Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi popularly known as JNU has been a center of debate for different reasons. Its debates often take a political turn. However, a movie named Jahangir National University is in controversy for allegedly being based on JNU. Students from the university are calling it a ‘propaganda film’ which is trying to malign the image of their university.
Sagar Singal, secretary of Student's Federation of India (SFI) said, “JNUSU is writing a memorandum to the Vice Chancellor regarding the movie.” He continued, “JNU has been under attack since 2016. The right wing is trying to defame our university, first with the movie Bastar and then JNU. This is all a part of systematic attack.” Singal continued saying that JNU will surely fight back and will not stay silent.
Another student, Himanshu Shukla, PhD student and an activist of AISA said that this movie is a result of ideological defeatism that the right wing faces in JNU. “They are not fighting against any idea rather the very idea of critical and free thinking that JNU entails. This is the reason why on one hand there is seat cut, fund cut and on the other hand there are movies like Bastar and JNU.”
Describing the movie as white-washing the incident that happened on January 5, 2020 wherein 50 masked people entered inside the university and allegedly beat the students, Priyanshu Suman said, “Based on the gist of the movie, it is clearly spreading misinformation about the fee hike incident. The movie is based on a person who is a right wing activist. In the movie, he is hailed as a hero but according to media reports he won the 2016 elections by rigging the votes. He is the face of the shutdown JNU movement.”
The opinion echoes not just with political wings of the university but also common students. Jahanvi Sodha, who is studying MA in Medieval History from JNU said, “the inherent assumption in the movie that the students aligned with the left are anti-national is absurd.”
“If the movie is based on true incidents, why did the students of JNU elect a left party president three days ago?”, said Vaseem Ahmed, a first year student at the university.
The film's IMDB page describes the plot as centering on Sourabh Sharma, a small-town JNU student, who "becomes restless" due to Left Wing "anti-national" activities on campus. The movie is scheduled for a release on April 5.
The debate is based on what students think the movie is about, the final verdict will be out on the day of the release.
