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

[Samvit]

Only time will decide that. But for now we know we have anti nationals
living off tax payer's money.

On Tue, Feb 16, 2016 at 3:55 PM, Asit Das <asit1917 at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.
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