NEW DELHI: Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) has cancelled a student-organised discussion on a book authored by former student Umar Khalid, scheduled on the campus on Monday, citing “non-disclosure of the full facts” about the programme.The discussion was centred on Khalid’s book, Fractured Communities: Adivasi Histories and the Politics of Power, based on his PhD thesis submitted at JNU’s Centre for Historical Studies in 2018. Khalid has been in custody since Sept 2020 in the larger conspiracy case related to the 2020 northeast Delhi riots. The event was scheduled from 3pm to 6pm at the School of Social Sciences (SSS)-I auditorium.The university, in a post on its official X handle on Sunday, said the auditorium booking had been cancelled “because of non-disclosure of the full facts about the programme”. It posted, “JNU is a democratic and decentralised institution. The permission was given by the dean, SSS, who has taken action as well in cancelling the event.” The post tagged the Prime Minister, Vice-President, and Union home, external affairs, finance and education ministers.According to the poster circulated for the event, the discussion was being organised to mark ‘International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples’. The speakers were prof Prabhu Mahapatra and prof Uma Chakravarti, writer Shuddhabrata Sengupta, activist Harsh Mander and Banojyotsna Lahiri, Khalid’s partner.The documents related to the booking show that the event had gone through the formal process. A booking form submitted to SSS mentions the purpose as “public talk for adivasi diwas (book discussion)”, with the date, time and venue specified. The form names SSS professor Avinash Kumar as the faculty representative who would be present at the programme.The booking was approved by the dean of the school on Aug 7. However, in a notice issued by joint registrar MK Pachauri on Aug 9, SSS informed Kumar that the booking stood cancelled for “non-disclosure of the full facts”. The notice was issued with the approval of the dean, SSS, and copies were marked to the SSS councillor, JNU chief security officer and the guard at SSS-I.JNU has not specified what information was not disclosed in the booking request. Queries sent to vice-chancellor Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit on the same were forwarded to the SSS dean, who did not respond.JNU Students’ Union said it would go ahead with the discussion outside the venue. “Cancelling a room does not cancel a conversation,” it declared.Khalid’s book is based on his doctoral thesis and examines the history of adivasi societies in the Singhbhum region of present-day Jharkhand under British rule.Condemning the cancellation, JNU Teachers’ Association called it “an administrative instrument” for policing legitimate academic discussions on the campus and demanded its immediate withdrawal.ABVP JNU claimed the event was cancelled following its protests and shouldn’t have been permitted in the first place.
