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.

No Banana Republic, we are an Animal Farm

The more things change, the more they remain the same!

Animal Farm is one of my favorite books. Of the little I have read, this book contains amongst the sharpest of satires. While funny in patches, I find Animal Farm to be a dark book. Dark because it talks of futility of hope, of how the masses get cheated again and again. Long back, Bharatmuni had codified the structure of fictional narratives. As per Natyashastra, each tale had to have a hero, a villain and unsurmountable odds. Yet, the tale could have no ending but a happy one. Not surprisingly, each of our ancient and not-so-ancient tales has good vanquishing evil. If not absolutely happy, at the very least, the closure is with hope of a better tomorrow.

Books like Animal Farm and 1984 run against the very basic grain of a kavya. Yet, they are probably much closer to life. After all, have not a vast majority of masses been born, have lived and died in misery with no ‘happy ending’ for them. Still, against all our awareness of stark realities, we like to be hopeful for it is probably the hope of a better future, if not for us, for our future generations which keeps us going. This may precisely be the reason why, while enjoying tales like that of the ‘Animal Farm’, we still like to believe that those are but flights of fantasy and reality can never be that bleak, that harsh!

As humans, we laugh at ostriches for burying their heads in sand in face of danger. We get amused when pigeons close their eyes when scared of snakes, thinking that the snake can no longer see it. But, these are simply base reactions driven by an urge for self-preservation. Among human beings, while children may close their eyes when scared, ‘mature’ adult may adopt a mode of denial, refusing to accept what stares them in their eyes, breathes down or grasp them by their necks. Some others, who are more directly impacted, react even more strongly and start believing that the tormentor is not really a tormentor but is doing what he is doing for a greater good.

If and only if, life was as it is hoped!

This intermittent blogger has previously criticised Arvind Kejriwal for betraying the hope of a people who were looking for a systemic change. This blogger, while being an unabashed Hindu Nationalist, has in his previous posts displayed an uneasiness with Narendra Modi. Yet, this same person had voted for the BJP and was ecstatic when results were out, simply because any alternative seemed better than the shame of a Government which had been ruling India for the last decade.

While the vote against UPA remains valid, what has been validated even more strongly are the reservations against Narendra Modi. What did India vote for? Among many other things, a promise for vyavastha parivartan, where Nation comes first, where the Government governs for the benefit of people, where old elites are trashed into dustbins of history, where a citizen is empowered enough to mould his/her own future.

But, what have we got? A thespian who only talks - in acronyms, alliterating, gloating on his supposed greatness, all the while searching for a new stage to perform? Arvind Kejriwal is condemned for indulging in theatrics and achieving little in his 49 days in power. While Arvind is justifiably condemned for having cheated the public, if the same standards of measuring output get applied, Narendra Modi’s government comes out much worse.

For a set of people who believed that UPA polluted India by its very existence, finding humungous merits in the latter’s acts has been amazingly easy. Be it the bigger issues like Aadhaar, Direct Benefit Transfer, Land-swap agreement, GST, disinvestment, FDIs in certain sectors, recovery of black money, nuclear deal with US or relatively smaller issues like declassification of the Henderson Brook Report on China War, Justice Mukherjee’s report on Netaji’s disappearance or investigation of cases of corruption (including those involving the Nation’s son-in-law), the Modi-led BJP has both spoken and acted precisely like its predecessor. And we are not even talking of going back on core agendas like Kashmir. From talking of a Congress-mukt Bharat, we now have the reality of Modi sharing toast with Sonia Gandhi on a high table. Well, the Vajpayee Government always offered Sonia Gandhi respect and space far more than what was constitutionally required. Modi is simply carrying on with the tradition. And had not the ruler pigs in Animal Farm later made peace and partnered with those very humans they had rebelled against?

How morally bankrupt this Government is if after opposing UPA’s policies for the last 1 decade, it adopted them in a duration less than what it takes us to blink? On top of the chain of turnarounds, this Government is too smug, too arrogant, too drunk on its power, to offer even a fig leaf of an excuse for its countless turn-arounds! Today, if it really believes that all its U-turns are for the benefit of the Nation, then why was it stonewalling and protesting against UPA on these very moves? Is not then, as the Congress alleges, the BJP equally responsible for the rut India was in, for the last few years? Which U-turn are we looking at next? A 'Promotion of Communal Violence Bill' because it is good for the Nation? Many of us would argue that the BJP became aware of realities once it came to power. That it is in fact a testimony to its greatness that it is carrying on with those policies which it had opposed. This argument does not hold any water for 1. the Indian Parliamentary system co-opts the opposition through various committees and standing groups where all details of any proposed legislation are analysed, 2. any bill is presented much before it is debated and even the Government of the day explains all provisions of any bill to the opposition, and 3. BJP leaders are no babe in the woods having been in power and in public sphere for years. And if they are, they are unfit to govern!

For decades, the Sangh Parivar and its various offshoots have detested Nehru (for all the right reasons, I would add). While they opposed Gandhi initially, in the last two decades or so, he has been incorporated in their phalanx of venerable National icons, to some extent out of expediency, but more because the Sangh does articulate the same thoughts as Gandhi on issues like Indian culture, conversions, morality, economy, etc.

However, while Gandhi has been co-opted, his most toxic and disastrous ‘gift’ to the Nation, Jawaharlal Nehru still remains (ostensibly) a hated figure for the Sangh. A second member of the dynasty who is hated by the Sangh Parivar, is Indira Gandhi, but in patches. The Indira of 1980-84 was not the strongly ‘socialist’ and ‘secular’ Indira of 1969-77 but someone whose actions were much more to the liking of the Hindu right. It was not without reason that RSS volunteers worked primarily for the Congress(I) and not the Vajpayee led BJP in the 1984 polls. Nonetheless, the legacy of Indira (1969-1977) is too strong to overlook and is the very anti-thesis of many principles the Sangh Parivar stands for. Hence, she continues to be abhorred for her authoritarianism, her acts of weakening the edifice of institutions, in fact of the Nation, of her corrupt regime, of her cultivation of the very anti-Hindu Left, her socialism and of course, the emergency.

Strangely though, for all their visceral hatred for Nehru, Sangh/BJP leaders take great pride in recalling that Nehru had identified a young Vajpayee as a future Prime Minister and puff with pride when any of them get called ‘cast in Nehruvian mould’ or having a ‘Nehru like vision’. As such, may be it is not quite so surprising to see that the ‘chosen one’ of this very Sangh Parivar is emulating its two supposed pet hates. Like Nehru, our current Prime Minister believes that the world is his stage. And like the gullible public then believed that India’s international standing was because of Nehru, today too, people are getting drunk of a non-existent potion of India’s ‘enhanced’ stature in the world. Nehru allowed his personal predilection for communism overrule National interests. Here, Modi's government leaks info that Sujatha Singh was removed because she refused to keep the issue of Kim Davey (Purulia arms-drop) aside when dealing with Denmark. Why is that important? Because Modi had invited the Dane Prime Minister to Gujarat and his no-show on account the MEA's pressure on Denmark to resolve the Davey issue was a personal insult to Modi! So, non-arrival is a personal insult but hosting a fugitive and refusing to hand him over, is not? How so Nehruvian! 

Like Nehru, who seemed to believe that India was his personal fief and made unilateral concessions to other Nations, our current Prime Minister too seems to believe that the path to ‘statesmanship’ and a possible Nobel lies through being magnanimous with the Nation’s assets. What else can explain the unseemly haste in acceding to US demands on the nuclear deal, on food protection, on intellectual property rights, on cheap drugs for millions of poor? Maybe I am in a hopeless minority, but I could only cringe when the Indian Prime Minister seemed a tad too eager to appear ‘close’ to a lame duck POTUS without adequate reciprocation from the latter. How can then Obama be criticised for gratuitously sermonising on how should India be as a Nation? Nehru is the only Prime Minister who contributed to the sartorial taste of India. Now, after 50 long years, we have a Modi kurta to give company to a Nehru Jacket. Nehru was supposed to have his clothes laundered in Paris (maybe an archetypical tale meant to indicate Nehru’s deracination and taste for luxury). Our current Prime Minister is one up. Never to appear sans designer clothes, he now gives company to figures as illustrious as Hosni Mubarak in wearing suits embroidered with his name!

As regards emulating Indira Gandhi, does authoritarianism ring a bell? Still, for her legion of followers, India maiyya could do no wrong. For the countless Modibhaktas, at least on social media, Modi is a god who can do no wrong.

In any other land, a Prime Minister claiming that only 'personal chemistry' between leaders matter and 'commas and lines on papers do not', would have been laughed off. Strangely, while much attention has been focused on the Prime Minister's fashion sense, hardly any analyst has commented on the inanity of that particular statement. Seriously, how can an Indian Prime Minister even think that way when so many times have we been led on the garden path by more realistic foreign leaders?

I still believe that India is great Nation, that in spite of all its challenges and dysfunctionality, it is land blessed by the divine, by the presence (both past and current) of great souls. Why then do we have the type of rulers we have? And can we, the people escape blame for our rulers? How can Modi alone be blamed? Adulation is heady and self-serving. The sight of those hundreds of thousands of commoners thronging grounds in searing heat to see him, chanting his name with frenzy, wearing his masks, would make all but the really great feel that yes, I am indeed the messiah! Even now, when the last eight months of Modi rule has yielded little but song and dance, talk and more talk, people enamoured of Modi find little fault in their leader. Each U-turn gets rationalized and defended, at times with passion of fresh converts to the cause. And as far as the mainstream media is concerned, till the time the issue is Hindutva/secularism, there is little to find fault in the Government. In the run-up to General Elections 2014, on Modi being presented as an outsider to the Delhi establishment, this blogger had observed that if a person associated with the Delhi power structure for three decades and who also happened to be a 4 term Chief Minister could be termed as an outsider, then there would be hardly any ‘insider’ in the system. Sadly, I don’t find any joy in feeling vindicated.

We, the people, who have invested our hopes in Modi have a moral duty to be vigilant and ensure that our leaders don’t digress from those promises which made us vote for them. Our Nation will become great, we will become successful, not by defending the indefensible but by being demanding, questioning and forcing our leaders to perform. If we don’t, and continue to believe that all acts of our leaders are for our good, our fate will be no better and in all likelihood, much worse than those creatures of the proverbial Animal Farm.

Poriborton - a mere change of face is not enough

With successive Indian Governments not exactly having set the Ganga on fire with their list of accomplishments, the 6 year NDA Government (1998-2004), was not really a bad deal for India. If nothing else, that Government did nothing which created a social fissure or economic meltdown. Yet, the Government failed to get re-elected. The reasons vary as per biases of the observer. For the secular fundamentalist, it was on account of the Gujarat riots, for the statistician, an outcome of alliances, for the socialist, a backlash against capitalism and for many committed BJP supporters, an apathy which held them back for voting for the party.

This intermittent blogger has previously argued that the seeds of BJP’s downfall had been sown in between 1998-1999 itself and that the NDA’s return to power in 1999 General Elections was more of an incidental event rather than an affirmative reward by the public. The reasoning is simple – the BJP lost vote-share as compared to 1998 and rather than breaking new ground, like it had done in between 1996-98 and earlier in between 1989-1991, its footprints had reduced. Moreover, unlike previous occasions, when a war or a large internal security issue had resulted in an electoral surge for the party seen as being best placed to secure the Nation, the Kargil War could help the BJP only retain its tally of 182 seats.

While the non-BJP/anti-BJP camps may offer different viewpoints, the reasons behind BJP’s denudation was obvious. The people who had voted for the BJP all through the 90s had not done so for love and fresh air alone. They had done so in hope of a break from the past, a new model of governance and a hope of having a ruler who could walk the talk. Yet, what did we have? A Prime Minister who made the obnoxious Nehruvian consensus his own! A party which seemed determined to desperately woo those who seemed even more determined to hate it and a polity which continued to rule the way it had for the previous half-century! Unfortunately, it was not the BJP alone which paid a price for acting like those proverbial pigs in ‘Animal Farm’, who, having dispossessed the oppressor, aped the latter and became one of them. More than the BJP, it was the Indian Nation which got punished in form of a decade long debilitating rule of the UPA.

So much so from the past!

But why to rake up these painful memories when we have a BJP Government at the centre today led by a charismatic individual who single handed has won a majority for the party?

This digging up of the past is important for while early, not only is the BJP is acting like those who it has defeated, it is showing signs of yet again succumbing to the need of getting accepted by those who have nothing but disdain for those who make the BJP what it is. If this assertion seems to verge on hyperbole, let’s consider the following:

• Commencing dialogue with Pakistan even when the ground reality of its support to terrorism has not changed
• Effecting an individual driven change in rules of service for TRAI
• Changing railway fares through an executive order rather than the budget
• The PM’s ostensible views getting communicated through whispers and leaks
• Proposal on easing Visa restrictions on Bangladesh, forget about clamping on illegal migration
• Government’s inclination to press ahead with enclave swap, Teesta water treaty with Bangladesh
• Continuing with UIDAI
• Little movement or even statement of intent on corruption cases involving the previous dispensation, sons-in-laws

More ominously, those very experts, who had warned of apocalypse if Modi were to come to power, are now sending messages of reassurance that the new dispensation’s adventurism has been replaced by pragmatism and life will continue as it was before May 26, 2014. After all, for these experts, anyone who lights candles at the Wagah border is certain to warm cockles of their bleeding hearts.

True, the India society has become accustomed to a slow pace of change. Yet, the masses who voted in droves for Modi, did not do so with a hope of having a saffron Congress in saddle. If a vote for Modi was an endorsement of what he had come to embody, it was an even stronger rejection of the past. A vote for Modi was a vote in hope of a better tomorrow, not a fatalistic acceptance of a little more of the same of the last decade. 

The BJP may complaint that the public is not allowing them a honeymoon period. But why should the public do so? If a Government enjoys fruits of power from day 1, it has to be accountable from that day. True, there is a time for build up but that gestation period should not end up un-nerving the public, particularly when the early signs of poriborton are more of the same. Anyway, in this world of instant communication, which incidentally the BJP should understand, having tapped its power only recently, there will be little patience shown by those who got swept to voting booths on the promise of a positive change. 

Lest the BJP feel that it being treated unjustly, let it remember that human beings are designed to judge more strongly those who they have trusted. Vengeance for trust broken is high – ask Aam Aadmi Party. A BJP seen as getting back on its promises will be wiped out even more comprehensively than the Congress. While that fate may be five years away, we have critical assembly polls happening later this year. For a government whose legitimacy was questioned on shallow grounds of vote-share, a loss in the polls would be a serious setback, indicating that the surge of support for Modi/BJP was but a temporary anomaly. The polls are for BJP’s taking. What it needs to do is to simply walk its talk and if that seems difficult, at the very least, not commit those acts which it had opposed, while in opposition.

For the sake of the Nation, let us hope that what are now being seen as disturbing signs turn out to be false alarms and that the BJP does deliver what it has promised.