The JNU row has inflamed not just Indian students but also students from abroad. Scholars on the other side of the globe have come together in support of JNUSU leader Kanhaiya Kumar.
Students of the famed Harvard University in the United States have joined the JNU protests to free Kanhaiya Kumar, who has been held on charges of sedation for participating in an anti-India demonstration.
In what is being deemed as the biggest nation-wide protest in over two decades, JNU student body head Kanhaiya Kumar’s detention under colonial-era laws, once used by the British to jail nationalist icons such as Mahatma Gandhi, has also aggrieved students at Harvard University.
A group of students gathered in Harvard Square to lodge their protest. They have demanded immediate release of Kanhaiya Kumar. Kumar was detained by the Delhi Police over his alleged anti-national comments.
The protesting students have faulted the NDA government for using the powerful sedition law against some of them. Meanwhile, over 400 academicians from international varsities, including Columbia, Yale, Harvard and Cambridge, have come out in support of JNU students.
A joint statement signed by 455 academicians from global universities, said, “JNU stands for a vital imagination of the space of the university an imagination that embraces critical thinking, democratic dissent, student activism, and the plurality of political beliefs.
It is this critical imagination that the current establishment seeks to destroy. And we know that this is not a problem for India alone.” Kumar’s detention over alleged anti-national comments and the violence surrounding it has exposed deep ideological differences about freedom of speech in India.
http://www.thehansindia.com/posts/index/National/2016-02-22/JNU-fire-reaches-Harvard/208871