Journalism of Courage
Among the students eligible to get their degree from Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) during its centenary convocation ceremony Sunday was student activist Asif Iqbal Tanha, whose six-semester exams were cut short following his arrest in the 2020 Northeast Delhi riots case. Tanha (27) was arrested in the main conspiracy case filed under the UAPA. He was granted bail in the case by the Delhi High Court in 2021.
This was JMI’s first convocation after the pandemic and around 12,500 students completed their courses in the interim, including around 800 gold medallists and PhD students, the university said.
While Tanha could not collect his degree, he reflected on how he managed to finish his course while in jail for 13 months. He had enrolled in the BA (Honors) Persian course at Jamia in 2017.
“I was arrested in May 2020 due to which I missed out on appearing for three exams in my sixth semester. When we were called for investigation in April that year, I wanted to make sure I could finish as many assignments as possible in case I ended up in jail,” he said.
“I prepared for one of my exams from jail and appeared for it when I was granted relief by the court in June 2021 for 15 days,” he added.
He also said access to material was limited, which led to his scores dropping. “My classmates would send notes through my lawyers… but preparing in jail was difficult. There were no teachers to clarify doubts… As I was studying a language, I needed a dictionary but not much material was allowed inside the jail. It was limited to texts included in the syllabus,” added Tanha.
Tanha is now working as a researcher with the Association of Protection of Civil Rights. He hails from Jharkhand. His father was a teacher in a private school and mother a housewife.
The Indian Express also spoke to gold medallists who received awards on the occasion. Among them was Sadaf Zareen (29), who received the medal for being the 2020 batch topper in Mass Communication.
“It feels good to come back to my alma mater after three years, meet friends, teachers and staff who have been part of my journey in Jamia. In a way, this medal is not just mine, it belongs to everyone I collaborated with on different group projects. It’s also a matter of great pride for my parents and family who watched a live stream of the ceremony,” said Zareen, who hails from Delhi and currently works as an associate producer at a media firm in Mumbai.
Zareen’s father is an engineer and her mother a retired public school teacher. This is her second masters degree. Her first was in Modern Indian History from Delhi University.
