The Telangana government did not oppose bail. Chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao also said that he would refer the matter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, asking him to remove Appa Rao, after nearly a week of protests against his rejoining the campus.
The day the 25 students and two teachers of Hyderabad Central University got bail, teachers from Delhi's government universities strongly condemned their arrest, the police violence that took place on the HCU campus and called for the immediate removal of controversial Vice Chancellor Podile Appa Rao. The teachers addressed the press on Monday in New Delhi, saying there could be no compromise on removing Appa Rao.
The Telangana government did not oppose bail. Chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao also said that he would refer the matter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, asking him to remove Appa Rao, after nearly a week of protests against his rejoining the campus.
Appa Rao had gone on an indefinite leave after the suicide of Dalit PhD student Rohith Vemula, and a case under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act had been filed against him, as his actions were found to be culpable to abetment to suicide. Teachers from Delhi University, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Jamia Millia Islamia, Ambedkar University and South Asian University, under the banner of Federation of Central Universities' Teachers' Associations (FEDCUTA), a nation-wide body, took this issue up strongly, asking how could Appa Rao return when there was a pending judicial enquiry against him.
The teachers also demanded the immediate release of the arrested students and dropping all charges against them. They called for legal action against the police officers who "abused, manhandled and beat up" students and faculty; an independent enquiry into the incidents of violence and ABVP's role in them; passage of the Rohith Act against caste discrimination in education; judicial enquiry into the role of the HRD Minister, and that of Union Minister Bandaru Dattatreya in "inciting violence against Dalits on campus and the death of Rohith Vemula".
Nandita Narain from DU, speaking as the president of FEDCUTA, called Appa Rao's return highly "stage-managed" and "secretive", despite the MHRD committee that investigated Vemula's death holding HCU administration guilty.
She, and the other teachers such as Ajay Patnaik, president of the JNU Teachers Association and Manisha Sethi from Jamia Millia Islamia, called the police violence on protesting students, and cutting them off from food, water, electricity, ATMs, the Internet akin to "war crimes".
Sethi added that the police behaviour on a university campus was reminiscent to state forces' behaviour in areas in Chhattisgarh, where villages would be cut off and collectively punished.
"This is an attempt to close down public funded higher education," said Narain, linking the matter back to student protests for their scholarships, under threat from WTO-GATS talks that will see the end of subsidies to public education.
They brought up that Rohith too was suffering because he hadn't been given his scholarship for months.
Narain said that the crackdown was more on communities that have been historically marginalised, as they were the ones questioning the system.
"An attack on public education is an attack on dalits, adivasis, minorities, women," said N Sukumar, a political science professor at DU, and a HCU alumni who was part of the Ambedkar Students Association.
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