The Conscience Collective is a struggle against institutional & self-censorship for these DU students
Tell us about the discussions leading up to this initiative.
We were beginning to feel that the spaces for anti status-quo discussions and knowledge production were shrinking in and around the university.
This shrinking was not just limited to official or administrative censorship.
It was also about a general atmosphere where questioning was discouraged. The fear of being repressed by dominant forces was internalised among many students, which led to self-censorship even before someone else could stop us. Important discourse was not just being merely limited, it was not starting out in the first place.
Our initiative thus arose as an independent venture, not affiliated to any college, department, or university — without fear of institutional repression, attitudes of questioning dominant discourses could start to flow.
What would be the purpose of the website and tell us what it is that you wish to achieve.
We wish to grow our audience, so that discussions that would otherwise be sidelined or marginalised can be brought to the attention of others. We have our website as we discovered that it was the most efficient way of getting people to read our articles. A website link for an article requires the least amount of effort from a reader.
Additionally, it has the advantage of being an online repository accessible at a moment's notice.
Have you faced censorship at the university? In your words, please tell us why this is such a huge problem in universities.
Yes, we have faced censorship at the university. As mentioned before, aside from institutional censorship which is obviously a growing problem, there is a psychological self-censorship as well — an unquestioning attitude towards dominant discourses.
This is something we would like to struggle against, The Conscience Collective being our attempt at that.
Your very first post is about Manipur, what other topics can we expect in the upcoming posts.
We have no limitations on our topics. Our website mentions different themes, and articles beyond these themes are also welcome. Because censorship is always political, our struggle against it is also, by definition, a political one.
However, we look forward to showcasing works on policy, history, geopolitics, and so on.
With social media, sharing opinions has become an easy thing to do. How does your website stand out?
Most importantly, our website offers the chance for long-form “content”. We hope that this opportunity would lead to well written articles and essays, not just quotations and attention-grabbing reels.
Tell us how you plan on expanding the scope of the website.
Right now, we wish to cultivate the readership base that we already have, which is about 200 regular readers. Our motto in this regard is quality over quantity. However, we are also confident that there are more people who would be interested in such an initiative.
We would like to expand beyond Delhi for the same. Once we have an established readership, and better footing, we will expand more.
