Shame on BJP for imposing Emergency on FTII

Speak up and protest before it is too late, for you could be next!

Shame on the BJP government, especially ministers Arun Jaitley and Rajyavardhan Rathore for ordering this midnight crackdown on the protesting students!

It is time for everyone to speak out and condemn this in the strongest manner possible. The students have been agitating for a dialogue, repeatedly requesting Jaitley, the senior minister for a meeting, to discuss the issues surrounding the appointment of a dubious C-grade actor, an active BJP member, as the chairman of the Film and Television Institute of India. Many across the film fraternity and the intelligentsia, including some ruling party members and sympathisers have criticised the government for this. The details of the four other dubious members of the newly-constituted governing council are already in public realm - these include an "eminent filmmaker" dubbed clueless about filmmaking by a Pune court in 2014, as well as members who wish to impose "nationalism" on the campus.

In the 70 days since the strike commenced, we have all hoped sense would prevail, that these ministers will pay heed to saner counsel, but instead, they have cracked down in draconian style, even taking girls on the campus to the police station at midnight. Ironically, Jaitley himself speaks volubly and frequently about the repression he faced as a student leader in 1975-76, when he was jailed for his opposition to the imposition of the Emergency by Indira Gandhi. Now, he is proving to be her successor as a bonafide authoritarian leader!

I urge everyone reading this post to register their protest. Decide how you wish to do it, but speak up, for silence is no longer an option!

Email the minister (ajaitley@sansad.nic.in) and the ministry (jspna-moib@gov.in) and/or organise demonstrations and protests in your institutions, colleges and universities and/or speak out on Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms and/or wear protest bands, on your film and TV sets, get your crews to sign protest letters and send them to the ministry and/or speak to the press - print, TV, online.

This is not an isolated institute's fight for some petty demands, but about the deliberate perversion of the education system, attacks on autonomy, targeting of independent centres of excellence and a dictatorial attempt to suppress any voices that raise questions.

Speak, before it is too late, for you could be next...

(This first appeared on the writer's Facebook page.)