Meeting people at a party a couple of evenings ago, I was taken aback by a question one of them asked: “Do you think it’s internal sabotage?” I was surprised because I hadn’t thought about the Jawaharlal Nehru University imbroglio in that way. But it certainly made me pause. Only for a moment though, because the idea is not only preposterous but it also gives credit for too much intelligence to one side.
The theory being propounded was this: Before the start of each parliamentary session, a controversy erupts, which has the political Opposition up in arms against the government. The net result is that the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha sessions that follow get completely dominated by the latest agitation, and no business is transacted and no bills passed. “Is it just a coincidence,” the industrialist friend asked earnestly, “that this happens every single time?”
Who would want to sabotage the National Democratic Alliance’s development programme from inside? The only possible saboteur would be the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, but why would it when it seems to be having its way completely in running this government? If you look at the JNU controversy, the two main architects (sorry my architect friends, no insult intended), are home minister Rajnath Singh and minister for human resources development Smriti Irani.
Both are staunchly RSS, and both seem to have the full support of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in what they do, and what they do not do. Given their performance in their jobs in the past year and a half, their bungling of the present crisis is entirely consistent with their capabilities.
If ever, our IIMs get down to introducing capsules on political management, the happenings at JNU would form an ideal “How Not To” segment. Let’s recap the sequence of events at JNU. The Democratic Students Union (DSU) asked for permission to hold a pro-Afzal Guru “cultural event”. This was granted by the vice-chancellor. The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (the BJP’s student wing) objected. The V-C, showing complete lack of guts, then withdrew permission, and did so just a few minutes before the event was to be held. DSU then said, ok, we will move our meeting to the campus canteen.
There are two questions to ask here. Was the DSU right in asking for an event related to Afzal Guru? After all, he was hanged for the terrorist attack on Parliament, so wasn’t the students’ union being unpatriotic? I am not sure about “unpatriotic”; however, one can certainly say the students were being insensitive and even provocative.
However, in the case of Afzal Guru, there is caveat: Many people believe he should not have been hanged. This includes the People’s Democratic Party, the ruling party in Kashmir in a coalition with the BJP, which called Afzal’s hanging “a travesty of justice”. It follows, then, that if the DSU is guilty of being anti-national, so, by association, is the BJP.
Why has the Afzal Guru hanging agitated such a diverse group of people? It shouldn’t, right-wing “nationalists” will tell you stridently (their usual conversational tone), because he had confessed. They conveniently omit to mention that the Supreme Court itself rejected this so-called confession.
The court said that “the language and tenor of the confessional statement (suggest that) it was a tailor-made statement”. In short, the court was saying that the confession was coerced. The Supreme Court also found “lapses and violations of procedural safeguards” in the evidence. Why, then, was Afzal Guru found guilty? Because of overwhelming circumstantial evidence. Would circumstantial evidence alone be enough to hang a person?
The answer would be a definite “No” in almost all cases. Therein lies the feeling of sympathy for Afzal Guru — he should have been jailed for life, not given capital punishment. Now tell me, is debate on this subject not a permissible one in any democracy? If students discuss a subject like this, is it not part of their education? I remember a famous Oxford University debate: the subject was “My country, right or wrong”. It was hotly debated, and widely reported, but no one said that one half of the debating team was anti-national.
Coming back to the JNU, the meeting continued at the campus canteen (also called the dhaba) and, not surprisingly, ABVP members barged in, resulting in slogan shouting from both sides. If you haven’t seen scenes like this in colleges, you haven’t been to a college. But what followed was not commonplace.
Some of the slogans that were now heard were unacceptable: “Bharat ki Barbaadi”, “Pakistan Zindabad” and other which were anti-India, pro-Afzal and pro-Pakistan. DSU office bearers insist that none of them were responsible, that a group of Kashmiri outsiders (none of them students) did all the shouting. Others believe that ABVP members were the provocateurs, deliberately shouting anti-India slogans to defame the DSU. Who is telling the truth? Surely, that should be the focus of any inquiry.
Where does Kanhaiya Kumar come in? The JNU Students’ Union (JNUSU) president’s speech, which resulted in him being charged with sedition, is now widely available online. In it, he has said things like: “If anyone tries to challenge the Constitution, be it the Sanghis, we will not tolerate it… We don’t need certificate of patriotism from the RSS. We fight for 80 per cent of the poor population of this country. For us, this is nation worship… We stand for equal rights. We stand for the right to live. Rohith Vemula (the dalit student who committed suicide in Hyderabad) had to lose his life to stand for these rights…” Most importantly,
Mr Kumar’s speech contained the sentence. “JNUSU doesn’t support any violence, any terrorist, and any anti-India activity, condemns slogans of ‘Pakistan Zindabad!’” Now, where on earth is sedition there? If anything, Mr Kumar’s speech is intensely patriotic. Sensing this, a version said to be heavily doctored, is getting play on the Internet. Not just that, but the police is using it as evidence!
Mr Singh and his pliant Delhi commissioner of police B.S. Bassi should be asked why the police rushed into JNU in the first place, and why they arrested and charged
Mr Kumar with sedition. Why is the home minister of India quoting a clearly fake tweet from the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba as evidence against the students? Is our home minister so very gullible? Why is Ms Irani’s response to all this to call a meeting of vice-chancellors and to ask them to hoist the national flag on their campuses?
There is no conspiracy here. It’s pure incompetence, coupled with a limited, but dangerous mindset. If Mr Modi doesn’t recognise it, let’s tell him: All his ambitious plans for the country are being destroyed, and by his own people.
