As though the existing mountain of problems were not enough, more trouble is brewing for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ahead of the crucial budget session of Parliament beginning on Feb. 23.
After Hyderabad university had triggered nationwide uproar over the suicide of “dalit” scholar Rohit Vemula on Jan. 17 and put the Modi government in the dock, another central university Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) of Delhi has erupted with even more severe repercussions for Modi. The JNU row is even more sinister for the BJP government as it has a fair bit of Pakistan angle too in it.
The BJP and the Modi government have unnecessarily embroiled themselves in the JNU row, which attracted national attention last week when a bunch of students organized a seminar in the university campus where allegedly anti-India and pro-Pakistan slogans were shouted. The seminar was on the “judicial killing” of Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhat, both from Jammu and Kashmir who were hanged on terror charges. JNU students’ union leader Kanhaiya Kumar, a leftist, was promptly arrested on charges of sedition.
Home Minister Rajnath Singh fanned the political fire further by claiming that Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Saeed was supporting the JNU row. The minister was alluding to a tweet by Hafiz Saeed, which later turned out to be bogus, and Saeed himself made a statement completely disassociating himself from the controversy.
This was the second time in successive months when Singh jumped the gun and embarrassed himself and the government. Last month, he had claimed that the Pathankot counterterror operation was over as all the four terrorists inside the airbase had been neutralized. Within hours it was clear that more terrorists were hiding inside the airbase and it took three more days for the Indian security agencies to kill all the terrorists.
Ministers in Modi government and BJP leaders waded into the JNU row dubbing the JNU as a place full of anti-nationals and triggering a full-scale political war between BJP and its ideologue Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) on one hand and all other opposition parties, particularly the Congress, on the other hand. Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi, a bitter critic of the Modi government, attacked BJP and RSS, saying they wanted to control everyone’s views and follow the agenda of creating divide and hatred among people.
BJP President Amit Shah accused Gandhi of joining hands with separatist forces and wondered whether the Congress leader wanted another partition of the country. This triggered another bout of angry exchanges between the two parties, which can’t see eye to eye on any issue.
Amid all this Modi kept mum and not a single statement has come from him thus far. Remember, Modi is the same politician who as Gujarat chief minister used to taunt the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as a “mauni baba,” silent ascetic.
The Modi government has not exactly covered itself with glory by wading into the JNU row. It should have kept itself away and let the university authorities deal with the issue. JNU students have been organizing protests and acerbic seminars on the death anniversary of Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhat, which falls in the month of February. Such protests and seminars never became a national controversy. The Congress government was much too clever to allow situation getting out of hand.
You don’t arrest a student leader under as serious a charge as sedition for allegedly shouting anti-India slogans, which the student leader in question has emphatically denied. This move is veritably a contempt of the Supreme Court, which has time and again said in several rulings that a case of sedition is made out only if an alleged seditious activity or utterance leads to violence immediately and not when allegedly anti-national remarks are being made. India is a democracy and dissent and freedom of expression are hallmarks of a democracy.
Moreover, it is beyond comprehension why the BJP is pushing the envelope so hard over JNU students protesting over the alleged “judicial killing” of Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhat when this has been the consistent stand of People’s Democratic Party (PDP) with which the BJP ran a coalition government in Jammu and Kashmir for 10 months and is now again trying to construct a coalition with the same party to form a government in that state.
The JNU row is yet another point of conflict between BJP and opposition parties which will inevitably cast a shadow on the budget session of Parliament beginning next week. The opposition sees it as yet another example of intolerance by other means. This is one controversy the Modi government could have done without.
