The Ambedkar-Periyar Study Circle is in solidarity with the #FTII students protest

PLSIGN PETITION BELOW IN SOLIDARITY

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/Arun_Jaitley_Information_and_Broadcasting_Minister_Withdraw_Nomination_of_Chairman_of_FTII/share/?

Students of Film and Television institute of India (FTII), Pune has been continuing their six day protest against the appointment of TV serial actor and a BJP member Gajendra Chauhan as Chairman of the governing council of the premier film and television institute by Information and Broadcasting Ministry.

Despite the strong opposition from all over India, the Modi government has been appointing unqualified and inexperienced candidate in the respective areas as head of higher education and premier institutions as well as intervene in the functions of such institutions by forcing the heads to quit their respective positions and make the institutions headless

The chaos induced by the political interference for the last one year has dragged the whole intellectual arena of India into an irrecoverable crisis. For instance, the appointments of Sudershan Rao as Chairman of the ICHR,  Zafar Sareshwala as the Chancellor of Maulana Azad University, Pahlaj Nihalani as the Chairman of the CBFC and the recent resignation of eminents like Dr. Amarthya sen (Nalanda University), Dr. Anil Kakodkar (Chairman of IITB), Prof. R Shevgaonkar (IIT Delhi director), Leela Samson (Chairman of CBFC), it is clear that, the vested interest of the present government is to impose and propagate the Hindutva agenda and curtail the democratic and progressive thoughts in academic fraternity through such interventions.

Though they proclaimed the Hindutva as source of knowledge and Vedic period as the era of innovations, from their wings, the present govt cudnt find even a single opt/qualified person with enough proven potential to chair any position.

Simultaneously the govt is cutting budget to Science, Technology, education and all kind of intellectual and cultural sectors on India. This is evidenced in the recent articles in Nature by Padma (March 02, 2015), the guest editorial in the recent issue of Current Science (10 May 2015) and in Frontline by Ramachandran (May 27, 2015).

Thus the development and morale of the intellectual community is lowered by making it “cashless and headless”. The duty of any citizen should be to rout the move of such regressive forces from pushing the intellectual sector of our country into a permanent saffron obscurity.

In this regard, we wish the present protest by the FTII student should be another setback for the attempt to push the society into obscurity.