Increasing Diversity by Increasing Access (IDIA) founder and managing trustee Shamnad Basheer has condemned NUJS Kolkata’s administration distancing itself from IDIA, following the alleged brutal assault of IDIA volunteers studying at NUJS.
The NUJS administration had made a press release and statements last week that the beaten students “did not have any prior approval from the WBNUJS authorities”, and that NUJS was a separate organisation from IDIA.
In a statement that he released on Linkedin, Basheer over the weekend called out the response of his former employer, NUJS, to the incident as being “pathetic” and a “disappointment”, saying:
Our statement on the murderous assault on our NUJS IDIA team members by state goondas. And our disappointment with the pathetic response of the WB NUJS administration (VC and Registrar). Though I must say that individual faculty members went out of their way to provide emotional and other support to the students.
I had no idea of the extent of trauma suffered by these students till I visited them recently. Hope they heal. And heal well.
We decided to express our anguish in verse. All details in IDIA blog link below. And I extract our short verse (“Walk the Talk”) below.
Walk the Talk
They taught us the talk,
Justice, equity and all.
But whither the walk?
To help those in need,
With many mouths to feed.
Our hearts yearn to do What our books command us to!
So we strive to set right,
The notoriety of might.
But they ravage and maul State goondas, so tall!
Bruised and maimed,
We return to be shamed?
“How reckless, how trite,
How dare you do what’s right!
Go back to your books.
Grades, moots and all.
As a student, that’s your only call!
When you can talk the talk, why walk the walk?
At your notion of justice, we do balk!
The beauty of law is in the book That’s the only place you need to look!”
IDIA was founded by Basheer in March 2010, while he was a professor at NUJS as a mass movement to support the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) preparation of selected students from underprivileged communities in India, through sponsors within and beyond the legal profession.
Basheer resigned from NUJS in 2014 after differences with Prof Ishwara Bhat who was the law school’s vice chancellor (VC) at the time and has continued as VC to date.
IDIA has evolved over time from helping underprivileged scholarly students get into law schools, to the scholars then acting on the principle of paying it forward and taking up various socio-legal initiatives while in law school.
It was one such initiative by the IDIA volunteers studying at NUJS that led them to confront a contractor proceeding with illegal demolition that was in contempt of court, and getting brutally assaulted and molested by the contractor’s goons in the process.
Comments
Also, the Registrar is SUPPOSED to go to the hospital when students under his care are injured. Human concerns aside, that's literally his bloody job!
@Kian: For the record, Bhat has done exactly zero to ensure student safety even within the campus. During his tenure, multiple girl students have complained about issues of external people getting into campus at night and events of molestation and harassment. Of course, the administration hushes it up every single time. Just over the past couple of weeks, there have two cases of assault and battery within campus, where two students have been quite seriously injured. One of them has even filed a police complaint.
Second, why on earth is IDIA treated in such a step-motherly fashion? The private organisation in question, while not related to NUJS, comprises students of the university. In this hour, perhaps the university administration could overlook petty differences with Prof. Basheer and support the students irrespective of their affiliation with a private organisation.
It does not bode well for a university professing to teach legal principles if it in turn doesn't protect its own especially when they are trying to implement the same principles that the University itself is teaching.
I would like to thank the Registrar for his actions, but still express disappointment in the manner in which the administration is taking steps to disassociate itself from IDIA rather than protecting its students and helping prosecute those those attached them.
Is it IDEA or IDIA? Without knowing about the basic of IDIA Charitable Trust, lets not comment, just because you have to comment in favour of your cartoon VC :)
How, in this entire issue, is IDIA or its affiliation with NUJS, the main bone of contention? Everyone needs to realise that private parties, in violation of an order of the Calcutta High Court, have demolished the living quarters of poor people and evicted them and in the process, physically assaulted and intimated persons at the site (who also happen to be students of NUJS).
Stop trying to divert attention from the main issue. Ask Bhat to put all his 'moral' authority in seeking justice for his students who have been assaulted.
No institution, that too, a statutory institution would jump the gun and file a police complaint for acts that happened in the course of a student's activities outside law school. No high horse and all. This is reality.
Kudos to the Registrar for supporting the students despite the VS's alleged disinterest. If true, the VC is a terrible man. But it stops there. The university was perfectly correct in not taking an official stance. It appears that the acts complained of did not take place inside the campus or pursuant to the official activities of the law school.
The VC might be a bad guy but there is a need to discriminate between when the institution had acted correctly and when the institution has not. It appears that the institution's stance is correct. But the VC could have acted in a kind manner in helping out the injured students in any way possible.