Kanhaiya Kumar’s totally uncalled for
arrest and slapping of the charges of sedition etc. have clouded the issue to further the interest of the elements the government claims to rein in.
But before we discuss the issue it would be worthwhile to recapitulate the basic facts of
the story which have been told and retold and changed somewhat in every telling.
No one has come up yet with the theory
that there were two editions of Kanhaiya. Otherwise every fact, every video
clipping comes in two versions. You can take your pick.
It is beyond dispute that a
group of students in the
JNU organised a “cultural” evening to celebrate the death anniversary of the martyred Afzal Guru. To an
overwhelmingly large number of Indians, he was a terrorist and enemy of the
Indian state. Political leaders across the divide had endorsed this view in the
immediate aftermath of the attack. The “cultural artists” chanted their
determination to fight till the destruction of the Indian state, and felt
ashamed that the killers of Afzal were still alive. They concluded by invoking
the blessing of Allah for this project. The slogans need to be quoted in full
for the enlarged meaning of “cultural activities”.
पाकिस्तान जिंदाबाद,
गो इंडिया गो बैक,
गो इंडिया गो बैक,
भारत की बर्बादी तक जंग रहेगी जारी,
कश्मीर की आजादी तक जंग रहेगी जारी,
अफजल हम शर्मिंदा हैं, तेरे कातिल जिन्दा हैं;
तुम कितने अफजल मारोगे, हर घर से अफजल निकलेगा:
तुम कितने अफजल मारोगे, हर घर से अफजल निकलेगा:
अफजल तेरे खून से इंकलाब आएगा,
अल्लाह हो अकबर,
भारत तेरे टूकड़े होंगे इंसा अल्लाह, इंसा अल्लाह"
भारत तेरे टूकड़े होंगे इंसा अल्लाह, इंसा अल्लाह"
Kanhaiya Kumar later distanced himself from the shouting of
these slogans and condemned this act. The evening, he said, was meant to
commemorate Dr. Ambedkar and reaffirm faith in Indian constitution.
Afzal Guru the “martyr”,
was hanged to death when the Congress government was in power, after the entire
range of curative options available to an accused in a polity governed by due
process of law – from the trial court to the mercy petition before the President of India - were
exhausted. Having failed to get a favourable verdict, few would dare indulge in
public denunciation of the most sacred of our institutions. Democracy is about building institutions;
institutions work in tandem with other institutions and they have to be
invested with authority by reposing faith in them and not wrecking them for
perceived wrongs. That is our share of the democratic burden. Dr. Ambedkar must
have turned in his grave to hear the public denunciation of all that we hold
sacred.
Lenin used to ask ironically: “Freedom -- yes,
but for whom? To do what?”. The
idea of free speech is so seductive that it seems wimpish to even suggest
caution or moderation in the exercise of this sacred right, but we must wonder
whether the democratic idealism provides a standpoint outside of itself to
wreck and demolish its very foundational values. No law was violated in the chanting of these
slogans, agreed, but are societies run by decrees alone? Are we subject to the
prohibition of laws alone? There are no laws against incest. Should that then
become an acceptable behaviour? Does good sense and consideration for the
feelings of others not curb our freedom of action? I hear that declaring
oneself to be anti-national has become the new normal for the enlightened
beings, but there are people who would rather be seen dead than being dubbed
anti national. If we inhabit a shared space, we have to
consider each other’s sensibilities.
Kanhaiya Kumar was not unaware of this, as his subsequent condemnation
of the incident shows. What was then the mainspring of his action?
According to an apostatic ABVP member there is a hierarchy of intellectual order
in the JNU; the Brahminical order consists of those from St. Stephen and
Presidency College. Cerebral, articulate and fluent in the langua franca of
power discourse – English – their minds
organised by the fundamentals of Marxism, they enjoyed hegemony till the upstart
ABVP types gate-crashed – perhaps riding pillion on the rise of the rightist
politics. “Students in JNU’s
history centre divided informally along class lines early on. Apart from a few
exceptions, those from elite colleges like St Stephen’s in Delhi and Presidency
in Kolkata turned left, while those from small towns were splintered among the
left, the ABVP and the Congress’s student wing, the National Students’ Union of
India. Apart from my background, it also seemed to me that falling in line with
the left would mean acceptance of this intellectual hierarchy. Spurning the
system seemed enticing.”
Kashmir is very much on the minds of the Indian
people. The ethnic cleansing of the Kashmiri Pandits is an equally emotive
issue for an overwhelming number of Indians, but it has never seized the imagination of the
progressively oriented JNU( or has it?) because it does not command as much traction as liberation of Kashmir. If we argue by results they were dead right. JNU has become a global
symbol of resistance and Kanhaiya Kumar, a nondescript entity from Bihar with
no past to reckon with, is suddenly a martyr to the cause of democracy. Secure in the knowledge that aggressive and
institutionally entrenched national and global elite well-versed in the
vernacular of law, who exert a tremendous pressure on politics will intervene
on their behalf makes such gestures risk profitable. Prashant
Bhushan has offered his services voluntarily; the likes of Arundhati Roy and
Chomsky have given him the thumbs up. If the exercise of freedom of speech was this rewarding, who would
flinch form murder? The intellectually unsophisticated security personnel
guarding the parliament building seemed to have laid down their lives quite
gratuitously when martyrdom comes so cheap.
As an Egyptian poet said,
“What have we not done for our
fatherland.
Some have laid down their lives , some
made speeches.”
