Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has said there is an “alliance of subversion” on certain Indian campuses and that the ultra-Left and separatists are speaking the same language. They must also allow others with different opinions to speak, he said while delivering a talk at London School of Economics on Saturday.
But he and his party and his frontal organisations look at their own alliance of subverting the basic tenets of Indian democracy. Akhil Bharatiya Vidayarthi Parishad (ABVP), the students wing of the sang parivar, from where many of BJP’s current leadership has emerged, unleashed unprovoked violence by pelting stones at students who had turned up for a seminar at Ramjas college where JNU PHD students Umar Khalid and Shehla Rashid were invited. Khalid was invited by the college’s Literary Society to speak in the afternoon on a subject related to his PhD, which he is doing from JNU. His topic at the seminar was The War in Adivasi Areas.
Khalid had backed JNU student Kanhaiya Kumar and was accused of allegedly raising anti-India slogans and held during Kanhaiya Kumar’s agitation.
That was the only trigger the ABVP students needed. This was no war. This was no ultra leftist speech delivered. This invite was for a seminar where differing and different thought processes were tabled. Even if Jaitley’s so called “leftist is equal to terrorist”, rhetoric has to be tested and proven, this rhetoric has to be tabled and allowed to be spoken for a counter to happen. This is the difference between discussing an issue and detonating a bomb.
Professor Prashanta Chakravarty of Delhi University then faced the brunt of goondaism, quite apparently from the ABVP. His crime: to support a protest march over the cancellation of the seminar by the college, fearing even more violence. Huffing Post reports: “Chakravarty was thrown on the ground and punched and kicked, and an attempt was made to strangle him with his own muffler. His image, of half-lying on the ground, dazed and disoriented, his shirt torn, with a patch of dirt on his face, as mayhem continued all around him”.
Gurmehar Kaur, a Delhi university student, decided to speak up against this by simply saying that she was not afraid of the ABVP. This led to a massive outrage against her where her earlier poster saying that her martyr father was not killed by Pakistan but by war (meaning that soldiers fight for peace but get felled by war), was also trolled. And then the mob took over and she has been facing threats of violence and rape.
Is this Mr Jaitley’s method of quashing an alliance of subversion? What have professor Chakravarty and Gurmehar Kaur subverted, except speaking out against the subversion of debate, discussion and speech in university campuses. Jaitley, however, said violence is not the method but hasn’t gone on to condemn or use his position as minister to seek justice, both for Kaur and Professor Chakravarty and act against those who have unleashed terror on them. Not that a single BJP minister has spoken in their defence. They are as guilty of violence by their tacit silence of the crime and instead questioning the nationalism of Chakravarty and Kaur, since it doesn’t match with the ABVP breed of nationalism.
But Jaitley’s take on free speech is not just debatable but highly condemnable. “I personally believe that free speech in India, and in any society, has to be debated. If you believe you have free speech to assault the sovereignty of the country, then be ready to concede free speech to counter that,” Jaitley said.
But was the sovereignty of the country being attacked by those who organised a seminar at Ramjas College to discuss a topic of intense interest and importance? The ABVP or the BJP’s view that anybody speaking for human rights and those of the adivasis are anti-Indian naxals cannot be justified. And this cannot be a view endorsed by a senior government minister. And speaking of conceding free speech, Professor Chakravarty almost conceded his life and if those who threatened the martyr’s daughter with rape go ahead with their threat, this nation will concede its humanity, civility, rule of law and the ruling party’s right to govern. The very threat has also done that harm unless the threat givers are brought to book right now.
Goa cannot and shouldn’t be allowed to be delinked from this. While violence on our campuses is not as pronounced, is that day very far, when similar incidents may well happen at Goa University? The DNA of discourse is changing to the DNA of extreme hate and violence. Goa cannot be immune to this. Without being alarmist, can we lose sight of the fact that we are fighting a mindset, a mindset that doesn’t attack ideas but people? A mindset that the Principal of Ramjas College has spoken out against.
University students in Goa, need to ask the leadership of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, a sangh-backed students’ wing, which won GU students Council election, if the Goa University will continue to have the mind and the space for divergent views, fiery debates and intelligent seminars and workshops to maintain the academic environment of the university. Incidents like those at Ramjas college, enhances the responsibility on all of us to keep our campuses free of violence and our minds inclusive to all opinions and have free speech as a non negotiable cardinal principle of society and politics.
