Sedition (?) at JNU

The Americanisation of Indian political journalism has meant that for over a decade now, the most burning issue before the Nation at any point of time is melee around ‘who said what’. If one day, the outrage is on ‘How could Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti use the term 'Haraamzaade', the next day the righteous indignation could be on an issue as mundane as 'How could they not allow us to demand India's destruction?'

While these contrived fracas may have made careers of many TV anchors and increased traffic on Twitter, at one level, these debates are repetitive and tiring. Not only that, contrary to the literal meaning of debate, these controversies only serve to harden pre-conceived notions and sharpen divides, the outcome many a times abetted by brazen duplicity of those who attempt to define and guide the narrative on free speech.

The following note is in response to a widely circulated write-up on Quora by one Harshit Agarwal, a JNU student, who claims to provide ‘a lot of answers’ from an eyewitness’s perspective.

Harshit's post makes a dishonest attempt to sound reasonable and bipartisan. Following are responses to comments Harshit has made in his post.

Whether seminar on Kashmir is wrong?

Seminars and discussions on Kashmir are dime a dozen and no one is really bothered about statements made on the nature of 'Indian oppression' in Kashmir. Hence, it is quote disingenuous to rhetorically question whether discussions on Kashmir should happen. At the same time, one does wonder the last time JNU or any left aligned body expressed solidarity or provided a platform to exiled Hindus, who also coincidentally, happen to be Kashmiris from Kashmir.

Whether objections to court judgements and capital punishment are wrong?

Of course, denouncement of capital punishment is perfectly okay. But people taking a stand against something (strong action against terror convicts) which has significant National sentiments attached to it, should be ready to bear the brickbats. We have feminists coming down like a ton of bricks on people who dare to highlight inherent biases in domestic violence or rape-related laws. Quite unfair but that holds true for all who cross the line of political correctness. That said, quoting Arundhati Roy's opposition to Afzal's hanging does disservice to those who believe that capital punishments are wrong by their very nature, and not just because the hung belonged to a so-called minority segment of society.

Shouting of 'anti-National' slogans

Harshit's paining of ABVP as the 'sole harbinger of Nationalism' betrays his own sympathies and ideologies. Will he care to explain as to why the 'beautiful JNU where all opinions, however radical are listened and respected', declined to let Baba Ramdev talk? Or did the students feel that his being a 'reactionary' automatically disqualified him from being among them?

In Harshit's world, members of sundry leftist bodies are students but that of ABVP mere 'cadres’. Is that respect or is that inclusion?

He claims that the slogans 'Hum jya chaahte? Azaadi!' were raised to ‘create solidarity’ and in response to ‘clichéd’ slogan of 'Kashmir hamara hai'. If it is so ‘clichéd’, just why did it take their goat so much that they had to demand ‘Azaadi’? How does demand for Azaadi create solidarity in between the communists and Kashmiri separatists?  And if the communist disgust at ‘Kashmir humara hai' is justified, what is wrong in many getting outraged at 'Hum jya chaahte? Azaadi!'

In Harshit’s universe, demand for Azaadi is perfectly normal. For did we not ask for it from British or did not USSR break-up? It is amusing that it escapes him that the ‘collective conscience’ of our people gets outraged when Kashmir’s sectarian struggle for secession from India (and merger with Pakistan) gets equated with India’s struggle to throw off the colonial yoke. If, in his words, secession itself is not bad, then just how wrong would it be to ‘plan a conspiracy to overthrow the government and seize Kashmir from India’?

On a more serious note - Why is Afzal Guru important? Because he is a victim of an unjust Indian state? Or because he is a martyr to the cause of Kashmiri freedom? If it is the former, then just how relevant is the slogan ‘Har ghar se Afzal nikalega’? Afzal Guru’s hanging has neither resulted in a social revolution, nor has it resulted in change in any law. For that matter, even in his life, (the presumed innocent) Afzal did nothing which would create an impact in the country. So, even if each communist womb/household does produce an Afzal, just how enriched will the revolution be?

On the other hand, if Afzal is seen a martyr, someone who dared participate in an attack on Indian parliament, he becomes very important, very prominent. And if this is the Afzal who will be born from each communist household, I will have no hesitation in standing with those who would want such Afzal-producing families to be punished in the most severe manner. Afzal as a martyr is not an activist for Kashmir’s azaadi. He is an active agent of India’s destruction.

Moving from the dangerous to the ridiculous, when Harshit quotes, hold on, Wikipedia! Just which scholar picks up lines from Wiki? Quite funny that two lines in the SC judgement are seen to be over-riding the entire judgement and the cumbersome mercy petition process. Any person who claims to be campaigning against capital punishment should at least be aware that this punishment is to be accorded in the rarest of the rare cases, where the crime is such that it shakes the collective conscience of society. Let him rest assured, that line of SC’s judgement does not mean that Afzal was hung simply to sate someone's bloodlust. The least likes of Harshit can do to refer to the full text of SC judgement  on Afzal's death penalty before deciding that he was innocent. Likewise, let he and others like him refer to the Machhi Singh case and recognise that 'collective conscience' is one of the criterion for 'rarest of rare' since 1983! But when has lazy and haughty ignorance stood in way of prejudices?

As regards terrorist, quite funny that the claim is that only people carrying arms can be called terrorists. Worldwide, across all societies, people supporting and abetting a crime are considered parties to that crime and are punished. Savarkar is sought to be condemned for his supposed involvement in Gandhi's assassination based on some conjecture of his being aware of the assassination plot, based on some supposed testimony of his servant, AFTER Savarkar had died. Here, we have spectacle of support for convicts who attacked parliament. Had it not been for the supreme sacrifice of our security men, many of those who are supporting the terrorists would have lost their lives. But that is okay as the killers are all oppressed by the Indian state. But seriously, does Harshit believe that his fellow-travellers agitating against the hanging of Afzal Guru and calling for destruction of the Indian state are merely court bards and do not actually have to bear any responsibility for their words?

Now the slogans which stirred the pot. This is where Harshit skillfully skirts the issue and portrays demands for India's destruction as normal. He makes quite a few claims. First he says that he was witness to some events on Feb 9. Then he claims that he has never 'witnessed or heard of them (DSU) committing a terror activity'. He further states that he had 'never heard any anti-India' slogans in JNU. He claims that the Kashmiris were outsiders for he had 'never seen them'. That he did not hear any 'Pakistan Zindabad' slogan and then tries to pin the blame on ABVP. Then he triumphantly declares that 'it is clear that no JNU student was involved'

He seems to be quite a man. Whatever he says he did not see cannot have happened! And since he is such a man, let us without question accept the ‘lot of answers’ which he has provided from an eyewitness’s perspective!

(The 'ABVP exposed' video highlights 2 men and a woman. The woman is seen arguing with someone (not sloganeering), 1 man only seen and another seemingly uttering ‘zindabad’. What sort of ‘expose’ is this that of the 3 ‘exposed’, only 1 seems to be actually sloganeering. And is he really an ABVP activist? If so, identity him and question him. Of the so many people chanting Pakistan Zindabad, the communists manage to ‘catch’ half-a-person and are triumphantly declaring that the entire fracas were generated by him!)

JNU is the very place where killing of over 75 jawans by Naxals was celebrated (so much so for being pro-India). The very place where Hindu festivals are suppressed (so much so for diversity)

The 'mild' Marxists, communists, Maoists all belong to political ideologies which suppressed individuals, communities and Nations, clamped down on any form of free speech and killed millions and millions of their own countrymen in purges and class struggle. If it seems too far off, these are the very people who decried independence, commenced an armed struggle, supported China during the 1962 war, committed mayhem in Naxalbari and as Maoists, tapping the many fault lines, are still working for disintegration of the Nation. Do we need to take lessons in democracy and freedom from them?

If rejection of the idea that these killers of freedom of all forms can educate the rest of us on what democracy and liberty are gets called as ‘suppressing dissent’, let us be strong enough to bear that cross. Not all talk is dissent. Talks of subversion are not dissent. The idea of dissent is noble. People who feel they are wronged get listened to sympathetically only when they talk about their misfortune, not when they threaten fire and brimstone on their imagined oppressors.

Dissent can be against the rulers. Dissent can be against entrenched interests. Dissent cannot be against the country, cannot be against our very Nation-hood. If we manage to confuse vicious demands for India’s disintegration with free speech, then, to put it mildly, we have a very serious problem in hand.

The fracas on speeches and slogans calling for India’s destruction at JNU have evoked predictable reactions but for the intriguing stand taken by the Congress. It would have been abnormal for the Communist parties and the born-again secular-socialists like JDU to condemn what happened on Feb 9. However, for the Congress, in spite of its cynical manipulation of the Ishrat Jahan controlled killing case, the Batla House encounter, and the bogey of Hindutva terror, it was quite unexpected that it would side with those who were actively supporting a terror convict and demanding India’s disintegration.

Still, the Congress under Sonia Gandhi is a much regressed version of the party under the original Mrs G, or even PV Narasimha Rao. It is quite scary to imagine that the only party with a truly National footprint can stoop to such pettiness but then we deserve the politicians we have.

As far as the JNU culprits are concerned, it would have been better had these student-activists been charged under NSA rather than with sedition. Given the outcome of even Binayak Sen’s case, we may see courts dismissing sedition charges. On the other hand NSA, if nothing else, could have been a good charge, particularly considering the way the Marxists have always applauded its application on Varun Gandhi, Kamlesh Tiwari, Swami Yashveer and many BJP leaders from Western UP for merely expressing their views.