Chandrashekhar Prasad's spirit looms over Kanhaiya's ordeal
JNU Students' Union president Kanhaiya Kumar faces more than the much-debated sedition charge slapped on him. His family, friends and comrades fear for his life.
Here's where the name Chandrashekhar Prasad comes to my mind. Like Kanhaiya, he too was a JNU student from Bihar. Chandrashekhar was assassinated in broad daylight for daring to speak out.
Kavita Krishnan, social activist and secretary of All India Progressive Women's Association, recalls the first time she met Chandrashekhar Prasad while studying for an MPhil in English Literature at JNU. "He knew I felt strongly about women's rights and was the first person to suggest I should work with women organisations full time."
After studying at the Sainik School in Jhumri Tilaiya, Chandrashekhar joined the National Defence Academy, but soon left it because he aspired to become a political activist. He joined Patna University before he came to JNU. Chandrashekhar played a vital role in the building of AISA, the then newly formed student organisation of CPI-ML. He won the JNU Students' Union election three times in a row, first as vice-president, and then as president in two successive terms.
In 1997, the young man was campaigning in his hometown against corrupt and criminal leaders of the region, which many claim took his life. Ajay Bhardwaj, a documentary filmmaker, highlighted the sequence of events that led to the famous JNU student leader's death in his documentary Ek Minute Ka Maun.
"In Siwan, a small town in Bihar caught in the vice-like grip of a political strongman, student activist Chandrashekhar Prasad is assassinated in broad daylight for daring to speak out. Back in Delhi, the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus erupts on hearing this news about its former student union president. The students come on the streets to protest the inaction of the administration in spite of eyewitness accounts identifying the perpetrators, and they, too, are met with police water cannons and lathis. In that moment of protest, emerges an idea: to create a testament of Chandrashekhar's courageous and principled brand of politics as a tribute to him and as a mirror to the state of society and politics around. Several television professionals and Chandu's friends get together and, from the footage of television channels on Chandrashekhar, a documentary is created that pulsates with urgency and a purity of purpose that communicates itself to viewers to this day," writes Ajay in the film's synopsis.
This story has an eerily similar beginning and one hopes the end is different, at least for another young JNU student.