To,
The Jamia Teachers’ Association (JTA) & Jamia Administration,
I am from J&K Hostel, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. I want to share with all of you what I am facing during this lockdown. Since the start of the Janta Curfew, my hostel warden constantly called my parents and asked them to shift me from the hostel to any other place. After many issues, I shifted to a PG. Living in this place has only brought on more problems for me.
In the last two months, I have faced immense difficulties with regard to the payment of the room rent and even with the availability of essential things. Recently, I got the news that finally, Jamia’s authority was providing transportation facilities for students to help them return to their homes. After getting the news, I tried to contact the provost, the proctor, the hostel warden, and even the department teachers but all of them refused to take responsibility for me. I have given up on them. No hopes at all.
We genuinely wish peace and happiness for you because we know what the level of distress is when one is miles away from their family, stuck away in a far fetched place, with no one to help them out, not even with the basic amenities; let alone love and care. You proclaimed yourselves to be our guardians every now and then, and now when the time came, you presented us with deafening silence to us. “Kahna toh bahut kuch hai, lekin phir bhi lab khamosh hain”. Because we complain only to Allah.
On our way home now, with the help of Jamia students, right from arranging the buses to looking after us in the middle of the night, we can realize just an ounce of the trouble which our innocent friends are facing who are languishing in the jails and have been wrongly incarcerated. They are being witch-hunted because they asked for their rights and rightly questioned the government.
Yes, we stand with Sharjeel Imam, Abid Husain Zaidi, Sir, can you hear me? We stand with Sharjeel Imam. Last time when we extended our solidarity to the ones who stood for us, you called us local goons. It was you and the administration who targeted my friends because they dared to say it to the face of the liberal-seculars, that we stand with Sharjeel Imam.
You belittled the position of your office. You called your goons and slapped my friends, you harassed them. What is it which doesn’t let you see the struggles of Sharjeel and Safoora and Meeran and so many like them? Is it your dying morality or your covenant with the fascists? And when you go around giving ‘solidarity’, why does it stop when it comes to these leaders? Because they assert their identity while leading the struggle for our oppressed community? Or because they are assertive Muslim scholars whom we proudly claim as our leaders? Unlearn the fear, Sir, and read, and learn.
It is time that you accept the pouring solidarities for Sharjeel imam and all the Jamia students who have been wrongly incarcerated, who stood for us and for the matter of fact, who stood even for your rights!
How low is your morale? At the time when you should have shown solidarity to the students who were opposing the massive wrongs perpetrated by the fascists in this country, you choose to speak nothing? Don’t you remember the struggles of the very University you teach in? Or did your forget it just like your humanity? And why are we even expecting anything from you? When students from the University were being booked under UAPA, you were busy pleasing the administration.
You didn’t have the courage to face the fascists like our leaders, but you could have at least looked after the University students who were stuck away, far from home. It seems you have forgotten this in the comfort of your homes, but this is a global pandemic!
We feel sorry for expecting you to act as our teachers. You have become morally corrupt, we worry for you.
We know our struggles. We will stand with our leaders. Safoora Zargar, Meeran Haider, Asif Iqbal Tanha, Shifa-ur-Rehma, and Sharjeel Imam are the face of our resistance. We stand with each one of them.