Slapping sedition charge on JNUSU president will hurt BJP
The government already seems to be losing the battle in the ongoing clash of ideas with Left and liberal establishment by arresting the JNU Students Union (JNUSU) president Kanhaiya Kumar on sedition charge. Kanhaiya's arrest was a misconceived and misdirected decision. It was a tactical error by the government.
Home minister Rajnath Singh's loud declaration that "anyone who raises anti-India slogans will not be spared," is likely to fall flat in the face in Kanhaiya's case unless it's proved that he indeed raised anti-national slogans. If the court throws away the sedition charge, the opposition case that the government is intolerant and vindictive will have been substantiated.
The sedition charge will not stick against Kanhaiya, an AISF leader. Left parties leaders' strong pitch that the government must go after the students who are seen raising anti-India, pro-Pakistan slogans in the video footage suggests they are confident that there is no case to nail him.
Kanhaiya is anti-BJP, his politics is anti-government but his is not anti-establishment voice. Since when did AISF and SFI become anti-establishment?
CPI(M) and CPI run a government in Tripura, having lost powers in West Bengal and Kerala. As far back as 1956, the CPI formed the world's first elected communist party government in Kerala. The CPI's Indrajit Gupta was home minister in the United Front government. But for the CPI(M)'s own "political blunder", Jyoti Basu would have become the prime minister. By what conceivable logic, could Kanhaiya be pursuing anti-national politics?
JNU itself represents the finest specimen of the establishment. It's a misconception and a grave error to declare JNU and its culture anti-establishment or anti-ruling class. Will you call Sitaram Yechury, the CPI(M) general secretary and Prakash Karat, former general secretary anti-establishment? So what's Yechury doing in the Rajya Sabha?
The Left leaders were quick to describe the Democratic Student Union as a "fringe" group which they suggested might have raised anti-India, pro-Pakistan slogans. It's a group to which possibly Umar Khalid, who was seen raising pro-Kashmir, anti-India slogans, belongs. And possibly Maoists, the All India Students Association (AISA), is viewed as a fringe group by Left leaders. AISA has established its dominance on the JNU campus challenging SFI.
The Left party delegation told Rajnath Singh that it wasn't in the realm of possibility of Kanhaiya Kumar raising anti-national slogans. The fringe Left groups could have and possibly did. The Left was talking of its allegiance to the Constitution and brining out its ideological differences with the Maoists out in the open.
JNU students enjoy being part of an academic island. Generation of students has got used to a way of life that's enriching and fulfilling. They are dissenters and protesters and might occasionally cross red lines as young university students sometimes too but, they are not anti-establishment.
They pose no threat to the system that governs the country. There is no threat or imagined threat to the system that has mutated from licence-permit raj to laissez-faire and under which the conditions of poor and dispossessed have hardly improved. They are no threat to the established political culture and milieu.
On the contrary, JNU contributes to the perpetuation of the system in a very smart and elitist manner. It's a civil servant-producing machine. IAS aspirants flock to JNU from all over the country in droves. The university provides an ideal setting, free and great library; free Wi-Fi, easy access to subject experts on the campus and stimulating academic environment for preparations of Civil Service examinations. They can take multiple chances with no pressure for vacating subsidised hostel accommodation. All this while drawing scholarships for MPhil and PhD degrees which are a side issue for Civil Service aspirants.
Consider JNU's symbiotic relations with civil service. Between 2002 and 2012, of the total 3,317 JNU students who wrote the Civil Service examinations, 496 cracked it as against 743 successful candidates out of 6,437 from Delhi University (which is many times bigger than JNU). For a small, postgraduate university like JNU, the number of students taking the Civil Service examinations as well as the rate of success is huge. The university produces more IAS officers than most of the states. Only the IITs rank above JNU on this score.
JNU is the most hybrid and, perhaps, hypocritical, elitist university in the country. It has built up a reputation for being progressive and inclusive, for incubating forward-looking thinking and ideas. But in reality it incubates status-quo perpetuating civil servants. It speaks the language of the deprived sections but contributes little to improve their conditions.
But the university students are free to pursue their dreams in a manner they wish to. The students are free to practise any brand of ideology they may like. There is no provision in the law that prevents them from rejecting the Right wing, ultra nationalist and sectarian ideologies that make the incumbent government so cut up with them.
As the night descends on the JNU campus, the dhabas turn into hub of lively discussions on the latest trend in radical political ideas- from Maoism to anarchism, from radical feminism to LGBT rights and from conservatism to fascism. Much of sound and fury of students' days ends up in crass conformism of civil service.
After mouthing slogans to work for making a classless society on JNU campus, Kanhaiya too might end up in civil service or on a university faculty or in a legislature if he is lucky.
Before that the government has to bring and prove a watertight case of sedition to declare him an "anti-national".