Modi sarkar is using HLEC to fight a proxy war at JNU

Kanhaiya Kumar's voice carried over the crowd in sing-song, accompanied by the quintessential protest-daffli, unfettered by the heat at the protest near the Admin Block at JNU. His comrades, sweating profusely in the April sun, lent their voice to his, and championed their student revolution.

This protest was in response to the HLEC's charges and punishments against Kumar and his 13 fellows (from all student organisations except the ABVP, whose JNUSU joint secretary Saurabh Sharma's punishment has not been confirmed yet), including two ex-students who have been declared "out-of-bounds" from JNU.

The HLEC's recommendation slapped fines of Rs 10,000 to Kanhaiya and Rs 20,000 to 13 others, while rusticating Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya for a semester and five years respectively, with the seemingly camera-shy Bhattacharya - not as much in the limelight as Kanhaiya or a sensitive religion-target like Khalid - receiving easily the harshest punishment.

JNUSU vice-president Shehla Rashid called the punishment "laughable", reported Scroll.in, reminding anyone who cared to listen about how the government was fighting a proxy war against the students through a bogus HLEC, headed by a casteist who continues to be the treasurer for "Youth for Equality" - an anti-reservation organisation - while serving on the committee in perhaps the only university which gives Dalits and the socially marginalised an equal chance in its structure.

Rejecting the committee on these grounds and more, JNUSU burnt a copy of the report in the midst of Kanhaiya's trademark sloganeering for Azadi added with "Aaj hartal, kal hartal, naa mane to bhook hartal" [strike today, strike tomorrow, and if you resist, hunger strike] - a new slogan as per the latest development of the students threatening a hunger-strike if the punishments are not repealed and the report rejected.

In the afternoon sun, at 4pm, Kanhaiya's energy was admirable, as was the solidarity of faculty who had also shown up for the protest which is to continue with a protest march organised for tonight as well.

However, what was worrying to see was the turnout, with only about a 100 protestors present at the venue, repeating Kanhaiya and company's fervent cries for unity and revolution, even though more than 2,000 students signed a signature campaign to the same effect. This number has a lot to do with the heat, I'd like to think, but even more so with the timing of the committee's releasing of the report at a time when 60 per cent of JNU is in the middle of an exam session, and exams in fellow universities which showed great participation in February, just around the corner.

By contrast, the protests of February had spread like wildfire in a jungle since Kumar's arrest, and during the lectures on nationalism at the same venue there wasn't even space for all the participants to sit down on the floor so they could hear. Such was the unity with which the "azadi army" had first fought, and perhaps won a major battle in freeing Kanhaiya, Khalid and Anirban, but only on bail.

People from all walks of life and ages participated, realising the symbolic value behind these students and the JNU, and this unity perhaps set the forces of pseudo-nationalism and intellectual bankruptcy back in a battle they did not expect to fight this intensely.

The result: Our leaders were freed, and they gave triumphant speeches, deservedly so. Interviews flooded the news for a while, and we celebrated a victory, perhaps forgetting in the moment that bail is not acquittal and a disciplinary blot on a resume is a permanent dent to an academician's prospects.

Azadi had won a battle, but the war was still on, and is. Almost all of March since the HLEC's reports had passed like the calm before a storm, and, make no mistake, the storm is incoming for the right to dissent once again with the punishments on the dissenters made by stooges of the government.

A proxy-war is still a war, making clear that the government has not forgiven or forgotten - in fact, it's using the age-old tactics the establishment has always used to impose their decisions: to attack when the numbers are the fewest, be it this punishment out of the blue leaked to the media even before the students concerned in the middle of exams, or, in the past, the fitting of CCTV cameras in hostels in DU during the summer vacations or the fee-hike in BITS, Pilani, between semesters.

Azadi, once again, stands in the battleground, for the symbolism of the first wave of protests has only intensified since, much like the cementing of its faces. Whether it will have the same army as it had the last time remains to be seen, but the "azadi brigade" must do more than just see!

Historically numbers have been the heart of every revolution - it is an axiom that is, perhaps, never going to change - and if the numbers thin, so does this fight's balance. In the protests following the one on Tuesday more voices must join the chants of Kanhaiya and company, or history will not record the events of February as a victory for freedom and dissent, but a mere roadblock in the way before rising fascism took perhaps the Left's strongest stronghold from them.

The trouble with history is that it is invisible in the present. It is impossible to tell if one is a part of history being made, but make no mistake, JNU is at a historic juncture. What the pen of history writes for our children and theirs, however, hangs in the balance. Fans of either story - azadi or otherwise - must unite and force the hand of the historian.