SIO in Solidarity with TISS Strike – Nahas Mala (President, SIO of India)

by | Mar 1, 2018

Students Islamic Organization of India expresses its deepest of condemnation and denunciation to the TISS (Tata Institute of Social Sciences) administration’s continuing policy of withdrawing scholarships and financial aids to the students from marginalized backgrounds. The TISS administration had previously withdrawn the support given for the OBC (NC) students in 2015. The recent move by the administration to similarly withdraw the support to SC/ST students are only going to further marginalize the already marginalized to the extreme extends. The administration has also been hiking the fees to unreasonable levels making it difficult for the unprivileged to gain access to education.

The history of knowledge production in India shows that it has always been a brahminical sphere. It had always made sure that only the socially dominant has an entry into it. History also shows that any attempt from the below to enter into the sphere was thwarted cruelly. The university and college spaces across India have continued to be, in this way, academic ‘agraharas’. There were small but significant changes being made to this tyrannical order when the marginalized and oppressed classes began gaining entry into the educational spheres as a result of the reservation and affirmative policies. Such policies of scholarships and fellowships were fundamental to these changes. Any attack on such policies and support structures is going to reverse all the progress that has been made. Coupled with this, the neo-liberal agenda of the BJP government of privatization of education has further worked to worsen the situation. The educational sphere being increasingly run purely on the basis of profit-motive and the state actively withdrawing from the sphere has resulted in the soaring up of fees to unreasonable levels. These have in turn made education a luxury and an unattainable dream to the unprivileged as it has become unaffordable and inaccessible to them. All these have meant the shutting down the doors of education and empowerment on the face of the unprivileged. This is going to reverse the educational spheres back into being purely brahmanic ‘agraharas’. All these attempts at marginalizing and oppressing the socially backward needs to be resisted and fought.

In this context, the Students Islamic Organization of India expresses its complete solidarity to the Students’ Union and the students across all TISS campuses – Mumbai, Tuljapur, Hyderabad, and Guwahati who have been observing an indefinite strike against the brahmanic and oppressive move from the administration. SIO also condemns the administration’s recent remark of justification that these supports systems have only been a ‘favour’ to the students. SIO wants to make it clear that these have never been anybody’s compassionate ‘favour’ but the right of the oppressed which was won after a lot of relentless struggles. SIO further appeals the larger national student community to actively fight the neo-liberal urges to privatize and commodify education into merely a market good.

Syed Azharuddin

National Secretary, SIO of India)

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