[Reader-list] JNU: This Time The RSS/BJP Has Bitten Off More Than it Can Chew

[Asit Das]

JNU: This Time The RSS/BJP Has Bitten Off More Than it Can Chew
SEEMA MUSTAFA

Monday, February 15,2016

NEW DELHI: Delhi police stood by and watched as a handful of BJP
lawyers attacked all those who had gathered at the Patiala courts for
the hearing of the case slapped against JNUSU President Kanhaiya
Kumar. The lawyers---not more than 10 or 12---took the law into their
own hands, assaulted the JNU faculty and students and then set about
beating the reporters, snatching away their mobile phones (cameras are
not allowed inside) to prevent them from filming the attack, tore
their shirts and shouted at all to get out, “go to Pakistan.”

Journalists said this was completely unprecedented, the ferocity of
the attack left them completely shaken, while the large contingent of
police stood by as silent bystanders making no effort to intervene. A
young TV journalist said that when she tried to ask the cops to
intervene they asked her to leave the court, as they could do nothing
to control the situation. All others confirmed this, with the initial
un-doctored reports from the ground establishing the presence of the
BJP supporting lawyers, the assault with the violence continuing for a
while with a “anti nationals go to Pakistan” slogans and warnings,
while the police watched. The lawyers took control of the courtroom,
and the premises.

The day started with what many construed as a green signal from BJP
president Amit Shah who clubbed the JNU faculty and students under the
“anti national” brand in a fiery blog targeting Congress vice
president Rahul Gandhi. Shah made it clear through the blog that the
party was pushing the nationalist versus anti-national agenda, with
JNU being used deliberately as the fulcrum to accelerate the BJP/RSS
campaign and raise the decibels to strident levels.

The five questions from the blog reported by NDTV and others as well
centre around :

1.Has Rahul Gandhi lent his voice to separatists in the country? Does
he want another Partition?"

2. "The kind of statements that Rahul Gandhi and his party colleagues
have delivered at the campus proves that there is no place for
national interest in their thinking."

3. "Rahul Gandhi hobnobbing with anti-national elements at JNU. Is
this his definition of nationalism?"

4. "I ask Rahul Gandhi, was 1975 (Emergency) a demonstration of
Congress commitment to democracy? Was Mrs.(Indira) Gandhi not
Hitler-like?"

And then he goes on to state that "In the frustration of defeat, Rahul
Gandhi is unable to tell the difference between anti-national and
national interest."

The BJP/RSS kidgloves are off with the nationalism debate being made
to hit Delhi through the premier education institute in a bid to draw
the lines, and polarise opinion. The rush reflects increasing
desperation on part of the government, as the protests sharpen in the
University and across the country with the Parliament session
beginning next week set to be now submerged under Opposition anger.

The questions, given the severity of the anti-reaction from students
particularly, thus arise:

1.Why has this government unleashed what is going to become a huge war
pitting the students of this country against the Hindutva brigade?

2. Why has this government---through a series of actions in
campuses---turned the students against it, more so when the youth were
its biggest supporters at one time. IIT-Madras, FTII, Hyderabad
Central University, and now Jawaharlal Nehru University have been
rocked by direct, undemocratic intervention by the Ministry of Human
Resource Development in action that has virtually united the students
against the government, and of course the BJP and RSS it represents.

This constituency, in immediate terms, now includes even those
sections of the corporate media that had been supporting the
government position on JNU but whose journalists at Patiala House have
taken a beating. And the first reports from the ground by the young
reporters speak of unprovoked brutality by the BJP lawyers, collusion
by the police, and the severity of an attack on all those who were not
wearing the black and white lawyers dress.

The attack on the earlier universities ---IIT-M, FTII, HCU---was
spearheaded, at least for the public, by the Ministry of Human
Resource Development and Minister Smriti Irani. In that all
intervention was orchestrated by HRD, with the University authorities
being pressured directly to act against what was seen as dissent by
groups in these educational institutions. In the Hyderabad Central
University little would have been noticed had Rohith Vemula not
committed suicide. And the persecution of five Dalit scholars leading
the Ambedkar students Association---the one point of dissent and
debate in HCU---would have gone unreported.

For JNU, HRD was reinforced by the Union Home MInistry as clearly
there has been a conscious decision to up the scale. The very fact
that the Home Minister was managing the ‘operation’ is an indication
of the importance attached to it. When the protests grew, a shaky
Rajnath Singh came on to insist that the students had links with
terror mastermind Hafiz Saeed. He subsequently had to suffer the
ignominy of a denial by the Lashkar e Tayaba mentor who said that he
had not issued any such statement and that a fake account was being
used to put words in his mouth. Interestingly the Indian Express,
quoting intelligence sources, carried a detailed report of the fake
account actually being fake.

Along with this there has been a concerted effort to create and push
the stereotype of the “JNU student”. A musical troupe was detained by
the police while on way to attend a Urdu festival currently on in the
capital, and released later after being told by the cops that they
appeared to be “JNU types.” And judging from their appearance, clearly
the ‘type’ dresses in kurtas and jeans, sports beards, and thereby
becomes the ‘dissenter’ that now constitutes the new Wanted list of
the Delhi Police!

There is a visible strategy by the Hindutva brigade to crush dissent
in educational institutions. The opposition to this has been factored
in, at least to some extent, by the Nagpur strategists to achieve the
goal of ensuring that the new generation of students enter campuses
with possible reprisal for dissent in mind. And are thus more pliable
and thereby more controllable. The effort is also to win
over---through the threat of violence if not debate---the fence
sitters by ensuring that they do not cross over to the dissent and
debate side, but are “convinced” with the display of power and the
brand of nationalism JNU has always been a pet peeve of the Hindutva
brigade, following its inability to penetrate the University despite
all out effort. This has clearly been a sore point that BJP leaders
have never really bothered to disguise.

After HCU and the protests across the student community, the BJP/RSS
was expected to change course. At least momentarily. That this has not
happened, but that the government has moved from Hyderabad to hit a
major central university like JNU is a clear signal of a decision to
clear campuses of ‘dissenters’ and kill debate and freedom of
expression, so close to the campuses of Universities known for
academic excellence.

Will this intimidation work? Momentarily, but not for long as swathes
of Indians are being alienated. Students, teachers, Dalits, Women,
Scientists, Writers ---certainly not from just the Left or the
Congress but largely independent----have come together to form a major
resistance to the efforts to bludgeon the democratic rights made
available to the people through the Constitution of India.

The reasons why JNU could prove to be the Sangh’s Waterloo:

1. It is recognised the world over as an educational institute of
excellence and has a faculty and students used to high standards of
freedom; its students are teaching in Universities across the world
and the adverse response to the current developments are very visible
already on the social media and in international media reports.

2. The blowback will be felt in the very states that the BJP is keen
to control---Uttar Pradesh and Bihar---from where most of the students
of JNU are drawn. A majority are from the backward and scheduled
castes, again the constituency that the BJP had earlier claimed to be
wooing but seems to be giving up on now.

3. The violent response by the state to a meeting inside JNU has
stunned even those who had been critical of its politics. This is
visible again from columns, articles and responses with the government
fast acquiring the reputation of being anti-student. The unrest
created by the government in the above named campuses is fast
coalescing and it is highly unlikely that the strong arm tactics will
subdue the youth of this country to a point where opposition is
stifled into asset.

4. The government has run into trouble---because of a series of
omissions and commissions ---with ex-servicemen, kisans, women,
Dalits, minorities as clear disaffected constituencies. This
constitutes a large section of the Indian population of which sections
had supported the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections.

5. JNU will reverberate in the budget session of Parliament. The
government will have no alternative to climb down from the violence it
has escalated. Unless it moves to impose Emergency and crush all
dissent within---that too temporarily as in 2016 the world is far more
connected than it was in 1975.

Interestingly, the lawyers at Patiala court have managed to alienate
the one constituency that had been supporting the BJP and the
government on the JNU issue till early this morning: the media.
Journalists representing television channels and the print media were
threatened, assaulted and in some cases severely beaten. Their mobile
phones were snatched and as one of them said, “we were given a taste
of brutal medicine.” TV journalists were interviewed by their own
channels with a particularly shaken NDTV reporter in trembling voice
narrating the sequence of events that together spelt a concerted
effort to terrorise all inside the courtroom. At least one news
channel that uses the word anti-national as freely at times as the BJP
brigade, was also on the receiving end with its reporter at the spot
intimidated by the BJP lawyers, as well as by the police that was
present in large numbers but refusing to take protect those who were
being openly assaulted.