Can BJP charge PDP with sedition for celebrating Afzal Guru?

As the notorious Nazi propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, had once said so infamously, "The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over."

The BJP-RSS attempts to whip up mass hysteria over JNUSU President Kanhaiya Kumar's so-called seditious proclamations, amplified by the Delhi police commissioner who's on the verge of retirement and is clearly sniffing around for post-superannuation lollies, would have made Goebbels proud.

It is the same saffron brotherhood that ruled Jammu and Kashmir with Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, an ardent supporter of the now-much-condemned Afzal Guru. Remember how the late Mufti just ignored the mewling of his coalition partner and released the jailed separatist, Masarat Alam, against the opposition of the Kashmiri Pandits, who had been most vocal in their support to the BJP? These very same pseudo-nationalists were delighted to have Sajjad Lone, another lifelong separatist, on board an opportunist coalition, and sat with their hands beneath their legs in the midst of all the brazen anti-India public demonstrations by Kashmiri separatist groups when they were in bed with the late Mufti. They now breathlessly await a long-overdue invitation from Mehbooba Mufti Sayeed to get back to the business of governing the state.

The ghost of Afzal Guru was given a new lease of life the day the BJP decided to sacrifice its publicly stated principles at the altar of political expediency. It was not Kanhaiya Kumar who was holding a candle for the perpetrator of the 2001 terrorist attack on Parliament House. As anyone who cared to hear his speech, or read through the transcript, would know, he was only speaking up for the Dalit martyr Rohith Vemula, which could have only inconvenienced Smriti Irani and cannot be construed to be "a call to arms" (which is how the term "sedition" has been interpreted by our highest court). He was only defending the Indian Constitution written by the greatest of all Dalit leaders, BR Ambedkar, whose 125th birth anniversary year has been bloodied by ceaseless attacks on the statute that he so assiduously drafted for a grateful nation.

I was pleasantly surprised to learn this morning that Shatrughan Sinha, whose association with the BJP pre-dates that of the goons we saw in action at Patiala House courts on Monday and today, voiced a similar sentiment. You have to be opportunistically deaf and blind to slap the charge of sedition on a young nationalist. And to have the Union home minister propagate a lie emanating out of a fake Hafiz Saeed Twitter handle. And to have his second in command brush away the attack on the sanctity of the law and the freedom of the media at the Patiala House courts with the frivolous counter-question: "Was there a murder?" How can any nation that believes in democratic values stomach such shameless attacks on the intellectual sovereignty of its people?

Before doling out licences guaranteeing the nationalistic credentials (or the lack of them) of other people, the BJP must first examine its own devious role in Jammu and Kashmir and make amends. Its leadership, to restore its tattered credibility, must then examine the disruptive role of its student wing, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), from Hyderabad Central University to Jawaharlal Nehru University. It must not let ABVP's frustration at not being the favourite of our youth cloud its judgment, even if it hopes to derive an electoral advantage from the present polarisation. And if it really wants to believe its own nationalist credentials, it should give the Kanhaiya Kumar treatment to the Hindu Mahasabha hotheads who have repeatedly been asking for the deification of Mahatma Gandhi's killer, Nathuram Godse.

The saffron brotherhood must clean up their act or they'll find their glass house in a self-constructed Utopia shattered by the stones of democratic reasoning and debate.