‘Anti-student agenda’: JNUSU condemns JNU admin for cancelling Umar Khalid’s book discussion

The Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union (JNUSU) has condemned the JNU administration’s decision to cancel the discussion on Umar Khalid’s book, Fractured Communities, alleging that the "arbitrary" decision by the university admin is part of its “anti-student and anti-intellectual agenda.”

The discussion on Khalid’s book, “Fractured Communities, Adivasi Histories and the Politics of Power,” was scheduled to be held on August 10 from 3 pm to 6 pm at the university’s SSS-1 auditorium.

The JNU administration announced the cancelling of the discussion today and said: “JNU is a democratic and decentralised institution. The permission was given by Dean, SSS who has taken action as well in cancelling the event. The booking of the auditorium SSS-1 stands cancelled because of non-disclosure of the full facts about the program which is going to take place on 10th August 2026 from 3 pm to 6 pm.”

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However, the JNUSU has announced that the discussion on Fractured Communities will proceed as planned, outside the SSS-2 building, in the open, and expressed: “No administrative order can suppress the right of students to think, question, and discuss, and cancelling a room does not cancel a conversation.”

Explaining the reason behind the cancellation of the discussion, the JNU students’ union stated that according to the administration, "full details" were not disclosed at the time of booking, rings hollow.

Whereas, the JNUSU said: “It was the Dean of the School of Social Sciences who himself instructed that the booking be made in that very format. This contradiction lays bare the administration's true intent: to manufacture a pretext for censorship.”

Khalid’s book is a serious, long academic work on the struggle of Adivasi resistance and their struggles of “Jal, Jungle and Jameen”, and cancelling the discussion has exposed the admin’s anti-Adivasi ideology, it added.

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It also said that Khalid is a vocal defender of constitutional rights and civil liberties, and his continued imprisonment under the current government is the continued violation of the constitutional rights, and silencing discussion of his work is an extension of the same injustice.

The crackdown, according to the JNUSU, as a recent investigative report by journalist Alok Rajput was published by the Reporters' Collective, raising concerns regarding multiple faculty recruitment's at the level of associate professor and professor under the current vice chancellor.

Several appointees did not meet the minimum qualifications on teaching experience and publications as specified in the original advertisements, it said.

The JNUSU has also urged the JNU community, students, faculty and staff members to support and defend the academic and democratic character of our campus.