Herald: We are here today to discuss an issue that is critical to the country and at a time when democracy has been threatened. We are at crossroads, where the pillars of the constitution are crumbling, when our basic existence is being questioned. This debate as to who is a nationalist and who is not has become the subject of not only drawing room and news room discussions, but also a serious worry in the minds of all right-thinking people. Sparks flew in the Jawaharlal Nehru University and the Patiala courts, and the country is raging not only at the arrest of the JNU student union president Kanhaiya Kumar, but the manner in which he and journalists were thrashed at the Patiala courts thereafter. This is not just a JNU issue, it is not an issue of the courts. Universities across the country have gone up in virtual flames, protesting against Kumar’s arrest, and the manner in which the government, RSS and ABVP have handled the situation has come in for a lot of criticism. The right wing has said that this is a fight against people who are trying to destroy the country, it is against sloganeering in the universities, against western anti-national elements coming and threatening the fabric of the country. It is easy to be excited in a time like this. I think it is very important to have a mature, sane debate, albeit an angry one, to look into three things: which way our country is heading, whether our institutions are at a point where they’ve crumbled and there is no hope, and what must society do to repair the damage caused? We need to find out if the idea of India can survive and what we can do to protect it. Our panelists for this debate are: Dr Oscar Rebello, Advocate Cleofato Coutinho, Hasiba Amin and Amogh Arlekar.
Herald: Oscar, has the idea of India been threatened?
Rebello: I would like to structure this debate into two, if you look at it dispassionately, what the ‘right’ did not do right, and what the ‘left’ did wrong. Let me first come to what the right did not do right. From the RSS and all its frontal organizations, including the ruling political party, they have got it wrong for the simple reason that they have misread and misunderstood the mind of India, and more importantly, the mandate they were given to run this country. To see these kind of scenes in which lawyers – custodians of the law – doing what they did in Delhi, to see the police abjectly standing by and virtually surrendering their entire authority to see a student and journalists being thrashed and abused – I think that kind of an image that goes out to the world, it looks like something in South America or Africa. The damage done to the government by its actions is complete intolerance and abuse of power. It is going to be phenomenally damaging to the government itself more that it will be to the idea of India. I am an optimist. I’ve always said that our founding fathers have inoculated us with the vaccine of democracy in 1947. If you think a couple of years in the social media era and this proliferation of information that is there, you can convert us into some straitjacketed monolith of the RSS, I think it is an experiment that is bound to fall flat and its going to be egg on the government’s face. Perhaps the government wants this to completely hit the fan in this manner, is for electoral reasons itself. They want to polarize not into Hindu and Muslim or Hindu and Christian, but between national and anti-national. They want to polarize the electorate in this way because they have seen what has happened in Delhi, they saw what happened in Bihar, and they’ve realized that the development agenda is not working out. Muzzafarnagar probably gave them the answer that it works. I also want to address another point: where the left is wrong. It is obviously not Kanhaiya Kumar who raised those slogans, but every piece of video evidence shows you that there were definitely statements made on the JNU campus, which calls for the disintegration of the country, which calls for Azadi for Kashmir, which eulogizes people like Afzal Guru. This is brazenly something that is wrong. This cannot be dissent. This is wrong. Because this is definitely being done by a leftist organization, the left needs to address this constituency of theirs and tell them it is wrong. That kind of thinking, where you think you can splice the country, that is not dissent or debate. That is completely unacceptable. The way the government has handled this, it was almost like using a sledgehammer to hit a rat. I would love to see even Arvind Kejriwal and Rahul Gandhi go to the JNU campus and address the students and say that this kind of thinking is unacceptable in a country like this.
Herald: Cleofato, the damage has been done. Do you see this as irreparable damage? Because at the end of the day, it is the manner in which one of the pillars of democracy, which is the judiciary, completely raised the bar of hooliganism to a different level altogether. It’s not about when you call it dissent or anti-nationalism, but the fear is that rogue elements have entered a profession which is as holy as yours. When edifices start crumbling like this, then it is beyond the question of who is a nationalist and who is not.
Coutinho: Before I come to that question, I will touch on two issues Oscar has raised. If you look at the Hyderabad University, the issue came up for the first time when they took up the issue of Yakub Memon. Now it is Afzal Guru and then the charge of sedition has come up. They have jumped on this to create some sort of divide. If you see the editorials in some of the national newspapers in the last week, you will find that in Muzzafarabad, this has been helping the ruling party. There is a deliberate attempt at polarizing the country. Oscar may be right in saying that they are trying to divide the country on nationalism or pseudo-nationalism, but I look at it purely on the basis of religion. After the victory in 2014, particularly in UP, has been on the basis of polarization. In Bihar it did not work because it is a different state altogether for various reasons. Now the UP elections are there. This polarizing is for the UP elections. I don’t agree with Oscar’s point about Afzal Guru to that extent. I don’t see any debate about the country being broken into two. The question about whether Afzal Guru was hung rightly or not has been an issue in JNU. Whether Afzal Guru got justice or not, whether Indira Gandhi’s killers got justice or not, this could always be a subject of discussion. And if they have discussed, I don’t think there is anything wrong in that.
Rebello: I agree with Cleofat. The BJP runs with the hare and hunts with the hounds. It catches hold of Kanhaiya because of the Afzal Guru issue and puts him behind bars and it actually wants to have a great love affair going on with Mehbooba Mufti of the PDP, which also stands for Afzal Guru. There the hypocrisy of the BJP is exposed. My point is there were statements video recorded on campus, by who we do not know, that called for the splicing of this country.
Coutinho: This video recording, according to AAP, are ABVP plants in the JNU campus. I’m saying being anti-national is also not a crime. Every December 19, we have a debate in Goa on whether we should have remained independent or become a nation. What is wrong with having a debate? As long as all of you stand by the constitution and the country. Is it wrong with having such a debate?
Amin: I just want to say that as a country, we’re very strong. A few people having a dissent or a different view are not going to break us down. We need to stop looking at that as a threat and calling for them to be killed or stoned. We shouldn’t turn into that in the midst of this.
Herald: Amogh, I’ll just leave the field to you. Respond to all that you’ve heard.
Arlekar: I think the idea of India is very subjective and personal for everyone. Everyone has the right to have their own idea of India.
Rebello: Is my idea of India acceptable to you?
Arlekar: I may defer with you, but I agree that you can have a different idea.
Amin: I doubt your party will agree with that.
Herald: What is your idea of India? Your issue of India is that the constitution of India comes first. Kanhaiya Kumar in his JNU speech saluted the constitution and said if anybody raises a finger at the constitution, they are going to chop that finger. Kumar’s idea of India is your idea of India. SO why is he in jail?
Arlekar: Kumar’s arrest was on the basis of being present at the place where the sloganeering took place. He was shouting slogans. Such sloganeering was wrong. Should we wait for such sloganeering to turn into actions? When people think that way, when people are shouting slogans in that line, is it not possible for that to turn into actions in the future?
Amin: If we’re not waiting for it to turn into action, why is Kanhaiya behind bars, but not one person who has made those slogans has been taken into custody. The people who were actually standing there and making slogans have not been taken into custody. The guy who was taken into custody was the guy who was stopping the fight. Just because he spoke against the RSS and BJP has been taken into custody on a charge so grave as sedition. And understand the situation; there are lawyers standing outside who are calling for him to be stoned to death. People in our country are talking like that. We are not letting law take its course. I’m scared for that boy’s life. As a student activist, I feel that if I speak anything against the BJP, they will slap a sedition charge against me, put me behind bars, use Photoshop and propaganda mechanisms to believe that I am anti-national.
Rebello: Amogh, do you think the government of the day equals to the nation?
Arlekar: Thomas Edison had made it very clear that a patriot has to stand up against the government for the nation. The nation and government are two different things. But that’s out of bounds of whatever we’re discussing right now. Now comes the allegation that lawyers thrashed journalists. That’s an extremely condemnable act.
Herald: According to you, Kanhaia Kumar is a culprit and he should be booked for sedition, which he has been. What Amin is saying is that there were people with him who shouted similar slogans. Where are they?
Arlekar: The police are acting in a way you may or may not agree. But they are acting. The lawyers and Kumar being thrashed was not done by ABVP. Why are these questions being posed to us? The larger question also remains; how did this come to tackling the government or BJP? Certain political leaders went to JNU campus three days after the incident. Had some of those leaders gone on the day of the incident and said such slogans were not to be given, that would have been a rare moment in history. The attack on Kanhaiya and journalists is extremely condemnable.
Rebello: Why are the same police who have been so quick to swoop down on JNU and arrest those poor innocent kids, going with kid gloves who were attacking journalists? Are you trying to tell me there is no political master behind this trying?
Coutinho: For the last many months, there is the clear creation of an atmosphere of fear. It started with IIT Madras. Thereafter the Greenpeace activists were rounded up. Then FTII. This is the same situation during the Emergency. That was a situation of personality-based leadership. It is the same situation developing here.
Arlekar: After many years, ABVP has been able to get a seat in the council of JNU. There is a certain feeling of discontentment among the left forces and JNU, thinking that somebody else is settling inside their home. ABVP has been elected by the students of JNU. Slowly we’re starting to have ground over there. That has been the most uncomfortable for them.
Amin: Three ABVP members have written a very beautiful letter. They have resigned. So you should know the difference between nationalism and hooliganism. There is a bigger problem here. It is not as small as JNU and Kanhaiya being attacked. I will say this in the context of educational institutions. The government has realized there are certain institutions from where dissent is rising. It started with the Ambedkar-Periyar Study Circle. They had the guts to speak against the HRD Ministry. The moment that happened, the next day those people were banned. There were protests across the country and the ban was lifted. Then there was FTII; an RSS puppet was made the chairperson and the students had the problem with that. They were on strike for over 100 days. The government didn’t have the same to go and talk to them. We know how the autonomy of the institutions is being thrashed. Today the same thing is happening in JNU. This is a pattern that is going on.
Rebello: What I find completely non-synchronous, is the clear and concerted attempt by the right-wing forces to clamp down on any form of dissent, especially from the student community and the creative bodies of the country. Whatever forces that create thought, which does not conform with the straitjacket of the RSS, I don’t know how that conforms with Modi’s pet project of Make In India. I do not know how you can have Make in India, how you can have people’s creative juices flow? Today even in scientific institutions you are supposed to follow a narrow narrative of what happened in the Vedas as being the gospel truth as far as science is concerned. If you crush dissent like this, if you crush creative thinking like this, and if you put people into straight-jackets, there is no way you are actually going to exploit the full potential of the minds of the young Indian to make in India. You’re not going to do that. You have to allow dissent. The best creative innovations from the world have come from democracies. They have not come from dictatorships.
Herald: Dr Oscar has made one thing very clear: he is fighting for the right to dissent. He has also said that he does not mean that dissent extends to raising slogans against the country. The people in JNU may have exercised dissent. There is no proof that the people who shouted the slogans were from JNU. In fact, the JNU committee had denied permission for the meeting. People from outside came in and said those slogans. People are seeing this attack on Kanhaiya as an attempt to crush dissent, not as an attempt to crush anti-nationalism.
Arlekar: Where do you draw the line for dissent? If you seek the destruction of our country, is that dissent or is that being anti-national? That’s anti-national.
Coutinho: What has happened and what has not happened is only because there is government-backing for the police.
Amin: ABVP cannot wash its hands off and say it is not the government because when it needs help, it takes help from the government.
Arlekar: The allegation of BJP being the ABVP’s mother organization is completely false. There are various instances where we have protested against the BJP in various states.
Herald: We have debated this on a national scale. It’s very important to figure out what this means not only for India, but in Goa as well. There is a lot of dissent, resentment and anger in the way the government is functioning. There is a genuine fear amongst people that dissent in this State will also meet the same fate. Goa is being ruled by the same party. I’m not beating the drum and raising fear psychosis, but do you feel that the space for dissent is shrinking in Goa.
Amin: I think the space for dissent is shrinking across the country, including Goa. The government is creating fear psychosis and doing this as a deterrent. I knew many people who used to be vocal when they saw something wrong happening but are scared today. It’s really scary and we need to do something about it. It’s high time we do something
about it.
Rebello: I love the way Hasiba speaks with this level of fear gripping her during the BJP regimen. Not that her Congress regime was any better as far as instilling fear psychosis in people was concerned. Dissent in Goa is crushed. You can say whatever you want, except when it comes to the financial interests of the ministers in power. That is when dissent will be crushed. I don’t think they are bothered about whether you call them goondas or do anything you want. I have noticed that for the last ten years since we’ve been fighting to secure the land of Goa, whenever a financial interest comes under strain, at that time if there is dissent, then the ministers will come after them. Claude Alvares is a massive hero to the BJP during the Congress regime, but he becomes a massive villain for fighting for the same causes when it comes to the BJP regime. Yesterday Parsekar said he will crack down on any activists are seen at the Defexpo. What does that mean? That dissent will be crushed the moment it hurts the financial interests of the government or whichever minister is involved. Otherwise, on the basis of the grand concept of Goa, you can talk about it till thy kingdom come, they couldn’t care less.
Coutinho: There are so many schemes in place as far as the government is concerned and at various meetings, they are in a position to collect people for the meetings on the far that the schemes will be discontinued. Secondly, the debate on tolerance has been going on for the past three or four months, but still Kanhaiya happens. Still the attack on lawyers happens. This means the government is not bothered about the public perception on such issues. It is relevant in Goa to some extent. There was a time when the government was attacked day in and day out. Today, the present government has gone back on every issue possible. The extent of dissent that is there in society is much less out of fear of the government. This fear was not there during the last government. The last government was receptive to some extent.
Arlekar: I think the fact that we’re having such vocal debates at every forum possible across the country is a reflection that dissent has not been crushed. I strongly feel that dissent has not been crushed. This is a false fear psychosis because of people who feel that their ideology is withering out. Therefore, the only thing that can help them is to create a fear psychosis that they are trying to crush us.
Amin: The most unfortunate thing that is happening today is that the RSS and its political wing, which have not raised the national flag for 52 years and who were colluding with the British during the freedom struggle, have no right to tell us who is a nationalist and who is an anti-national.
Arlekar: Her allegation of us not respecting the national flag is completely baseless.
