New Delhi: A large number of students gathered outside Jawaharlal Nehru University’s (JNU) School of Social Sciences-II building for a discussion on JNU alumnus jailed activist Umar Khalid’s book, Fractured Communities: Adivasi Histories and the Politics of Power on Monday (August 10), after the university withdrew permission to host the discussion in an auditorium.“We condemn this cowardly administration that cancels [events] due to fear,” said JNU students’ union president Aditi Mishra. “We gave a befitting reply to those who tried to take our books, our classrooms away from us,” she said in a statement after the event.Permission was earlier given for the event to mark Adivasi Divas, the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, but the university later claimed that “full facts” about it were not disclosed when students booked a hall. The event was then moved by the students to the new location. Maktoob reports that “hundreds of students” gathered for the event.“By cancelling the venue for this event, the JNU administration has once again exposed its anti-student and anti-intellectual agenda, one that seeks to suppress critical thought and silence dissenting voices rather than foster the free exchange of ideas that a university is meant to protect,” JNUSU had said in a statement. JNUSU had also said in a post on X that the event “would be held tomorrow“, August 10. The statement also said that “cancelling a room does not cancel a conversation”.An updated invitation issued by JNUSU with the new venue for the discussion on jailed activist Umar Khalid’s book.Khalid is imprisoned in Tihar Jail since September 2020 as an undertrial facing a “larger conspiracy” case related to the violence in Delhi in February-March that year.The university administration wrote in a post on X on Sunday (August 9), “The booking of the auditorium SSS-1 stands cancelled because of non-disclosure of the full facts about the program.”The post shared a form submitted by students seeking to host the event in the SSS-1 [School of Social Sciences] auditorium. In front of the “purpose” slot, the applicant had stated, “Public Talk for Adivasi Divas (Book Discussion).” The form shows that the event was approved to be hosted on the first working day after Adivasi Divas, August 10.The university also shared on X an invitation sent by the JNU Students Union (JNUSU), in which the book and guests were described in detail. It featured the cover of Khalid’s book.The book, published in 2026, has been widely discussed and reviewed in recent weeks. It was submitted by Khalid as his PhD thesis to the university’s own Department of History in 2018, which accepted it, and it was later published in book form.The gathering at SSS-1, as the invitation shows, was scheduled to host historians Prabhu Mahapatra and Uma Chakravarti, artist Shuddhabrata Sengupta, activist Harsh Mander and scholar Banojyotsna Lahiri, apart from students.From the two images posted on X, the university administration sought to indicate that the form seeking to book an auditorium for the discussion does not mention the name of the author. It suggests that had the university known the discussion was about Khalid’s book, it would not have been given permission.The administration also added a text message to the X post: “JNU is a democratic and decentralised institution. The permission was given by Dean, SSS who has taken action as well in cancelling the event.” In other words, since the permission to use the auditorium is being withdrawn by the professor who first granted it, JNU was both “democractic and decentralised”.The JNUSU statement accused the administration of “double standards” in hosting events led by ISKON, a Hindu religious outfit, while “denying space for a legitimate academic discussion”. It said the permission form for booking the auditorium was done as per the norms.