Right Wing Politics and attacks on Academic Freedom and Democratic Rights
Professor Sugata Marjit has written an article in the Times of India , attacking students' participation in politics. Having started with a disclaimer that since the issue is sub-judice it would not be right to comment about the specifics of the Jadavpur case, he goes on to make ample innuendos, and while the article heading talks about banning gheraos, in fact goes much further to demand: “first strategy will be to ban politics among the teachers, officials and non-teaching staff with exemplary punishment in case of violation”. (ToI, Sept. 27, 2014). Professor Marjit has been quite well known as a right wing scholar, a supporter of all the standard neo-liberal positions, and given his stature (former Director, CSSSC, editor of academic journals, a wikipedia article on him which is basically his publication list), one of the more well known academic faces of the current Trinamul Congress regime in West Bengal. Having served as a chair of the State Higher Education Counci