find odd jobs. For ₹3,000 a month, he works as a mason, labourer or carpenter. Hasan is 27 years old and, for all purposes, the head of a family of four brothers, two sisters, a working mother and an invalid father. He also holds a degree in sociology and a Masters in education, obtained through distance learning at the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU). “I could be a teacher but there are no jobs here. So I do mazdoori,” he says.

Despite the boom in higher education institutions in Jammu & Kashmir, the sector has seen a considerable gap between policies and implementation. According to a HRD ministry report, the State has one of the lowest concentrations of colleges — 14 per lakh people compared to the all-India average of 23. With four of his siblings pursuing correspondence courses, Hasan considers his 16-year-old brother Ahmed (name changed) lucky. As part of the Prime Minister’s Special Scholarship Scheme, Ahmed was chosen for an AICTE-approved institute outside Kashmir. In 2013, he enrolled at the Swami Vivekanand Subharti University (SVSU) in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, for a BA LLB course. Yet, for three months now, Ahmed and his family have been living under a shadow of controversy and uncertainty.

On March 3, SVSU hit the headlines for ‘expelling’ 67 Kashmiri students following a scuffle that broke out on its campus the previous night over the India-Pakistan Asia Cup semi-final. During the match, which was playing at a TV room in one of the 13 hostels on campus, passions were running high and students were cheering fervently for both sides. Things came to a head when the Kashmiri students rooting for Pakistan were accused of being ‘anti-national’. The next day, they were booked under section 124A (sedition; withdrawn later), 153A (promoting enmity between groups) and 427 (mischief) of IPC. They were slapped with a fine of ₹5,000 and asked to leave the campus for three days. Three days turned into three months, thanks to a heated election campaign in a communally sensitive State.

In May, a hostel in Greater Noida reported a similar incident, in which three Kashmiri students at a private university in Noida were allegedly forced to shout anti-Pak slogans and subsequently beaten up.

Last week, the 67 Kashmiri students returned to the SVSU campus. According to the vice-chancellor, Professor Manzoor Ahmed, “major portions of the internal inquiry by the university are over.” A separate inquiry is being conducted by the Meerut police, findings of which are not out yet. Meanwhile, the university has cancelled the expulsion of 57 Kashmiri students, allowing them to resume their studies. The remaining 10 have been asked to leave. They will be given migration certificates on request and no mention of the incident will be made; 16-year-old Ahmed is one of them. “But we haven’t asked for a migration certificate. We want him to continue to study there,” says Hasan.

The jury is out

Three months after the incident and two near-complete inquiries later, the original question remains: What happened that night? According to the video evidence on YouTube of a few Kashmiri students who spoke out, others had taken offence at the pro-Pak cheering and thrashed them. “If the seniors hadn’t intervened, we’d have been beaten to death,” said one of them. They also alleged that a similar incident had occurred in February — “Jaan leva hamla tha” (a near fatal attack) — adding that the injured student had to get stitches.

While the VC denies any knowledge of it, Rabia Altaf, who runs an NGO, All India Centre for Urban and Rural Development (AICURD) in Srinagar, says there have been at least five other incidents in the last two years at SVSU. “One or two of them were serious in nature but I won’t reveal anything about them,” says Rabia Baaji, as she is fondly called. Since 2012, her organisation has been instrumental in sending hundreds of economically backward Kashmiri students through the Prime Minister’s Scholarship Scheme, including the 67 students at SVSU. Each year, under the ₹1,200-crore scheme that got off to a shaky start in 2011, about 5,000 Kashmiri students are sent across the country, some of whom continue to face problems as the scholarship funds haven’t been entirely disbursed. Faced with termination letters from their colleges, many have had no choice but to return to the Valley.

“See, I don’t know what happened exactly (on March 2). But I suspect at least two of them (Kashmiris) were miscreants,” says Baaji, whose Srinagar office was allegedly attacked by students. Baaji, who contested elections as an independent in Srinagar, also blames the media and parties for politicising the issue. “The students would’ve returned in three days if it wasn’t for the media... For all the other incidents, I went to the university and solved the issues on the spot.”

Citing a recent survey that shows the average Kashmiri has become more irritable and argumentative in the last two decades, Baaji says, “Kashmiri students need to be understood. There’s a sentiment towards Pakistan. They are emotional. These are children who’ve grown up in an atmosphere of strife and human rights violations, they need counselling.”

Junaid, a first year B Pharma student admits to nothing. “In case it (causing damage to property) happened, I’m not saying it did, I wasn’t even there… but even if it did, a penalty should’ve been enough.” Some say they’ve been told to avoid speaking to the media.

“The university is not an island,” says the VC when asked to give his version of the incident. “It is in the city. Violence happens.” So will the university help the 10 students find placement elsewhere? “We have nothing to do with that,” he says. When we ask if SVSU has taken or is considering taking action against the non-Kashmiri students present at the time, he says, “They weren’t involved. There was no confrontation. Then why will we take action?”

“My brother didn’t do anything, he doesn’t even watch cricket,” says Hasan. Admissions for the scholarship scheme are over by January. “If they let him go now, Ahmed will lose not one, but two years. Where will he go?”

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